Alex Heitman

Good the hear Quillback. I got on some today as well. Football jig this morning in the back of a cove with a long flat. Thought I had a big bass on but it stayed down and ended up being a 10 lb flathead. What a fight! Ha. The rest of the day ended up drop shotting dock slips and found a bunch of K's. ended up with probably around 15 fish. Going back out this evening in Indian point area we will see how it goes.

I don't know if it is me but I doubt it is but the bite has been flat out tough for me. I can't recall when I have had this hard of a time of catching fish and trying to develop some type of pattern. I have been down here since Friday and have caught all of my bigger fish dead shallow in the bushes. This takes lots of time and effort and not very many fish to show for either but they are bigger at least. I can't get a consistent deep bite either. Have tried drop shotting and deep with the FB jig but not very consistent and takes work as well. I cannot get fish to bite deep unless there are by docks as well I have not had one open water deep fish yet which is odd for me. I also went way up into long creek today for 5 hours and managed only 2 fish! At least they were 3+ lbs. Both were caught on square bill. Basically what I'm wondering is if I'm doing something wrong or if everyone is struggling. I have caught two 4 lb fish but geeze my best day numbers wise was 9. I'm blaming the bad fishing on the hot weather and rising water temps ha!

The table rock sp color looks like a new color. Is this an old color and if so has anyone tried it. Looks killer.

My take on the rules is that since you cannot cull you are allowed to have 6 fish in your boat. Lets say you put five in the box. The rule states you cannot cull but are allowed to keep six. So you keep fishing and catch a bigger fish that would cull. Well you just simply keep it and use it to cull another smaller fish but you do not throw the smaller fish back. You bring it to the weigh in site and do not count it towards your limit but it is put in the release boat. This is probably not right but just my take on the rule

Right there with you abkneenan. This year unfortunately I have had nice smallmouth almost completely swallow my tube and injured them on the fight to the boat. I did not mess with them and just cut the line. They ended up coming up after there release and not making it. I hate it when that happens. Made me sick.

This brown water has me all excited. Green pumpkin tube with orange tentacles should drive them nuts.

I would have to say the Nitro boats are made way better than they were a few years back. Their new haul design is awesome. IMO they ride way better than a Ranger or Phoneix. The price of them is unbeatable. I just love my Z-9. Rides like a dream

IMO I think 65 is fast enough.Not to mention the gas you burn for a few extra minutes of fishing. I run usually at 50 MPH. When you are running full throttle all the time I think it puts more wear and tear on your motor. Just not smart in my opinion to run wide open all the time.

Abekeenan I was throwing a couple different ones. I was throwing 3 and 4 inch storm swimbaits in pearl color. I was also throwing a scrounger head with a mag fluke if I got around the gizzard shad if not I was just throwing swimming fluke. Scrounger head sizes depended on what depth I wanted to be at. Used 3/8 and 1/2 oz heads.

Thanks guys. I have just been lucky at the right place at the right time. Can't complain though, except that it gets you hooked and makes you want to be out on the water everyday!

Swimbait was a soft paddle tail and used 3/8 to 1/2 weight

Went out Friday at about noon and fished some muddy water first in the back of creeks and coves. Picked up 2 real quick on some gravel flats on a crawdad colored tube. Thought I had them figured out and then nothing on the tube for a long time. My brother caught some nice LM on crankbait in the muddy water. Visbility was about 6 inches. Tried the jerkbait after the tube and nothing on that which was a big surprise to me. Struggled the rest of the day while throwing the kitchen sink at them until I pulled out a swimbait during the evening and that was the ticket the rest of the trip. Saturday I stuck with the swimbait and they were just eating it like crazy. I focused more on the clearer water with green tint that was stabilizing and clearing up after that big rain. This turned out to be a great decision. My brother continued to throw the crank and it was working as well. We caught probably over 20 keepers that day and lots of 14 inch fish, I quit counting after 10 keepers. A few SM mixed in but mostly really nice K's and some big LM. The K's are ready to explode! I caught them up close on the bank and backed out in the spawning areas. I feel that some of these fish are spawning deep this year with the rising water level we had come up Thursday. Some of the bigger LM we caught had already spawned. In the pic below is a 7 lb LM that was already spawned out. Saturday night lots of shad chasing activity in open water so I pulled out the spook and caught them on that all the way until dark. They were chasing heavily and explosions were common in the one area I was in. Sunday I went back to the area they were chasing to try some more topwater and they were still chasing. Caught several keepers on the spook for about an hour. Switched back up to the swimbait and caught another giant LM. This one had not spawned yet. Continued catching them on the swimbait for an hour and had to get back home. Really a succesful morning. Only fished from 6:30-9:00 and caught them the whole time.

