fishinwrench

Outstanding !

I think there's something pretty special about that zone you're in. Because if that happens at any similar areas up and down the Mo./Miss. I've sure never heard about it. That's just awesome!

Ahh, well I'll be darn. Thanks for digging that up, I had always heard/read otherwise. How cool! Guess that explains it then.

Nevermind....I just looked at the pics again. Definately not Whites.

All very cool looking bugs. I'm just mildly blown away because to my knowledge the closest hybrid stocking is either gonna be Lake Ozark or one of the Illinois lakes. I guess it's not completely crazy to think that those might be HONKER river WHITES! Kinda hard to tell by the pics. Check the tooth patches next time you catch one. You realize, right, that hybrids don't reproduce on thier own....so if they are Hybrids (wipers) then they were stocked somewhere, and they don't dump them in the Mo. or Miss. Rivers at all (at least that is My understanding).

I like a #4 and white usually does the job on the water I fish mostly. I don't tie commercially but here's the pattern. Mustad 3366 #4 Cork popper body (reversed, painted, and epoxy coated) Tail: calf tail & two strands med. round rubber. Hackle: grizzly saddle The deer hair version doesn't cast as good, doesn't have that sexy "splat", gets waterlogged, and just doesn't get bit like this one, so I don't even carry or tie them anymore. But of course YMMV

If it wasn't for the shape of that fish I'd swear it was a striper. This is really interesting to me, cuz I don't think the Hybrids around here key on crawdads that often..... or maybe they do and I am missing out on it. Are there shad in that area? Where do you think those hybrids are coming from? Is there somewhere upstream from there that they are periodically stocked ?

You really got my interest in a big way when you said "hybrids" ! Do you get them to eat craw type flys along the bottom very often?

Yeah I gotta say that I do. I love spinning hair, but for poppers and pete's I have done alot better with cork. It kinda sucks too because the hair versions are alot easier/quicker/cheaper to make....and to MY EYE hair looks cooler, but I gotta stay with what gives me the most confidence. And the confidence in the hard headed pete's came from getting bit more often.

I've wondered that about the bead chain too, especially with the heavier tippet you are using. I would think you'd need a bit more weight to maintain bottom contact. I'm guessing that a sinking leader would spook carp for 1/8 mile.

Prime topwater time is from late May until late Oct., with emphasis on the whole month of July. Deer hair Sneaky Pete (Hairy Peter), yep, been there....but for several reasons that I don't fully understand (nor shiv-a-git) the old faithful hard headed version rules.

Yep, the left leg of Davy almost all the way back, sits on a real good secondary point loaded with brush. MM to Shawneed bend #2 by road. (look for the tower) then follow the signs.

Check out Castaway's. Excellent bass fishing real close and it's a nice laid back place. The guys that hang out there are among the best fishermen on the lake.

HA! Wow, where was I when all this went down? Classic. It's all so obvious..... someone from the drake finally wanked their way to the end of the thong thread. Congrats WF, now go shave your palms. :roll:

Sharps, this is JMO of course, but you can do yourself a lot of good right off the bat by pitching that Harry Murray book behind the fridge or somewhere else that is equally hard to get to and easy to forget about. Harry Murray has apparently stumbled onto a waterway where the trout wear smallmouth suits, and you won't find those cross-dressing Smallies here in the Ozarks. You wanna stick predominantly to topwater flies (Poppers, Sliders, Foam hoppers, Gurglers, Crease fly's) and sub- surface flies (Muddlers and the like) that you can maintain visual contact with a few feet below the surface. Rabbit strip leeches, Sparkleminnows and Clouser's are about the only flies you'll need for covering deeper areas where you can't see the bottom from where you're standing. Crawling crawdad imitating flies along the bottom is the most difficult presentation to master and usually it is easier to coax them into hitting something you can see than to rely on lightning fast reflexes or pure luck. Unlike Harry Murray's fish, our Smallies have a tendency to approach slowly moving flies, suck them in....and spit them right back out before you are even aware that you had a bite. The most consistent strategy for getting them hooked is to maintain a tight line to the fly at all times and try to illicit an aggressive take. Or by using presentations that allow you to visually watch the take. Sorry to rail on Harry and maybe I'm out of line by assuming I know better than he does, but his and Holshlags writings set my learning curve back about 2 full years. That's all I got

I used to get calendars from TU and one of the pics would always have some obvious rookie glitch....like line wrapped around the rod between two guides, or a guy fishing in a seemingly remote location, far from any road....with his boot laces untied and dragging the ground, that sorta thing. LOL

I'm gonna address the tach issue first because this is possibly a worse problem than it seems. The tach gets its signal from the voltage rectifier/regulator, and bad voltage rect/regs on J/E V4-V6's are notorious for going up in flames and roasting 1000.00 worth of electrical components and wiring. Get that puppy checked out pronto ! If the tach wasnt working at all then it would possibly be just a bad tach....but a tach that does crazy $#!t is usually a smoked rect/reg. If you have a voltmeter on the dash also you'd probably notice the voltage spiking or dropping when the tach starts fluctuating. The fuel gauge issue sounds like either a bad sender, or a sender wire that is shorted to ground.... no biggie there.

Ain't that the truth. LOL

A 16' jon boat with a 15-20hp outboard and a trolling motor will fish practically any water in this state. Tows easily and holds its resale value better than anything that floats. You wouldn't have any trouble unloading it if and when you choose to upgrade either. Its the closest thing to a solid investment that there is in the boating world.

I have a OT Guide 147 that is as good a stand-up/poling canoe as I've ever been in. She's pretty hefty, but for an all around solo it's pretty hard to beat.

Changes from year to year used to be somewhat of a non-issue, the ones that wete made were well known and easy to understand. Anymore though it is encroaching a likeness to the tax code. Firewood soon wont be hauled across county lines, crawdads can't be carried over a hill, your boots have to be approved, and bans on certain types of terminal tackle are being considered. Pretty crazy. Yet gigging still goes on unchecked. I am too much of a curmudgeon to take all this change in stride without getting cranky.

Have you recently bumped your head, or are you truly that green? I was under the impression that you had been fishing awhile.

No you won't. And "every thread" doesn't turn into "this crap", but you knew full well that this one was going to go south when you first clicked on it, just by the thread title alone, now didn't ya? So ok, your attempt to stir the dung while pretending to not want to, is noted. LMAO

Signature worthy. Stolen!

Well I've got some disturbing news, and I really hate to be the one breaking it to you... Your cat secretly hates your guts, and probably sticks its paw in your coffee mug after a trip to the litter box.