Riverwhy

Tonight I'm planning on making a shepherds pie out of some smoked turkey. You can bet it will have plenty of those wonderful peas. I'm going to copy an idea I saw posted on here about putting ice cream shaped scoops of potatoes on top. I hope I can get that perfect lightly browned look.

If there is not a decline in crawfish densities why would we care if during certain parts of the year they eat crawfish? I obviously enjoy fishing for hybrids.

Fascinating that you can cross two species that are both open water foragers and produce a hybrid that changes into a fish that eats different forage in a different portion of the water column. Fascinating, but I am not a buyer of that hypothesis. The biologists obviously studied and concluded that crawfish populations have suffered substantial declines related to the hybrids. I would love to see the study. I'm just a bit skeptical. I generally catch hybrid that are associated with bait fish schools. I have never caught one bouncing a jig on the bottom.

I want to throw my cell phone away and spend the last two weeks of May floating, fishing and camping from Trappist Abbey to Tecumseh with my wife. Then hop onto my bass boat at Tecumseh and spend all summer fishing every cove, every bank, and every bit of shoreline Lake Norfork has to offer. I'll stay in the small local resorts along the lake and my family can visit on the weekends. Finally in September I'll reach the dam and conclude my trip. All while we are both still healthy.

I picture is worth a thousand words but I did not get around to it. Last night I made elk rib eye brought to room temperature and then seasoned and grilled to a medium rare. Covered that with my first Diane sauce minus the brandy but still pretty darned good. Threw together crab cakes using two cans of Great Value minced crab. Mixed them with an egg, mayo, Worcester, Old Bay, red pepper, salt and bread crumbs. Fried them in butter and then put them in an oven a 350 until I was ready. Prepared green beans for the vegetable. Served with a white wine. After dinner cocktail of Absinthe muddled with a sugar cube and water.

This topic is a much needed relief valve for me. I am constantly teased about the volume of fishing gear I feel that I need. I am normally a boat passenger and not captain and I usually bring six rods. I think a guy needs top water, spinners (both inline and traditional), cranks (both lipped and lipless), jigs, plastics, jerk baits, drop shot, and spoons. I find 6 rods to be a good compromise. Sometimes it is my two large tackle boxes that are packed to the seams that gets as much head shaking as my number of rods. I now feel confident in telling my fishing buddies that the forum consensus is that six rods and two big tackle boxes are par for the course. Since I fish, I feel I have license to exaggerate.

I hate to hear the news on the hybrid stocking. They are my favorite sport fish at Lake Norfork. Thanks for the report.

I'm coming down tomorrow and will put in at PB2. Hopefully the bass will cooperate a little. I'll post back on Friday.

I fished the Cranfield area last weekend. Water temperatures ranged from 69 to 72 degrees. Water had a little color back in the creek arms. Either the cold front resulted in a tough bite or I'm just not very good. We had hoped to find some white bass and hybrids moving back into the creek arms but we had no luck finding them. We managed four keeper bass with no real braggers. Altogether we caught over three dozen bass with another four that just didn't quite make 15 inches. We got lucky with a 3.5lb blue catfish on a white rooster tail, an 11 inch crappie again on the white rooster tail and a 19 inch walleye on a crank bait. We caught 4 other walleyes but they we a little short. Our best bite was around secondary points and chunk rock banks in the wind. The further we went back into the arms the slower the fishing. Most of the bass were caught on crank baits, megabass jerk bait, and a few on the ned rig. We did keep several big green sunfish.

I think the cold front and the ENE winds are going to make fishing very tough this weekend. I'm not sure whether small and slow is the answer or perhaps a reaction bite from a lipless might do better.

I appreciate the report Dewayne. I'm headed down this weekend and will be fishing the Cranfield area for black bass and hopefully a few whites. I sure hope I can match your success.

I sense a tremendous amount of exaggeration. A real whopper.

Got to the lake early Saturday but lightning kept us off the water until 10:30. We saw a few whites feeding in the first cove and picked up three good whites and a short. Anything shiny from spinner to crank would get an occasional bite. We headed to a main lake point and I managed a 16" and a 19" largemouth on soft plastics. We took a pretty classic approach and threw up on the point and bounced the bait back into deep water. We left the point and went back to white bass fishing by targeting windblown shallow points and flats. We picked up a white at almost every stop but it was one fish here and one fish there. None of the multiple white bite that I had hoped. (I'll wait until fall and hopefully find them bunched up at LOZ.) We went back to the main lake point and I picked up another 16.5" largemouth. I got tired of the endless stream of pleasure boaters coming around the point close enough that I could have cast in their boat so we headed home. As you read this you might note that I am a poor lake fisherman when it come to fishing creature baits. So, a more seasoned jig or rubber worm guy could probably of had much better results.

So tinjet225, we would like to hear your bass report?

Smallmouth bass can best be protected if we commit to winning the hearts and minds of the MDC and the fishermen who desire to harvest a portion of their catch. Recognizing and supporting the MDC in their small steps forward will help to build the bond with our fishery managers and we will not be seen as a group that serves no purpose but to complain. Most importantly, I think a civil discussion in the public forums on the benefits of reduced harvest and length limit protections will yield much better results than verbal abuse of those fishermen that support resource harvest. The battle is being won in changing attitudes towards keeping a limit of smallmouth bass but I think every time we pull out the terms such as meat fishermen, knifers, etc. we have alienated the majority of fishermen in this state and we serve to reinforce their attitudes and practices. We are not going to change attitudes by making this a fight between C&R and harvest fishermen.

I fished Door County a couple of years ago in late May. I caught a several over 20 inches but even the 18 inchers are absolute beautiful fish. My buddy calls them popcorn bass because you could catch a bag full of the 18 inchers. We found the Goby imitation baits very effective but also had good luck on big Mepp spinners.

I actually find most folks to be pretty good guys when you take a minute to get to know them. I absolutely detest wake boats and wish they did not exist but the guys that own these are just looking for a good time. Same as me in my 17 foot bass tracker. As I was reading the thread I reflected a bit on how I use to view other boaters. My buddy and I started referring to the guides and tournament anglers as "the Gore-Tex boys". We knew that by and large we could count on the Gore-Tex boys to make constant wakes as they zoom from one pre-fished spot to another. We also knew that they must be a friendly bunch because they always seemed to enjoy pulling in next to my little boat to fish. So now we have the wake boaters arriving on the scene. There is a bit of karma for the Gore-Tex boys. While I will use my limited abilities to help a guy at the ramp, I think Bill made the correct decision in this case.

Absolutely a great western scene. The only one that ranks higher for me is John Wayne repeating Richard Boone in Big Jake with "Your fault, my fault, nobody's fault I'm going to blow your head off"

I'm headed to Ketchikan the end of July. I hope to post a picture of a big king salmon with a Ned in its top lip.

It might work better if the second joint was a ned.

Does LOZ have a special regulation length limit of 18 inches or is it the standard 15 inch length limit for walleye?

I floated and camped Tuesday night on the North Fork. While cooking dinner we heard load splashes up stream and witnessed repeated portions of the dirt bank caving into the stream. One huge cave in actually made a very large wake that traveled across the river. The water below the cave in went from murky to chocolate brown for hours after the event. Smaller cave ins continued into the night. Not much left of the cattle fence by the time it was over.

Shimano Stradic and CI4+ are excellent reels. I know they are more expensive but they will last a long time with reasonable care.

Dave and his jig heads have been the most valuable thing I have found on this forum. They are really great for the application he describes.