fishinwrench

Oh Nice! Will you STOP IT! I've got work to do and you are NOT helping me stay focused.

How far from Gravois Mills are ya ?

The Center for Disease Control ? Ebola Crappie....Get ya some !

Applys to all. As soon as fish dump their eggs they start developing more. Just like chickens, humans, crocodiles, ect. Chalk one up for evolution.

That is one hell of a LO Walleye ! She may very well hold that one over you for life.

Nope, they cook them all Winter.

Elaborate can ya ? Are we talking banana yella, harvest yeller, or fluorescent yellow ? I have always found buckskin tan to be a good draw for stocker browns also.

You can usually scrape off the chrome with an old pocket knife, I have done that on spooks and rattle-traps back when "bone" was a hot color.

Good deal ! I love happy endings.

That's the way it is up here every Fall. I look for areas where there aren't big balls of shad everywhere, which usually means the extreme shallows or far up a off colored creek arm where the only shad you'll find will be smaller schools of big ones. What you are mostly seeing out over deep water is probably giant schools of 1" long yearling shad.

Good deal.

So your version of the truth is that we were lead into a controversy, asked questions of a few who pretended to be "in the know", became confused and concerned when the questions were ignored.... And now WE (the ones who expressed concern) are at fault for it ??? That is some fuktup logic.

Yes you can weld a new skeg on. If done by a quality shop it will be stronger than, and look as good as the original. The last one I had done on a smallish outboard (15hp Evinrude) cost 65.00 and that included touching up some chips on the cav plate as well.

I would have the skeg repaired and forgo the attaching of any kind of "guard". It is my opinion that prop guards just create more turbulence and cause more problems than they solve. The trick to running rivers with a prop is knowing the stretch of river well, and taking it slow and cautious until you do. In the usually clear waters of the Ozarks that is pretty easy to do.

They aren't at their best when fished slow I don't think. Fast, Erratic, with some stop-n-drops thrown in should improve your catch rate.

Running down the bank with a Red eye shad is a sure way to avoid a skunkin' on a lot of lakes. Can't imagine that TR is an exception.

Wow, this is the damndest "plead the 5th" thing since the Lois Lerner deposition. WTH ?

From the factory FORWARD=CLOSED, but sometimes valves are replaced backwards, especially when someone unfamiliar with the system replaces both the valve and cable at the same time. The valve body is designed with cable braces in two different positions so that they will work with both types of cable routing (cable can be attached to the valve from forward, or from the rear) and the valve can be flipped to obtain the correct setting relative to the control knob (or slide switch). A lot of times on older bass boats you'll find them all screwed up where one livewell control has to be slid forward to drain while the other one has to be slid back. That is just because someone replaced a valve backwards and didn't want to "do it all over again" because replacing those valves is a pain in the butt. So the easiest way to be sure which is which is to stick a garden hose in each live well and find out.

You have some moisture in the throttle/shift handle switch most likely, or if you have a trim switch at the bow panel it might be that one. The lower cowling switch is sealed and usually immune to that bug. Be sure to check the back side of the relay panel. If the motor ran against itself long enough to heat up wires and melt the potting on the back side of the relay panel then you'll probably have some exposed circuits that will eventually corrode and cause you problems later on.

I'm not clear on what the problem is with LO walleye but overall catch rates on this lake are terribly low, even by guys that specialize and actually target them during what is considered peak times. In all my years here I only know of one occasion where a couple guys set out to catch a mess of walleye and succeeded. Personally I only catch enough of them to occasionally remind me that they are in here. So until the success rate on catching them improves drastically I think the current regulations are exactly where they should be.

Gotcha I certainly wasn't expecting a crappie out over a bare shallow flat, much less a giant one.

One fish characteristic that I only see happen in Fall is a strict topwater bite. On days when it seems they are just completely shut down, won't touch a jig or anything else, you can start throwing a buzzbaits or a spook and absolutely tear'em up. Any other time of the year if they are active enough to bust topwater stuff then they'll also eat spinnerbaits, flukes, cranks, and just about any bait you choose to devote time to. Not so in the Fall.

Can't argue with success, but I'm curious why a 1/8oz. head if the bites were only 2' down ? Caught a big ol' barn door slab up on a shallow flat last Thursday myself. Fought like a white bass too. Surprised me.

They are breeding those fish into swimming billboards down there! Fish Tattoos. Now that is clever! What a cool way to fund a hatchery

Yeah, I was just referring to the markings. It kinda looks..... Oh nevermind