Mike Worley

The Twin Lakes Walleye club took a field trip to the MDC hatchery where the walleyes that were collected from BSL near Powersite dam this year are spawned. We were told by the hatchery spokesman during his presentation that some years the walleye reproduction in BSL has been made up of 80% natural reproduction. So I don't think that the walleye population in BSL is a put & take thing. I found the hatchery trip to be quite informative. BTW MDC did collect a 14#+ female this year but she was well past her prime and did not survive the spawn. The hatchery personnel said females in the 2-8 pound range are the best producers and after that are generally not successful in spawning so if you catch a 8 pounder and want to keep it I don't think you are hurting the spawn. BTW I fished on the lower end of BSL yesterday and stayed after dark to see if the walleyes were still on the points spawning. We saw very few walleyes last night where we saw probably saw 200 last week we did see a female that looked like she was really beaten up. I think that maybe the really warm weather we had with 50 MPH wind over the weekend may have gotten them spawned so maybe the bite will get going soon.

Do you know what area of BSL that you will be at? It's a big lake (70+ miles long) with pretty good accommodations in most areas. You should narrow down what part of the lake you want to visit.

Fishing has overall been pretty good with mostly bass biting. Water temps have fluctuated from lower 50's to upper 50's last week. As of Saturday there were lots of walleyes up on the points at night getting ready to spawn.water temp was 54-57. We had a 90 degree day Sunday with a very strong south wind (30-45 MPH) then a cool day yesterday (48 degrees) with a strong NW wind & rain. The walleye bite usually gets going pretty good at water temps of about 60 degrees. We have been catching walleyes this past week casting stick baits late in the day and just after dark also some are being caught trolling crank baits during the day. The Bass are biting stick baits on chunk rock points on days with wind, white bass are biting in the back of the creek arms & bays in very shallow water (less than 5') when the wind is blowing. Look for colored water for the best bite. Crappies have been biting around brush piles some days shallow over the brush and other days on the bottom with jigs & minnows as well as small crank baits working best.........................Mike Worley (www.bullshoalsfishing.com)

Yeah, I just sent Hutch a check for $80 myself (second order this spring) They sure do make some nice jigs, so far I haven't had anything wear out on any of the jigs except some of the tinsle from the White Bass tearing them up.

I like 1/16 OZ jigheads with a light wire 2/0 or 3/0 hook. I don't use a weed guard for this presentation. Just try to keep it swimming along paralell to the bank in about 3' - 5' of water along a med to steep chunk rock bank with the point being the highest precentage area for bites.

Jigs & trailers cover a lot of territory. I have used a just about anything that resembles a crayfish or minnow. Hula grubs on a 1/8 jighead is a good choice as well as a 4" swimming minnow in smoke or motoroil on a 1/16 jighead. Keep in mind that we are talking about very clear / shallow water in this topic and getting a reaction bite so a swimming type presentation is going to work better than trying to get a bass to pick up a slowly worked heavier jig which is a different presentation.

Bass fishing has been good in shallow water this week with lots of Largemouth bass feeding on crayfish in less than 5 FOW. The lake has really cleared up with 16' visibility in many areas. If you can find colored water the fishing is much easier but the bass are still feeding even in the clear water in very shallow on the rocky points and coves that have crayfish present. The trick is to not spook the fish before you can catch them. Be sure to try and keep your boats shadow off the areas you are trying to fish. This means you must try to keep the wind on your back and the sun on your front, this is not always easy but with the water as clear as it is it's one more thing to consider if you are going to be successful in catching fish. Light clear line is also important fluorocarbon line or braid works best with 4 - 10 pound test. Try to make long casts down the bank with your stick baits, crank baits or jigs. Work with the wind. You will be able to get closer to the fish on windy cloudy days. I find that tilting up the outboard motor and using a drift sock to slow the boat down while keeping the boat as close to the shore as possible with the electric trolling motor works best. This technique calls for some preplanning and you need to be in stealth mode to make it work in other words don't move around in the boat and don't make noise. There are a lot of big fish in shallow water and they are easily spooked. The closer you are to shore the less visible you are to the fish with a much reduced boat Shadow. Locating areas that have crayfish present: look for fist size chunk rock (boulders or shallow ledges are a plus) Crayfish seem to like points for spawning. Crayfish are present all year round in Bull Shoals Lake and are the preferred forage of all species of bass. Bass will eat just about anything but will feed on crayfish whenever they are present. If you remember being in a area where you saw bass spook out of clear shallow water they were probably in there for crayfish make a mental note that it's a area that holds crayfish and work it when conditions are right. I like to use a suspending stick bait or a crank bait like a Wiggle Wart or a very light (1/16-1/8 OZ) swimming type jig presentation for a reaction bite. A 4" swimming minnow on a 1/16 jighead or a Hulagrub on a 1/8 jighead do a pretty good imitation of a crayfish or minnow when trying to escape and will trigger reaction bites. Try to use as light of line as possible I use 4 - 6 # florocarbon for the swimming jigs.