No liley keep them guessing ha ?

Guys just thought of this and don't know why until now. Has anyone ever used trout colored swimbaits on the rock since there are some trout that are in the lake? I haven't but I am going to try next time I'm down for sure. It could turn out to be a killer color

Hey guys was thinking about heading down Thursday. Does anyone have the current water temp in the dam area? Would really like to get out down there again but if it is below 45 after this cold snap I might just stay home. Thanks

Purple is what gets the smallies! Awesome colors on those warts.

Thanks guys. Cracken I was throwing paddle tails on the rig.

I had a two really stellar days of fishing in the dam and KC area. The weekend before I did not throw the a-rig at all, so this weekend I decided I was going to give it a whirl. Friday morning I started at 730. A few cast into the morning and BAM! I was hooked up with a giant. Talk about a fighting LM even on 50lb braid. The sow was easily over 8 but I didn't have my scale on me for some reason. It came off the front of a dock that was sitting in 45ft of water and suspended in about 15ft of water. I found throughout the day the bass were sitting on drop offs on chunk rocks banks halfway back and all the way in the back of spawning pockets. If the wind was blowing also in toward or down parallel to the bank into the pocket it helped also. All of the bass were sitting on the drops in about 10-20ft. I found a few ditches in the back of a pocket where a lot of them were holding ambushing shad. If there was a lot of timber that was bunched up it seemed they were not there but if there was some here and there they liked it better. Presentation was a slow and steady retrieve with a few jerks here and there. They were really slamming the rig hard and eating it well. Caught almost all LM with some K's mixed in. I duplicated the same pattern on Saturday and fished the same areas. I think the areas I was in new waves of fish kept coming up in the pockets. I was able to go back to the same spots later in the day and still catch them. My best five would have went around 26lbs. Just really had a trendmendous day on Friday. Saturday I was able to duplicate the same pattern. Never got one that was over 4 lbs that day though but I still did catch all quality keepers. Below is some pics of the bass I caught on Friday.

I'd watch for ole Edwin Evers. It's his home state and he is due for a classic win

Z-6 is way to small. If you can afford it, I would definetly go with the bigger boat. The bigger the bass boat the better. I would say at least an z-8.

By the way that smallie had been shallow for quite sometime. I took that picture back at the dock because I had no camera on me at the time of the catch. He was as dark and brown as could be.

I was down this past weekend and had fair fishing trip. I fished mostly between the Indian point area up to Kimberling. I was tired of dropshotting all summer so I decided to try and find a shallow bite. I focused on long coves that had creeks coming in (not that any of them were coming in the lake) that had lots of timber all the way to the back. I started about halfway back in a creek arm and fished all the way to the back. If there was silverside minnows in the back, I found a great topwater bite on larger fish. They were just smoking the spook. I had several non-hookups with some really nice LM keepers but they would destroy it up to three times if they missed. They were hard to kook to say the least. Below is a pic of a really nice smallmouth I caught before dark on Saturday that torpedoed 4 ft out of the water with my spook. I've never seen a smallmouth jump that high out of the water to hit a topwater. Talk about neat. The rest of the fish came about halfway back in the arm with the boat in about 25 fow and came anywhere from 2ft to 15ft on a pigsticker jig. They only hit the jig if it was moving and on the drop if it went over some tree limbs. The better fish I caught were dead shallow in the back on a spook. I think in the next week the shallow bite could really pick up. I seen tons of bait everywhere in the backs of pockets. Good Luck.

Great report bill. I was down last weekend and experienced the same thing. Fishing is great. On a side note ; a fishing friend of mine has developed new spinnerbaits and buzzbaits that interchange into hundreds of variations without re-tying your line. It's called The Interchangeable and he has a website at Revolution Lures.com. I was throwing some of those buzzbaits around docks, I heard from a local guide you could get some strikes early in the morning, he said he caught a few with using them.

Try the deep cranks in the timber. If you want some bigger fish. I feel like the color of the crank is the key. It needs to be a deep diver and you won't get many bites but they will be quality. Experiment with colors

Has anybody been throwing a spoon on schooling fish lately? Last weekend I played around with it a little bit when I found some bait and an active school. I had pretty good success with this. I did not do it all day but when I found a school it seemed to work pretty good.