bfishn

Reports and AGFC data lead me to believe Ozark L&D had more sauger caught than Van Buren, but as mentioned bank fishing there is for the nimble. Van Buren has a stretch where you're on a sidewalk fishing 20ft down over a rail in the generator outlet. Gotta be flow. 3-way rig with a light dropper for the lead... bring lots of lead, sometimes 3oz isn't too much.. The goal is to fish pretty straight down, finding (and avoiding) the bottom with the lead (lose lead, not baits). A ~2ft dropper for your bait of choice, one that works well in whatever current you have. If there's few people there you can walk the rail end to end. The only casting opportunities are on and around the downstream point, but you're off the sidewalk there. Twilight's best. Best is relative. I only connected twice out of probably 20 trips over a few years. Limits both times, nothing over 2lb. Both times were bitter cold and windy. And dark. Good times.

Back before the www, we got our fishing reports in the Friday paper. There were 2 bait shops reporting from Ozark and Van Buren that you could count on for sauger reports if you went that weekend... which means they'd been there for a week or better. There will be a few folks there when its on.

It's a little early for the sauger anyway, especially this year with late-to-arrive cold water. That applies to the local stripers too, the deal I told you about was always over by December when I did it, but has been (much) later the last couple years.

The local ones are pretty hardy, just keep 'em cool as you can. Upper Spavinaw still has a few accessible pools that hold at least 2 varieties. February-March. Also stonerollers, shiners, sculpin, chubs, and more. Just follow the creek road from Hiwasse to 59, best one's about 2/3 of the way.

Always thought Darters were some of the prettiest freshwater fish around, but I think the Candy Darter takes the cake. Perhaps recently saved from extinction; https://www.fws.gov/story/2022-11/sweeter-future-rare-candy-darter Gotta be within @Johnsfolly s range. Give 'em a few years to spread, then have an 'accident'. ☺️

The farm I grew up on was ~5 miles north of Thomas Hill Lake. Remember it being built. The flattening/widening of Hwy 3 soon followed, & somebody paid my Dad for new fence and about 5 acres off one edge. Dad decided if he was building new fence on one side, it would be an embarrassment to not do the whole place, so we built fence every spare moment for the next year and a half. Corners were all 4 x 1/2" angle iron set in 3' of concrete, braced w/2" angle also set it concrete. Hired a neighbor named Harry that was a fence-building mofo, he'd spot the t-posts with a couple strokes, and my brother and I drove 'em from there. When the posts were done you could line up your sight with the first 3 posts, and the rest vanished behind them as far as you could see them. Pulled a quarter mile of wire at a time per section with the tractor and finished it with the mechanical stretcher. Harry knew just how tight was right, 'cause too tight would pull the low posts in that NoMo black dirt. We were all pretty proud of that fence. After typing that story I did a Google Street View of the old place. Poor resolution, but that fence is very much still there. Looks just like it did 50 years ago, or it would if the paint hadn't faded off the posts. (Note to self - add to bucket list - repaint at least the corner posts on that fence.) Oh yeah, Thomas Hill... maybe next time.

Not since around 1974... 😉

Thousand Hills SP?

Can you turn a round tuit?

Online at; https://ruralmissouri.org/the-trout-of-taneycomo/

Yeah, she'd have been 34 when that song came out. Who knew?

RIP Christie

I bounced around NWMO a few years as a youth, every family had someone related to JJ... found it odd that the rest of the family wasn't.

's gettin' close, real close. 😉

Especially if you're married to a psycho like I was at the time. She could clean a trout in 14 seconds, but I really hated letting her have that sharp knife...

Ha! It did read that way, didn't it? Nah, I admired the guy. He capitalized on an unintended windfall from the GRDA with the leak from the pumpback lake. He and a D7 built a series of ~20 pools of various sizes spanning about 1.5 miles of previously dry, rapidly falling holler, and a decent road thru the whole thing. Unique spot that had a Colorado feel about it. Think he was stroking his TU connection pretty good for it too.