The dogwoods & red buds are starting to bloom at my house right now. We have been getting a little rain down here so maybe the creeks will muddy up a little and get the whites biting again. We were doin' pretty good on them in the back of the creeks & bays till the water cooled back down and cleared up.

We fished the Jimmie Creek & Sister Creek areas Friday afternoon and Sunday. Friday was a pretty good day with several LM & a keeper walleye biting on stickbaits. We also found some good size white bass biting in the back of the creek that bit on white bucktail jigs. Sunday the cold front slowed things down but still caught a few fish on the stickbaits and bucktail jigs. The most productive bait for us was a 1/16 white bucktail jig fished on 4# test line tipped with a 2 1/2" gulp minnow on both days. The walleye was caught after dark near the new Frost point launch ramp. Water temps on both days in that area was 48-52.

I like Hutch tackle's bucktail jigs. These hand tied jigs are really deadly on anything that swims. I like the 1/16 OZ in #28 (white with tinsle) Check out Hutch's website (www.riverwalleyes.com) These are very high quality jigs and are very resonably priced.

How's the fishing been at Powersite? Is there enough water to get upstream from River Run access yet?

How's the fishing been at Powersite? Is there enough water to get upstream from River Run access yet?

fishing report 2/20/11 This unusually warm February weather has really helped the bite on Bull Shoals Lake. Bass fishing has been good with lots of keeper size Large Mouth, Spotted & Smallmouth biting on everything from suspending stickbaits to jigs. Walleye are being caught on suspending stickbaits and White bass are moving into the back of the major creek arms and are biting on white or smoke colored grubs in shallow water. Crappie are staging along the bluff banks in the creek arms and can be caught on jig & minnows and small crankbaits. Look for the warmest water you can find, the coves that are facing south are warming to 47-55 degrees when the south wind is blowing. Try to find water that has some color to it as these areas warm fastest and are holding shad and gamefish. Work your stickbaits according to the water temperature a slow jerk with as long of a pause as you can stand in the colder clearer water with a more aggressive snap and pause in the warmer colored water...........................Mike Worley (ar.walleyes@yahoo.com)

The shallow water bite on BSL is getting better as warm weather and strong winds are warming the water in the back of creek & main lake coves. Look for areas that have had the wind blowing into them. Best coves seem to be chunk rock with some wood cover located in less than 20 fow in the back of the cove. Look for areas with some colored water which will help with the water temperature a difference of one or two degrees can make the difference in catching or not catching fish. The back end of productive coves yesterday showed temps of 48-50 degrees while other areas showed 45-46 degrees. From 3PM to about 6PM we caught 6 bass(3 keepers to 17") and a 20" walleye on suspending Rogues. A pretty hard snap followed by a long pause seemed to trigger the bite T-Shad, gold clown & avacado shad all caught fish.

Water temp yesterday in the back of a mid-lake creek arm was 46-48 degrees (late afternoon) The water was very clear if you can find some colored water it should be even warmer.

I agree with Tim about how good this year (and last year) being great fishing on BSL. I finally got out on the water late yesterday afternoon and fished till a little after dark. Water temp was back up to 46-48 in the back end of the mid-lake secondary creek arm I fished. Water clarity was very clear which if you can find some colored water that should help. I did manage to catch a couple of fish on a suspending Rogue 1 14" LM and a 19" walleye. The walleye hit right at sunset. I was fishing in the point 16 area there may be a little more color to the water further up the lake. Just before the snow storm hit us I launched at Peel (125 Park) and found better water color up around Buck Creek. The ramp at the 125 park was almost too low to use at that water level without having 2 people. Water temp was 43-45 that day and I did about the same with 1 SM and a 20" walleye. I don't think the night bite is going real strong yet but the walleye are starting to show up along the chunk rock spawning type banks half way back in the tributary arms and they will bite in shallow water right now. If the weather will stay warm and we get some rain I think the fishing will really take off for a early start to another great year of fishing on BSL.

I have 2 kinds of rod holders on my boat with 9 rail mounts. I use Ram 2000 rod holders for everything except planer board rods which I like the Attwater / Roberts rod holders for. The rail mounts for these two brands fit both. Both brands have strong points and weaknesses. The Attwater / Roberts seem to do a better job of holding planer rods which are set up almost vertical to get the line up high enough to get the side planer boards out far enough and at the right angle to work properly I use 8 1/2' rods for that application. Flat lining & dead sticking I like the Ram 2000 which has a 6" post that raises rod holder up higher and allows for a wide range of adjustments for different trolling rod lengths, I use a mixture of rod lengths from 5' to 12' when flat lining, leadcore trolling, contour bottom bouncing or dead sticking. The weakness of the Ram 2000 is the twisting of the plastic post when trolling with side planer boards and you snag the lure on something and the drag is set a little too tight the Attwater rod holder seems to hold up better under that pressure. Also if you decide on rail mounts be sure to leave the brackets a little loose so you can move it with the rod holder installed up or down which will give you a lot more adjustment. I prefer the Offshore side planer boards but have also used Church and Yellow birds. I generally find that one board on each side is enough but I do run one or two extras at times mostly when the fish are biting in shallow water near the shore line. The main reason I use side planer boards is to give enough room to be able to have 2 or 3 rods in holders off the stern of the boat.

