bfishn

Ahhh, it's just a matter of living good or living long. Very few get to do both.

Cool! What was the water temp?

For some reason, this one pops up around beer-thirty on Fridays pretty regular. Cheers! I

Awesome! That should get you ready for that big gator gar I know you're going to catch.

I'd never heard of Iris until I saw her & John Prine team up for a show in Springfield years ago. Been in love ever since. Her voice has a hauntingly unique emotional effect on me like no other.

I could qualify for your group idjit. Peach/habanero brats sound good to me, as long as they got the levels right. A little is often a little too much. Given a small enough taste, they're delicious. Best method I've seen is Infused oil, you can brush it on, it soaks in and spreads, even flavor. I

We (Callao) used to play Mexico in HS basketball. They always cleaned our clocks pretty good, but so did most everyone else in NoMo. I always enjoyed the bus ride home from Mexico though, 45 minutes in the dark with a cheerleader... Oh wait, we were talking about discipline and misbehaving youngsters...

Now there's a blast from the past. Haven't been there since the early '70s, chasing parts for the neighbor's 706. That was in Macon. Was there another branch somewhere?

Nuttin wrong with 5lb bass...

Oh, man, do I have a story on that... involves a $7.95 Dollar Store inflatable raft, 35 feet of water, a much younger me, and the King of Cranky Ganders that convinced me that was his puddle (flogging involved). I've already passed my keyboard quota for the day, so it'll have to wait. Carry on.

My favorite fiddler and my third-favorite picker got together on this one long ago, and I missed it all these years. Already played it 3 times to make up. Happy Friday! I

Those stripes are a "bite here" indicator for flatheads. 😉

Happy Birthday Phil!

There's a few new YouTube vids of the event. Looks like Norfork Tackle Co got there early. Their video is what I expected to see. By 1PM it didn't look like that at all. I'm old enough to know better... Old Dog, meet New Trick.

This makes me wonder... why do I think box turtles are cool, but softshells are repulsive? Easy enough to understand my dislike of snappers though.

I don't recall it, but there's an extensive collection on YouTube from user '80sCommercialVault. Hours & hours of big hair... Kinda makes me miss the days before "medicine" ads.

Yeah, there's a really short window when they're good, just a few days. I've never picked a good one from the tree, but all those that were freshly fallen were tasty. Have to check daily to beat the critters (or rot) to the ones on the ground.

Easier just to not subscribe. Is it worse to have a $5K cruise charged to your card that you can reverse with a phone call, or autodraft $49.95/mo for "protection" that requires the same response on your part in case of an event? After ~25 years of paying Norton and the like, I've decided that I'd have been better off without it. I've had ID fraud attempts. They're like home invasions in that you feel violated, and your window of trust narrows proportionately. While I smacked 'em down, they get enough successes to make it pay, so it continues. I'm hoping someone that matters will notice that SS numbers can no longer be the de facto priority ID. At least 60% of everyone online and 40% of those not, already have a complete digital "you" available for pennies. It gives me some satisfaction knowing the whales have more to worry about than I do. I

Shouldn't be a step for a stepper like you, pitch your tent in the living room and breakout the s'mores.

Post-turnover 'eyes can be literally anywhere. My strategy was to adopt a striper-chasing mentality... mouths of major creek arms around 55 deg., then to the back ends of the creeks from 52-48, then back to the mouths till they disappear in the mainlake depths for the winter. Many larger ones will be right with the stripers, and if you miss them you can at least get some stripers, which is pretty good consolation.

I "got there" about noon, spent 15 minutes trying to find parking, had given up when my contorted path back to the highway led me by a lot a car was pulling out of. By then I had lost track of where I was in relation to the event, Google showed me over a mile away. Still lots of people everywhere, so I joined a crowd standing near a corner and in a few minutes a shuttle came by and picked us up. 35 minutes later it dropped us at the site, none too soon as I was about to pee my pants. Started with the nature center (bathroom) which was pretty cool. Then outside to the tents, where the food had all been cooked and submitted for judging. Got in on a bit of the fish fry, but no squirrel for me either. Spent the next ~45 minutes browsing and looking for you guys to no avail. By then the line for leaving shuttles had shortened some, so I stood there another 15 minutes to get on a shuttle that took another 35 minutes to pass where I'd parked. REALLY glad that I dropped a waypoint at the truck when I parked... they drove around parts of Springdale I'd never seen. It certainly was a beautiful day, and I enjoyed it despite the poor logistics. Definitely will pre-check the parking situation before returning though. Sorry I missed you guys, I had a little gift for the Billetheads in my pocket, but it can wait for another time. My biggest surprise was not seeing anyone I knew there. I know/have known a lot of folks around here that I expected to bump into, or at least a few. I couldn't help but ponder how much this area has changed and grown in ~40 years on the drive home.

Looks like I'm going. (noonish) I'll be the smartest-looking, fat, bald, bearded, wanna-be, has-been there, in a black Lilleys' shirt and straw hat. AGFC just dumped this on YouTube;

Knowing some of those that will likely attend, I suspect there will be a variety of big, furry hats... 🤠

I know the guy that started this event several years ago, he's... let's just say... colorful. He attracts a crowd of equally-colorful individuals, and they all have stories to tell. Never been to one of their shindigs, but I expect there'll be no disappointed attendees. If I'm not too busy Saturday, I might just go for a bite at lunch.

So the best I can figure, it's the Missouri Office of Homeland Security , only related to the federal DHS in the sense that it was borne of 9/11, and intended to fill a needed gap in inter-agency information sharing. The state-level department soon ran out of things to do, so they maintained their necessity by branching out. In the meantime, federal IT consolidation is catching up, obviating the need for external help that could confuse more than assist. In the big picture, it's nice to know that you know someone that knows someone that has some very important phone numbers in their contacts list.