ColdWaterFshr

I had the In-N-Out burger a few months ago. 2nd or 3rd time having it. Nothing special. Freddy's is probably a little better. I think that by far the best burger from a chain is Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

Tell that old knucklehead I said hello. Still fish and float out of his old Dagger canoe all the time. Love that boat. And he is one of the best fly tiers I've ever been around. Gavin is a close second. 🤣

I haven't fished it in a couple years, but that stretch from the Hwy bridge up to the red gate has always been the most feature-less part of the creek in my opinion. Not as curvy, more wide and shallow.

Impressive!

Nice spot to put a cabin in. Too bad the fishing in that stretch isn't very good.

I did a genealogy test and the results were shocking. It turns out my real mother, Sally Jesse Raphael, and my real father, Lee Marvin, had something of a fling back in the 60s during the time of free love and LSD. It all happened at a wild party thrown by Ernie Borgnine at his home "high" (literally and figuratively) in the Pacific Palisades. 9 months later, Paul Dallas was born in the backseat of a taxi cab after SJR was thrown out of Universal Studios during filming of "The Dirty Dozen". She was extremely upset over Lee's infidelities and had to be escorted off the set after it was discovered she had destroyed Lee's entire GI wardrobe with a pair of scissors, . . . and when confronted, she flew into a violent rage, yelling at the cast and crew and even picked up one of the studio's props, a fully loaded grease gun (M3 submachine gun) aiming it wildly at everyone. She also pulled a pin on a live grenade. Fortunately, due to Charlie Bronson's heroic and tender actions that day, filming on this monolithic masterpiece was able to continue immediately. He was able to talk her down and get her a cab, and just a block outside the studio gates, she went into labor, and he delivered the baby. She asked Charlie to be Pauls godfather and they remained in close contact for many years. Thank you for letting me share with you this very personal subject.

Yeah, baby. That lake used to love a spook around the big timber.

Used to fish that area a lot back in the 80's. Point 13 was a walleye hotspot, and all that timber on the west side of it for largemouth. I'm intrigued by the Stunna jerk bait. It doesn't look that much different than Megabass or Luckycraft. What makes it better? Thanks

Very sorry to hear this news. He was one of the best. Love that guy even though I never met him. Pure class.

Agree with most of what you said, but I hope you're wrong on this point. In a way, and I didn't always agree with this, I do see some value in the "Blue Ribbon" moniker these wild streams have been designated by MDC. Blue ribbon may mean different things to different people, but it is a special designation and a line drawn in the sand with a purpose, . . . for protection and for future advocacy. I don't think it would be terrible idea to carry over to a select few pristine stretches of wade-only smallmouth bass water. At least the ones that aren't so secret any more. I think the pinhead landowner threats are a bigger threat to their longevity than the pinhead fishers that would target these places. Maybe. Maybe not. A 16-18 inch SMB has quite a bit more meat than a 10 inch trout, and much more likely to be kept, regardless of any regulation in place.

Not ticked at me I hope. Its a pretty little creek and I caught a single pretty little fish. I don't think Barren Fork is in danger of becoming the next Bennett Springs due to my little trip report. If anything, I'd like to see the wild creeks like this get more attention. Not that I want to see cars parked there the next time I go . . . selfishly, I want it all for myself. But isn't that a narrow view? particularly when it comes to protecting such rare resource like this for the long term? It deserves at least SOME attention. I get what you're saying about the pinheads though. But suppose its a pinhead who owns property on this creek and starts trashing it? People need to expand their imagination of where to go and and how to fish and what to target, and in the end I think you become a better steward of wherever you prefer to go and fish. Outlet #3 at Taney, yeah, I've done that once. What else is there? How do you challenge yourself and seek out a new adventure? Is that 100th stringer of stockers you landed as thrilling as the first stringer? 99.9% of the people who trout fish in this state will never bother with a place like Barren Fork, . . . . and thats okay. I've driven by it so many times, I'm glad I finally pushed myself to go and explore it, even for just a few minutes.

