kjackson

Thanks all for the input; I do appreciate the help. Here's my report: woke up at zero dark, turned off the alarm, watched the lights in the sky and listened to the thunder and went back to sleep. I don't do lightning. I've been in situations where the graphite rods start ticking and the line remains up in the air after a cast. I don't like it. So Plan B is to hit it tomorrow morning. The rain delay means I can dig out a couple of Jet Planers (the 20-footers) from my steelhead gear and rig a rod with a spoon or small spinner behind it. Couldn't quite get to it yesterday. I'm also going to throw in a drift sock because my luck with weather hasn't been stellar lately. And I'll probably tie up a few more spinners--just in case.

Very nice...

I absolutely love nervous minnows! I'm gonna have to try rigging with bait at some point soon. The plan is to hit the bridge area tomorrow, if the promised storms hold off. If they don't, then I'll wait until there is a break and hit the dam area. And soon i need to get out there with a few sunnies in a bucket and a rod...

Nice!

Heading out tomorrow at zero-dark-thirty somewhere. But I've not been on the water for a month, although it seems like years (work is not my favorite thing). So I'm out of touch with what is happening on Beaver. If it was just me fishing, I'd pick a spot and go figure it out. However, Number Two Son is finally home from college and would like to catch fish. He doesn't care what, nor do I for that matter. I'm thinking of heading to the Highway 12 bridge and doing the trolling thing there, but the dam area is closer. So is the upper end of Table Rock. But since the idea is to actually catch fish, not just chase walleyes, I'm thinking the 12 Bridge area is the best shot. The dam area is something we can do later on shorter trips. The weather says scattered storms in the morning, so that might be a limitation. I'm open for any and all suggestions. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Nicely done.

That is impressive. Nice.

Makes me wonder what kind of info was getting out in the sales meeting before the tackle show. October ship? Yeah, right. But it certainly could be one of those "right hand doesn't know" decisions. I wonder how long before BPS is sold out.

ey, F&F-- Now that you're on the inside, maybe you can find out about the Flicker Minnows. Reports from up north say some shops have them, and this after the guy at the show saying October was the ship date.

Very good! Gotta wonder if the farther upriver you go, the shallower you'll find fish (up to a point). Crossed the 62 bridge last night, and the river was a ribbon of mist. That cold-water release may draw some fish.

Word has it this really is the way F&F fills the livewell... http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2014/07/31/video-fishing-piranha-using-meat/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=July%2031%202014%20Daily%20Newswire%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=46594683&spUserID=ODA0NzEwOTk1MTcS1&spJobID=484035793&spReportId=NDg0MDM1NzkzS0

Way to go! That is intriguing...

Very nice--change is opportunity. I would have stopped yesterday if I'd known. Arrange it so that you can go to ICAST next year. I can help with that...

What they said plus cast, let it sink to the bottom, and then do the pull-and-drop just like a Texas-rigged worm.

And more thanks!

Good report; thanks.

That is sweet! Gold spinners? I may have to do some tying. Nicely done indeed.

Forgot to add one more spinner. This is a non-floater tied with a hoochie. Back in the day, a company built one of these with a small float on a 6-inch leader, and it worked fairly well. And a Washington company, Wicked Lures is tying these for salmon and steelhead in rivers. The line is now moving into the Great Lakes fishery. Powerdive--nope, didn't know them, but then I moved about the time internet forums got started, and I chased salmon exclusively for a while instead. F&F-- you're right there. The Spin N Glos are great for a less-intrusive presentation when the fish aren't terribly active--Or when they are, for that matter. J-Doc--Your boat isn't big enough for my bag of tricks. I have stuff.

I said I would post shots of some of the rigs we used in Washington and the Columbia. These all are pre-tied, but they can give you an idea of what was in use 20 years ago. This is a shot of one corner of my spinner box. While I did use pre-tied rigs, mostly I tied my own using Winner and Lil' Corky floats from Yakima Bait and Okie Drifter bodies from Luhr Jensen. The Spin N Glos above were deadly used ahead of a bead (for a bearing surface) and a crawler. They come in well over 100 finishes when you combine wing color--white, black--silver mylar, pink mylar and chartreuse mylar--I think that's all) in sizes that range from the smallest, about the size of a dried navy bean to the largest which comes close to a small hen's egg. This is Yakima Bait's pre-tied version of the Spin N Glo rig. Here is another version tied by Yakima Bait and designed by the late Roy Houle. This gives you an idea, good or bad, of some other means of floating a crawler harness. When I was introduced to "floating spinners" as we called them, we'd also take a worm blower and give the crawler a shot of air. And this is Luhr Jensen's version using an Okie Drifter for a body. While RPS likes a single hook to reduce snags, two small hooks in tandem are also relatively snagless and possibly weigh less than some long, single hooks. The hooks used on the above spinners are large in part because of the size of the walleyes in the region and the belief that the larger Octopus hooks would hold better than smaller hooks. Finally, here is Mustad's new version of the Slow Death hook. It's designed for use with plastic baits, and that is why there is such an exaggerated bend. Sorry about the soft focus, but I figured that the bend was more important for visualization than the point. We've all seen points. For those not familiar with the idea of a slow-death hook, you thread half a crawler up the hook past the eye. The half crawler then spins like crazy when it is slowly trolled and has two things that walleyes like: motion and scent. I don't know the theory of why such a strong bend is needed for soft plastic, as I haven't had a lot of problems getting plastic to spin, but somebody likes it.

I've picked up a couple of noodles that were apparently freelancing--no others in the area and stuck in brush along the bank. To me, it's just like a coil of mono left on the bank--fishing trash that doesn't belong there.

Nicely done--congratulations!

Sounds like fun...

Used to use them quite a bit during the winer with a strip of squawfish as scent. If you need some, I should be home Monday. I do intend tp post pix of what we used out West.

Here's a quick question: does anyone use blade baits--think Heddon Sonar--during the spoon bite? The do work well, at least back where I did most of my walleye fishing.

On the new low-profile Okuma line counter--its model number is the 350, and it will hold 150 yards of 65-pound braid, so I'm thinking it will hold more than that of 10-pound fluorocarbon. Working on my last article, and we're headed home on Friday. May take a while to get there as we're looking at some real estate on the way.