If you're calculating by the pound as most live haulers do, it's the other way around. I had no qualms hauling 500 lbs of 1 to 2-pounders, but I'd cut that in half or less for little ones, especially if it was more than a couple hour haul. Once you've got the O2 handled, ammonia buildup is the big issue. Agitators help with that, where OX-only doesn't. The only factor that affected the bigger fish more than small ones is bugeye, which happens if you get carried away with the O2 (similar to gas bubble disease). First time that happened to me, I thought it was pretty cool that 2 lb trout were leaping out of the tank as soon as I lifted the lid, until I realized that about half of them had one or both eyes bulging out. Bought a medical grade flowmeter to accurately dial in the O2 rate right after that. Added; if you lose fish while hauling, that's on the hauler, the buyer doesn't pay for dead/dying fish. Hence the sphincter factor for the hauler. If my load would've croaked 20 minutes prior to arrival, I'd have spent all that time and money for nothing and been out 250 lbs of fish.

So was I. He had a spring fed pond about an acre in size way out in the boonies. I delivered about this time of year, so the water temps should have been OK till at least spring, but he told me he planned to feed them out on catfish feed. I told him that wouldn't work, but he didn't seem to care. I think he was just a richie rich that thought it would be cool to be the only guy with a pond full of trout that close to the Mexican border. 🤔 After I warned him of the risks involved and he still wanted to go, I decided I didn't care why. He said 2 other trout farms in Missouri had turned him down due to the haul distance, and I knew those guys had liquid OX which is the only way anyone in their right mind would haul that far. It was just the perfect storm, he had the money to blow, and I was just desperate and crazy enough to do it. I live hauled to customers with various plans and desires. Made regular winter trips to a couple striper guides on Quachita that used them for bait back when Quachita had net pens with winter releases. Obviously it wasn't legal to use them for bait, but it was legal for me to sell them, so I didn't care. Hauled many loads to a guy in Kansas, OK that had built a series of dams on a ravine stream on his place that was really a leak from the nearby pumpback lake just over the ridge. He charged the Tulsa TU chapter to fish there thru the colder months. His last check bounced, then he died.

Cool adventures, all. Can't say I ever travel to fish more than 120 miles. That range covers a good bit of all the puddles and creeks discussed here on OAF, and I haven't begun to master all that (yet). Guess I did go to Canada for smallies once, but I was a tagalong, on an organized company trip. Got invited 'cause I'd drive their motorhome and trailer while they got drunk. Fun times. If traveling with fish counts though, when I was raising trout, I did an 18 hour straight haul of 250 lbs (~1500) of live 6-8" rainbows to a ranch outside of Uvalde Tx. That size requires a lot of oxygen, and I had 4-12V agitators (that consumed most of my alternator output), and 2 big bottles of compressed oxygen on flowmeters and commercial stones. No backup, no way to get more. My sphincter could have pinched a hair in two the whole way. $3K that I desperately needed to buy feed. My fish were jumping out of the net on delivery, just what you want. Buyer was pleased. When I asked for a check, he asked, "You want paid now?" My heart fell, I had maybe just enough money to get home on. He said if I'd go by his office in Houston tomorrow (a Saturday), I could get my check. I agreed. Houston from Uvalde looked like "all across Texas" on the map. I only had a few more hours of driving in me, but made it to a Motel 6 a block from The Alamo in San Antone. Crashed for ~14 hours. Made it to Houston by 9AM Saturday, to my surprise, my check was waiting on me. The only problem was, all the branches of the bank it was drawn on were closed on Saturdays. (back in the age of phone books). No choice but to see how close to home I could get. Gassed up at a Sams that let me get $50 cash and take a check for the gas. The clouds parted a bit. Drove till I couldn't, ended up at a tiny AGFC park in far SW AR at 2AM. Crashed till the sun came up. Super foggy, When it began to lift there were deer all around me. A beautiful little lake too. Can't remember the name, it was south of Murfreesboro. Made it home in one piece (on fumes), the check didn't bounce, and life was good.

I've had a few critter days like that, the last one was a drunk deer, a suicidal sparrow hawk, and a kamikaze cat. The fish were just as crazy as the critters that day. I've always associated the two. Deer herds grazing in the military park are a good sign.

That's certainly a unique way of putting it. 😆

I've long wondered the definition of food poisoning. Had plenty of semi-bad bathroom sessions that I blamed on what I'd recently eaten, but never what I considered serious or 'poisoning'. Hope I never do.

Cool! Restoring tube amps is an old hobby of mine. Built a few customs too, they sound like my youth.

That's what I like about golf.

Yeah, I rarely pursue bass, but I could enjoy the heck out of that.