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Any of the Zman baits that don't have salt, except the ShadZ which is an entirely different animal, require more weight to offset the buoyancy. Seems weird running that itty-bitty bait with a big head in it, but it works.

I meant the other direction in Arkansas 😂

Mercy. Whole lake is going nuts. Arkansas and Oklahoma look better every day.

It's a touchy feely little bait. I throw it on a little heavier head than you'd expect, at a seriously professional recommendation. And I throw it on a 7' mag-light kind of rod, with 8# braid and a looooong 6# leader. Catches every darn species in any lake you drop it in.

I didn't mention that one guy's pet color, at least.

They'll still eat smoke grubs. Same concept, same places.

The little Zman Slim Swimz will catch those fish when they get on the 2.8 Keitech too, in either the 2.5 or 3 inch. And it will last half of forever. 3/16oz head is the ticket with it. Looks like the old Gene Larew Long John minnow. Ham will probably be grumpy with me now.

They'll eat a swing head and menace grub with a quickness too. At times, anyway. But big line takes the electricity out.

Same kind of places, slightly different approach. It's a brown fish factory, and has been for a decade or more.

Yep. Brown fish want to be close to deep water, not necessarily in it. They'll get shallow earlier, and stay there longer, than most folks would believe.

Slabtastic! Saw some pics of the wind. Tough old weekend.

Not sure about that last part, but the info on the bank is spot on 😉. Gravel, or mixed gravel with small rock, on banks and points that look "scrubby"-ugly places. If you find one with a big chunk of slab rock in the middle of it, even better. They will relate to ridiculously subtle features...dock anchors, little six inch wide runoff channels running down the gravel, old single branches laying sideways on the bottom instead of a brush pile. Ned Rig will tell you faster than anything else if they are there. Might occasionally end up catching them better on something else, but it's a brown fish detector.

Pretty hard to avoid them from Baxter to the dam. Flatter gravel stuff, with deep water access. That doesn't necessarily mean hard edges/ledges. They'll also get in the trees in the creeks. Stay away from the pretty postcard places. Brown fish like shallow gravel and wind. Be prepared to fish slowly, painfully slowly. Downsize line and baits. The Ned remains a smallmouth vacuum, in most of it's varieties. If the weather is nasty, don't stay in the room. Brown fish like it wet and windy. A lot of times they'll stay on the same places with high skies and a flat surface, but get tight to the bottom and slow down. Still catchable, just have to approach them differently.

Bummer that everyone is having problems with the updates, but I appreciate getting the heads up about it. Was planning to update my graph this week, scratch that.

The great news is the Chicken Derby is coming in hot. I may have to go back to fall trips...

Immediate release should be the future. The excuses are pretty much out the window.

Won't be much to flip with them running it, or reasons for them to stay up there. Weather and Beaver could change that, I guess.

That actually makes some sense. *falls smooth over

Really nice work in that wind. One of our other OA friends sent some pics of the rollers down by the dam. Yee hee haw, no thank you.

👀

That's classic Truman. Run all week, back it up on the weekends. Same thing happens on a smaller, different scale at La Cygne (power plant lake S of KC). It's been a while since we've been able to get down in the summer. But in '18 we found fish out towards the lake...creek points, big flats, ledge stuff...with no generation they were reliably "loose". They were up off the bottom, "catching" baits on the drop and such. If you search, there was a crazy Dixie Jet bite then, June '18. With generation, the drag bite went nuts. Swing heads, tubes, Ned, FB jigs... depending on the cover. Generation absolutely fired them up, put them on the bottom, and/or tighter to cover. They ran it around 10am every morning, and the bottom bite would pick up like an alarm had gone off.

Yep. Wind will absolutely put them on the opposite bank from the day before, especially pocket and lake fish. Creek fish seem to stay put a little more.

What's the new pool deal at Beaver? It took me years to pay attention to the current at TR. I've noticed it more in the summer than spring. Mostly on main lake points and flats. Can read that as flat main lake points too. We've had some good bites that certainly seemed tied to the generation schedule. I know all the reasons that doesn't make sense, but it's hard to argue with feeding fish.

Been dragging that darn Ned again, haven't you? 😉

Fish love that dark water. Copper blade water.