danop69

Nice, rps. Just haven’t heard of it happening. Make sense that if anyone has that it would be you. I was quite shocked when I got it to the boat and saw what it was. It was almost dark so I didn’t see the hit very well.

Hahahahaha. Yep. They do. I don’t drink it very often it just happens to be my last name. 👍🏻

Has anyone ever caught a walleye on a topwater? Because I did on Friday night while fishing for bass. A first for me! Caught this one on a sexy dawg! then my boat partner and I caught a double on Saturday night on the same point on square bills. The biggest one was 24” and just under 4lbs. Have never caught so many walleye while bass fishing. Caught at least one on every outing over 2 1/2 days. Obviously populations are growing in TRL! Happy to see that!

Asked at the end and they said there were 220 entries this year

181 Posted 13 hours ago Well that doesn't sound like much fun at all! Well done. Was it up and down under the boat or were you making casts with the jet? We were cast it out and counting it down.

Got out at about 5:45 this am. Started at a cove just off the main channel down by Cow creek at about 6 or so. Water temp was 85.8 with maybe 5 foot of visibility. Looks like an algal bloom goin on. Was not like this 3 weeks ago. Fish were busting on top all around us sporadically for about 45 mins to an hour. Threw spooks, and wakers with no takers. Picked up a popper and they seemed to like that as I caught 2 in successive casts, both keeper spots, and then it was over. Found them out in the creek channel just outside the submerged tree line suspended in 30-50ft in 70 ft of water closer to the main channel. Started throwing the jet slab spoon and it was on! Giant whites with some Kentuckies mixed in literally knocked the snot out of the slab spoon. They were hitting it so hard the nearly ripped the rod out of your hand! Also caught a nice 4-7 Largemouth and 21” walleye on the same rig! What a morning! At 10 am or so we were just beat after casting that slab for so long so we called it a morning! Caught 29 total, no shorts. Mostly whites 4 spots, 1 Largemouth and the kicker walleye. Bass were released unharmed. Can’t say that for the whites! Gonna have some of them Friday night! What a blast! Good luck

Just to add more detail to my post. The jig I was throwing was 1/2 oz gr pumpkin/orange with a zoom speed craw trailer. And yes as others have posted I dipped both of the trailer claw tips in orange spike it. This seemed to make a huge difference as I out caught my partners 2:1.

Lol! No Champ. I was not. Just our little 3 person family tourney for the week. I have just that one! Just dreaming I suppose! Ha

Came down for our annual week at TRL Jun22-29. Sun was a complete washout for us as it rained nonstop all day and night. Every morning (Mon-Fri) we fished from 5am until 11am at the latest. We had found a couple of new areas that we wanted to try this year so we headed there first thing. A little cut of the main lake just down lake from cow creek. Being that there were a lot of flooded we decided to start pounding them with a jig first keeping a eye out for top water activity as well. . Caught this 5.00 beauty up tight in the bushes about 7:30 or so and she hammered my jig and craw! Also caught a really nice 2.27 SM on the point of the same pocket slow rolling a grub. Also caught a few on top with wakers and spooks. Tried some of our deeper spots and could locate fish but couldn’t get em to bite anything. Threw the grub, drop shot, jigging and flutter spoons and they were having non of it. Caught this 3.70 in the same pocket in the same row of flooded bushes on Tuesday morning on the same jig and craw. We caught more LM this year than ever probably because we were doing a lot more bank beating than we usually do this time of year but with all those flooded shrubs we couldn’t resist! Needless to say it was probably a good idea as these two fish are the largest that I have caught to date out of TRL! We did fish our usual locations but had limited success with no consistency. We did manage a few at each of our spots but just not like in years past. I’m sure the high water and the lower water temps (saw anywhere from 76-82 through out the week) had something to do with this as the summertime pattern is usually well established by the time we get to the lake. It wasn’t this year. We usually start our mornings looking for some top water action. We fished our usual gravel run outs and main lake humps near deep water and could locate fish at all but getting them to bite was another story. We did get a few every day on wake baits. Also had many blow ups but they would just flat out miss it! Was still a lot of fun though. We did have one morning when the whites blew up near the boat. We managed 5 before they were gone on wake baits and one on a flutter spoon. All in all it was a good week. Did not catch the numbers we are used to but the quality sized fish more than made up for that. I think we caught right at 50 fish over the week with about half of those keepers. Pretty good ratio in my book. Good luck to everyone. Thanks for all the great reports over the years as it has helped up fine tune our tactics and our ability to catch those pesky TRL bass! Dan