Have you been wade or bank fishing? has there been enough water to get a boat up past River Run?

I got out to fish a little yesterday in the Buck creek area caught 1 20" walleye on a stickbait about 10 AM before the wind died. Beautiful day to be on the water wish I would have gotten out earlier. Tomorrow I'm going to try and be on the lake at sunrise. Water temp was 43 at 9:30 AM and 47 at 4:30 when I put the boat back on the trailer. I caught some Smallmouth bass also, the walleye was on a spawning type bank half way into a creek in less than 15 FOW and hit a avocado shad colored suspending rouge. Here's a tip on color for Bull Shoals lake: I have found that when the lake is clear (3'+ visibility) and low a suttle color like green or smoke are usually more productive than loud colors like clown or fire tiger this holds true for other lures also like grubs and jigs. When the lake level is rising or the water is less clear try the clown or chartreuse colors. A good jig to try in the winter for bass is a avocado colored flat tail (beaver tail) grub. These are not the easiest lure to find but I have caught many bass in the winter the on them the only name I know for this lure is "Sting ray grub" fish it along bluff walls on a plain jig head a slow dragging action just let it fall off the ledges and watch for a line twitch to set the hook. Big Red's tackle in Lakeview, Arkansas has the String Ray grub in stock for $.25 each.

Thanks lonkm for the kind words. I tried to fish last night but I had to wuss out. My thumb hurt so bad I thought it was frostbite, I just can't take the cold like I used to. I guess I will have to switch over to a spinning reel on those cold nights it was 35 degrees when I got back to the rig at the ramp. I did not get a bite and was off the water about 7 PM.

Nothing "weird" about catching rainbow trout in BSL. AGFC raise rainbow trout at the Pot Shoals net pens all winter. A couple of the larger boat docks & resorts raise rainbow trout in pens that AGFC stock with fingerlings and release them into the lake (BSLBD & Howard Creek resort) I caught several rainbow trout in the 3-5 LB class last spring trolling 800 Reef Runners pretty much all over the lake. Trout fishing had been popular in BSL (trolling & night fishing under lights) BSLBD even had a party boat type setup pontoon boat that made several nighttime trips a week to the caves in Jimmies creek. About 10 or 15 years ago AGFC released a large number of tagged rainbow trout into the lake to do a creel census, they got almost none of the tags returned. AGFC announced that they were not going stock rainbow trout into BSL anymore. The years that rainbow trout were stocked were the same years that BSL was producing lots of walleyes in the 10LB class (my personal largest walleye a 15LB was taken in 1990) I guess the walleyes didn't know where to send those tags. I have cleaned walleyes with several 4"-9" trout in them. One of the most popular places to fish for trout was the face of Bull Shoals Dam but 9/11 put a stop to boats getting close to the dam and the no trout stocking announcement by AGFC pretty much put a whammie on the trout fishing popularity in BSL. I think that if AGFC would just start stocking fingerling trout again we would see a lot more 10 LB+ walleyes caught again.

The middle of January looks good with the full moon on the 19th which if we get a little wind & cloud cover can get the middle of the day bite going. I think the stripers should still be up & biting till the water warms up this spring. Main problem this time of year is predicting the weather. It's not much fun lauching the boat with ice & snow and it gets real cold trying to fish much after dark in winter time but if we get a warm spell it really can be a blast. There's a photo of another 40LBer I caught last Thursday.

This is true most of the smaller (20LB'ers) seem to do alright when released but the 30-40+ are just too stressed out to do much at all when you net them and will just lay on the surface if you try to release them. Also keep in mind that we are seeing a few smaller ones in the lake this year (the 20LB'ers) so hopefully there has been more than one stocking. Hopefully the AGFC & Missouri will keep a few in the lake with future stockings.

The striped bass in BSL are mainly in the 20-40+ class. I think most of them were stocked about 10 years ago but there are a few different stories about exactly how they got there. I personally heard a AG&FC biologist say they got a truck load of stripers mislabeled and put into Bull Shoals instead of Norfork Lake. I have also heard some stripers were stocked to help get the gizzard shad population in check, which it does seem that the gizzard shad (which were too large to be utilized by most game fish) have not been as thick as they were a few years back. Most of the stripers caught in BSL are real impressive compared to other lakes that I know of. While it doesn't seem like there are large numbers of them they can really turn a slow winter time day into a lot of fun in a hurry.

SgtChuck. It's good to hear from you. Your pictures are on my website now. Tell your buddy the stripers are bitting on Bull Shoals now with many in the 30 - 40LB class. I'm on my way out the door right now to try and catch a few.