This creek would definitely fail the navigability test. Its tiny. I did e-mail MDC just a couple days ago about access and received a prompt reply from the biologist. He sent me a better map (below) showing where to park (P) and if I cared to bushwhack to the middle section. Beforehand, I had a good idea of this "bushwhack" spot he refers to in his map, but the road shoulder parking was almost non-existent unless in a very high clearance vehicle . . i.e., there was no shoulder and a scramble down a steep hillside all by my lonesome was tempting but also had the potential for the many ways in which it could go wrong. The fish was full of fight and one of the prettier, more unusually colored wild fish I have caught in Missouri. Iridescent green. The picture doesn't do it justice. BarrenFork.pdf

Rare footage of Paul Dallas this past weekend. Looking quite fit and vigorous . . . https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k_1DlddIrJe16SaTGl8bpAbNGwuVPSzt/view?usp=sharing

Had a great time last weekend floating Greer to Turners North with my brother and my brother-in-laws and niece/nephews. My nephew is a wiz-bang on the Diji drone and shot some cool footage, but unfortunately deleted the clips of my pulling in fish after fish. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i4x0FoBdnvroexcRszYgi_IRdnI_2tTa/view

Had fun exploring this tiny little creek for about an hour while on my way down to 11 point. Access is difficult as I discovered, but I did manage to fool one little beauty on a stimulator. Beautiful area. Needs more exploration. Is it okay to wade all the way down the creek as long as you stay in the water?

I tried to private message a couple of you guys about Barren Fork just a minute ago, but it wasn't allowing the message to go through for some reason. Plan to hit this creek in a few days and was curious to get some more detail on how to find this sliver of land to bushwhack down a steep hillside to get to the good water. Is it off CC? Is it between Twin Springs and Roaring Spring? Will post a report with pictures. PM me if you can provide some basic clues for access to the good water if you don't feel like pimping it out here on the public forum. Thanks in advance!

Saw Shakey Graves the other night for the 2nd time, opening for Head and the Heart. pretty amazing talent.

How is Chief doing? Miss that guy on here.

And um, that first picture. You're speeding. Slow it down, bra.

quite? or quiet? I need a translator for everything Oneshot says. Context of any story is 100% absent, and fruit loops, . . . but yet he can't be a troll, because its way too far out there. He needs Paul Dallas to shadow and copy these deep thoughts and one-off gems. She just finished a class on re-building. This could almost be a Merle Haggard lyric. She is awful "quite", could be too. She's quite awful fetching, or quite awful difficult, or awful "quiet" because I hit her with a beer bottle in her forehead when she wouldn't shut up, but darn, she can right a pretty good FEMUR esstimut. 🤣

Somewhere in the midst of that meteorological soup of statements, swirling in the skies above us, like a leaf from the top of a tall tree, there is a point trying to make a safe landing. 😂

Henry Kissinger once said "America has no permanent friends or enemies. America has interests" . . . or something to that effect. True. Please share more of your rambling geo-political open air questions and musings, Oneshot. This is good stuff! Were you good with the post-WWII Marshall plan? With the formation of NATO? With Eisenhower Doctrine? What about Detente policy to end the cold war? Or going WAY back, were you okay to TJ forming a US Navy to open shipping lanes and protect private trade in from the Tripoli pirates back at a time when our country was still in its infancy and such endeavor was wildly expensive? Can you forgive those pirates?

Elvis was a rare and amazing talent. The marketing came after he was gone, so I can’t hold that against him.

Jaunarajas -- 🤣 -- I think is spelled "genre" Will have to see the movie. I've heard good reviews of it. I was fortunate to see Elvis "live" in one of his very last concerts at the old Hammons Student Center in Springfield in 1977. This was before jumbotrons, and we were sitting up in the rafters. I remember being slightly disappointed because his live versions didn't sound as good as what I was accustomed to hearing on my scratchy assortment of 45's. Of course, I was only 8 years old at the time and had not seen many live concerts. If you get a chance. Book a room sometime at the old Rail Haven Motor lodge in Springfield there on Glenstone. Looks a bit dodgy, but they keep the place up okay. Ask for the Elvis room. This is the room where Elvis stayed with his mother back in 1956 when playing a gig at the old Shrine Mosque. Right about the time his star was really on the rise.