Pretty much the same for us too. We started at 5:00am. Fished a flooded brush point and was throwin jigs, wobble head and topwater. I only managed one short brown fish on the wobble head with a zoom gr pumpkin speed craw and no top water action what so ever. Left there at about 6 or so and wanted to be on a main lake hump by the time the sun came from behind the clouds. Was fishin drop shot anywhere from 20-40 over 50' and managed a couple spots there. While there the surface came to life within a cast from the boat so we threw over immediately and caught a real nice white and a 14" spot and then they we're gone. After another 15 min or so decided to make a move. We ran over to pt. 7 where where we had had some luck earlier in the week and found some suspended fish at the same depth and caught 4 there including a real nice keeper spot and a 16 1/2" brownie then it slowed again so we went back to check the hump again but couldn't get bit. By the way Pete Wenners was fishin the same hump near us a couple days in a row and he actually went to our dock nearby to clean fish for his clients and there were two other boats with him as well. Had a group of 6 I think. Chatted with him briefly. Awesome guy to say the least. Just a real friendly guy to chat with. Also Brian Snowden dropped off some clients at our dock this week too. Pretty neat. Will have a post later about our week here later on.

Yeah, it was definitely a very slow bite. Just here and there. No multiples. Just swimming the grub very slow.

So true. We just got in from this morning an we have not seen balls of bait anywhere yet but have seen them scattered about. Saw a few here and there swimming on top while fishing but that was it. We went to completely diffenernt areas to look for more fish and found some on main lake bluff ends with pole timber. A little better than yesterday but not by much. Caught most of our fish swimming a smoke grub and one on a hula jig. Was overcast all day which I thought would help but not so much other than we went sweating and were very comfortable a morning. Did go out to fish a main lake hump and saw scattered fish. Caught 2 there with one spot and a brown fish on a fin believe it or not. It was a light rain at the time so just decided to head in for a bit then take the kids out for a while this afternoon. All in all, only 8 fish total with a mixture of LM, spots and brownies with only two keeps being small jaws about 16" each. Still have 4 more days to figure something out. Thanks for the input. Good fishin! Dan

Wish I could tell ya Quill. Out right now and didn't even try this morning.

Havin trouble uploading a picture of the Ned bass. Will try at another time.

Started the day at 0500 and went straight over to Schooner creek to scout some topwater action. Threw the fin for about some swim baits til about 7 or so with no takers. Had a few blow up but that's it. Not really much activity on top to speak of but did manage one short LM on a jig. Went over to Mill Creek fished a grub and jig sittin in 30 throwing up to 15 in gravel with nothin to show. Shot across the cove and fished a bluff wall with some pole timber and caught a couple of LM and a spot. Biggest was 14 3/4. Decided to head over and fish a couple of deep water docks with only one more fish. Called it a day at 10:30. All LM and spots for 5 total. No brown fish to be seen. Tough day all in all. Have to retool tomorrow and try something different. Did throw the little rig a bit but maybe not enough. Probably try more of that tomorrow. By the way did walk down to our dock last nite to try out a couple of new fins and Andy caught a nice 4 lb or so LM on a gr pump/ orange Ned that got us pretty fired up. Hope you all had a better day that us. We'll definitely be back out at 5 am. Good fishin, Dan

Dave. AAD and myself fished Schooner first thing this morning. Started approximately 5:15 and nothin, nada, zilch. We were throwin the fin and had a couple swipe at it but no takers. Saw minimal activity on top. You guys weren't lying when you said the tw bite was nonexistant. Found that out first hand. Last year at this time the tw bite was pretty good. Hope it picks up as the week goes on but I'm not holding my breath. We will post a full report of our day later tonight.

