Joenothum

A friend of mine I work with has some friends coming into town for the weekend and he asked if I would take them fishing. Not a problem except for the fact that they want to catch crappie! Crappie fishing is not my strong suit but I can manage sometimes. Would I be better to go down to the Long Creek area or up to the Flat Creek area up the James. Also are they on timber, brush piles and roughly any idea on depth? Any pointers or advice is appreciated.

Also forgot to add. Get some Storm lead strips to wrap around the hook on the belly so it keels right. The beast hook also comes weighted I believe but I don't like how fast it falls. That whole setup is weedless so run it through the trees.

I'll usually throw a hand poured swimbait with a owner beast hook. I have some really big baits that are hand pours 8" or so but the profile on hand pours is outrageous. I typically only throw those at Lake Fork when I go. I have been throwing a 5" hand pour that has worked decently well. You get bit often enough to have some confidence in it and will upsize your catch a little. I like throwing it over deep trees or bluff ends. I throw them on a 7'11" Powell Endurance heavy cranking rod. 15# flouro around her. Below is the pic of them.

After the weekend I had fishing down in the Tucker area, I couldn't help myself and loaded up and put in on the upper end after work. Not two or three casts in, I caught this fish. When his head first came up, I honestly thought it was a 10. The head was the right proportions. I quickly netted it and put it in the well and called a buddy to meet me at the ramp with a scale. When he got there and I pulled the fish out and looked it over. It was actually kind of a bummer (ok not really catching big fish is awesome). The fish was a male; pointed knobby lower jaw, very very skinny. But despite that, the fish measured 24" long and weighted just shy of 6 1/2#. Got a couple pics and turned it back! Great fish but I could only imagine if it was a pre-spawn female I would think it would have been in the 8 pound range!

We went out on Bull last polar vortex we had, it was 10 degrees at the ramp when we launched out of Tucker. We caught 35+ fish on A-rigs and a couple bonus walleye. Hot hands, couple pair of gloves and we were fine. Little wind and bright sun didn't make it so bad. We soak our braid in "Reel Magic" before we go out and spray all the guides down frequently. Helps a little.

I love every minute of it. I hate fishing it but love the whole atmosphere. I literally only go to the trout parks once a year and its for opening day. I think this year will be my 21st consecutive year. We always have a cabin rented at Montauk and have become good friends with the guys next to us that rent theirs. Its certainly become strictly a "tradition". Usually, spend like a hour tops in the main stream enough to catch one shy of a limit. Go back and clean them, then spend the rest of the day in the catch and release area or fly area since we fly fish.

Use to live in Gentry. We called it the hot tub. I college, we would go swim there in December if the plant was going. The discharge is always good if you can get a spot. Its fairly clear and the bass seemed to spawn just on the edge of how deep you could actually see bottom. I always had luck on C-rigs and square bills. But its been a couple years since I lived there. February is certainly the time to go since the water usually cools off enough for them to spawn. I can remember one February it was mild and we had a good top water bite. Its a fun lake, always seemed to catch a few.

I mainly fish the upper end of Bull and I can relate to what Bill has stated. Mid July till about first day or so of August you could catch fish deep or fish super shallow in the buck brush and do well. The past week the shallow bite has gone away and the deep bite is weak. The best pattern I have found is to sit on the main channel edges at the points if shad are present on the surface and wait for them to bust. Usually its 2 or 3 fish that come up for a few seconds but its working. Occasionally you will get a school of very large fish come up as well. I can only seem to catch 1 to 2 fish at best then wait 5 or 10 minutes and another group will come up.

Same here, we used 6# and 8# Maxima salmon fishing for tippet on our whip sticks and really could put some heat to 15-20# salmon. It blew me away how much it could handle.

When is the next tourney on taneycomo? TinBoat or any other.

yep! I see them too.

I figured so. First time I believe I have ever caught one.

Put in at Moonshine and fished from about 6 till 11 and caught quite a few. Most fish were 15'-18' caught them all on a jig or creature bait on a wobble head. Caught a good one pictured below probably 5 or 6 pounds Also had about 6 other keepers but nothing of any size. Also caught what I think is a meanmouth? The fish just looked different than a smallmouth. It did have the rough patch on the tongue. Fish measure 16 1/4". This post has been promoted to an article

Looked like in the video Phil was doing all the work!