bfishn

and I was about to eat...

Whoa! That's an image I could have done without, your avatar mounting a Big Boy... on a bird bath no less...

Tiny trout are as good as whoppers. Ask any 4-year-old.

Now that there's funny!

I've got a mouse that will do that. :-)

Nice one!

Sorry man, I thought you might remember that old diddy (with minor changes to suit the topic). I used to roam that area back in another century, thought it was pretty cool a popular song recognized a place I knew at the time. Pretty sure I still have that album on vinyl. Used to be a lot of birds up there. Used to, being 40 years ago.

Tarkio Road, is a mother It's just like, oh, so many others Where the pheasants reject you And the wardens inspect you Looking inside the trunk Under the hood, hoping to find The secret places where you Always keep your mind Whoa, whoa, no, Tarkio Road.

Step One; grab your ankles...

There's quite a bit of related stuff on Hootentown/Wordpress, some pictures of Owen's floats Here's an accidental catch;

Not for me. Having been nearly pulled overboard several times by trotlines and thrownets, I'm a little leery of tying stuff to my wrist

Yes, and that all falls under interpreting your sonar better. What I meant with the last point, you've got the cable in one hand and your face in the screen, leaving only one hand free to fish with. Get a bite and you have to quickly pull in 20-40 feet of cable before attending to the fish. I've not found a way to fish and watch together without risking losing a fish or the camera or both, but I'm almost always alone.

Get a cheap one and consider it another piece of disposable electronics. You should still get years from them, unless you hang it really bad. Be aware they all show well at night and low light, but daytime is more difficult to see the display well. Snap on sheilds help with that. The real benefit is learning to interpret your sonar better, having actually seen what you were marking. Beyond that it's watching tv in a boat... and when you're watching, you're not fishing.

...a ways down river (DeValls Bluff) and a couple generations earlier;

Yeah, as much as we whine about rec boaters pranks, I have to wonder what they think of my deliberate S-pattern? :-) (Shameless plug follows) I cut my teeth on sonar 35 years ago testing old stockpile samples of sub-seeking munition sonar. They ran on RCA vacuum tubes and a mag vynyl tape drive, and they were freakin' awesome. I'd love to have one today, and go ping up some silver carp sometime. They had an expected shelf life of 40 years, but an actual use life of far less than the 3 minutes of tape. The ones I checked were ~20 years old, not a one missed a beat. Ever. Now that I told you, I'll have to kill you. Ha! I ain't movin' to Russia. The stuff we use is the finesse version, but it works the same.

Yep. ... some that you absolutely can't "see" in the 'shadow' of the dropoff, unless... you're slowly moving directly at the drop from the deep. Then, even the hiders show up on the rising leading edge. Feathery, but there. Nice positioning and pictures Cindyjo. I think you might really enjoy an underwater camera view when you get on 'em like that. :-)

What you don't see in a shot like that is the fish that are tight to the vertical stucture. They're actually shown, but they're buried in the "bottom" junk. That's one example where an old flasher in experienced hands can outshine the modern tech.

You can download many of the historical topos at; http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/topomaps/f?p=262:1:22602829645695

This argument's been going on for at least the 28 years I've been in BV. FWIW, the POA has taken the reins in footing the bill for the lakes to a big degree compared to what it used to be. Back when, the AGFC would do annual sampling and write a suggested management plan each year in addition to supplemental stocking. Now the POA has a resident bio (Bowman), and very little help from AGFC. For the recent Blue fingerlings, you're only talking about $12-1500 total value. It would be pretty easy to justify that in court by the number of BV licenses.

Great attitude KC! Keep the bow up, the stern down, and the wind in your face!

You're welcome. Yesterday the Arkansas legislature unanimously voted to repeal Act 954 in it's entirety, and the Governor promptly signed off on it. Done deal. A giant step backwards led to a kick in the pants that landed us right back where we were to start with. Hopefully it's a lesson learned.

I had plenty of experience with herons at the Trout Farm. They'll eat any trout they can swallow whole, which is up to about 9". Anything bigger in stabbin' range, they spear right behind the head, drag out on the bank, and eat the eyeballs... and nothing else. Some of these fish get away, often turning very dark colored, and with one or both eyes missing, and the telltale spear wound on the upper back. Others become coon & mink fodder.

Update Act 954 became law Aug 16. In a review, EPA determined that Arkansas water law no longer fully supported the Clean Water Act, and that EPA would itself assume monitoring and permitting responsibility from the state accordingly. The Governor subsequently called for Act 954 to be repealed (although he had previously allowed it to pass by ignoring it on his desk). Unwilling to be the man who brought this potentially uber-costly oversight upon his constituents, the Act's founder (Davis) led the ensuing effort to repeal his own law. This is expected to officially happen as soon as tomorrow in continuing Special Session. Some here, including myself, had previously opined that the timber industry was the big money player. Turned out to be chickens, hogs, and turkeys (with a capital T).

Sort of. We had a food booth to advertise the Trout Farm back in the '90s at the (old) BV show. Smoked Trout, Fried Catfish. Made a killing with Fried Green Tomatoes the year that movie came out. Would have much rather been getting my butt kicked on Beaver or TR. Thanks for the patronage Quill, it helped. :-)

...skies that is. Just like it always rains on the Benton County Fair, the first big fall coldfront often visits us on Show weekend. It's been tradition for me to avoid the meelee by spending the entire weekend on some water. I didn't make it this year. But I do recall some monumental butt-kickings I took I could only blame on the weather. Did it suck as bad today as I recall? (feel free to patronize) On reflection, even my worst trip beat staying at home. :-(