Thanks Champ! We'll definitely be throwing the jig! Probably try the grub and finesse as we'll. We also have a couple of docks over some pretty deep water near us too that are for sure to be visited. We'll make sure to post the results of our mornings throughout the week. We stay in the Kimberling City area so that's probably where we will focus our attention. Would also love to run in to some schools of Whites. That's a blast as long as we can keep the hooks in them and out of our hands! Guess that's why we have that net! Thanks for the info and good fishin!

Thanks Champ. Tried to explain it the easiest way I could. That one can be a tough one for many to understand but I think it's worth my time if i can help anyone. Lord knows I've gotten a wealth of information from this forum the past few years from you and many others and it's always appreciated! So I feel the obligation to give back when I can. I will be down Saturday morning for my annual week of fishing and relaxation with family and friends and I'm literally counting the hours. Hope the tw bite picks up a bit because I have plenty of fins, spooks and poppers primed and ready for some action not to mention the "little rig." Ha! Tight lines my friends and good fishin! Dan

Dave is pretty much right on with his thinking here. Maybe I can shed some light. In most temperate climates like ours lakes will stratify in horizontal layers. Cold water is more dense than than warm water so it sinks and the warmer water will sit on top. So as the Sumer goes on this top layer will continue warm and warm. The point in the water column where the water temp starts to decrease more drastically as you go deeper is called the "thermocline". In relation to this drastic water temp change is dissolved oxygen levels. Cold water holds less dissolved oxygen than warm water and can become somewhat deleted throughout the summer months. As the summer goes on, as Bill and many have pointed out, you can actually see the thermocline on your graphs as a pretty distinct line going horizontally across the graph. The upper warmer layer "epilimnion" will continue to warm throughout the summer forming what some refer to as a "hard thermocline" and is usually very noticeable on the graph. At this point in the summer dissolved oxygen can become depleted by microorganisms which will cause fish to stay above the thermocline because it's a much easier way of life for a warm water fish to exist. Not that fish cannot live below the thermocline they can, it's just a different less energetic life because of the lack of oxygen. This is why you will notice the bass will sit just above the thermocline in the late summer because the water is coolest there while still holding sufficient amounts of oxygen needed to expend the amounts of energy needed to attack forage. The bass also know that a large number of their prey species can also be found above the thermocline. The thermocline in most temperate climates will disappear at certain times of the year. Usually once in the spring and once in the fall. This is when the "turnovers" occur. As the upper layer water temps cool in the fall to the point where it starts to reach the temp of the underlying cool water a mixing of layers will occur. This mixing of layers allows an influx of nutrients to a once depleted lower layer of colder water. In most of our lakes around here this will occur twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall defining what is called a dimictic lake (di - meaning two). There are also amictic (once) and polymictic (many) that occur as we'll. Hope this helps a little. Dan

Oh......forgot an obvious one. "Fin"

To funny! Couldn't get it posted fast enough! Ned + 1.

That is some really good stuff Bill. Thanks for taking the time to post some great info.

Nice report Bill. Sounds like they were really hammering that big Keitech swimmer! Coming down with AAD at the end of the month hope the bite is still as strong. Looking forward to some fun tw action as well.

I glue them up right before I get ready to use it and have had no problems. I'm also a fan of the mushroom head jig heads. The zinker z seems to adhere better to the jig head and I can catch many fish before having to replace one. Hope this helps.

Wow! Looks like a great day! Congrats, Bill! Those are some monster Spots!