Johnsfolly

RPS So sorry to hear about your loss. I hope that your wife is able to find peace. Our prayers are with you and your family.

Very nice set of tackle. As you both know its great to get the kids decent tackle that will catch fish. I have done that same with my kids, especially Livie. If you read any of my posts, no matter how much tackle she has she will likely still go ahead and try to catch them with her hands !

Those are some nice bass. Great catches! Congratulations.

Seems like they may not be committed yet to getting close to shore. May still be a bit too cool. What baits were you using?

That's a great smallie! Congrats to the angler and the guide!

I DVR'ed the episode last week. The episode name is "Diamonds and Stones". I love the underwater portions of the show. I don't know if I will ever fish Beaver, but I watch what's posted on OAF. I hope that I could fish it someday.

I think that you are right.

I've thought about setting up a tank myself and didn't invest the time to get one set up. We had an aquarium discussion last year and darters were a fairly common aquarium fish. Sculpin were fine unless you wanted other smaller fish in the tank ! I'd have to go back and look for those posts.

No problems Daryk. It was our pleasure. I'm glad that we were finally able to get together on the water. Just remember that there are lots of clear water creeks throughout the Ozarks. From now through June is the best time to catch those colorful male darters. Get on Tenkarabum.com for the microfishing hooks and get the Owner or Gamakatsu smallest tanago halfmoon hooks. And also remember that Hobby Lobby is closed on Sundays if you need to get another catch bag ot two .

Bill - Pomme is one of the better musky lakes in Missouri. There are several musky guides that fish that lake if he wants to go with a guide. Or he can cast to the many docks that surround the lake. If the dock is close to deep water there may be musky around. I haven't caught in Pomme, but the last trip we had an encounter with a 42+" musky off of one of the dock areas. We were fishing bucktails and big glide baits.

Quill - didn't say that we weren't fishing just not in a boat on one of the big lakes . Go check out my post on the Other Ozark waters forum. Livie and I were wade fishing a creek with Daryk Campbell Sr.

Finally got together with Daryk Campbell Sr to make good on a promise that I had made a couple of years ago. We finally nailed down a suitable date, time, and location to meet. What I did not expect was the drama at the Breaktime. Before Livie and I arrived, there was an altercation between a man and woman that we caught the tail end of and it ultimately involved the police. I'm glad that we were not blocked by the police and we were able to leave the parking lot and get to fishing. The sky was overcast, it was supposed to be in the mid 40’s. With the wind it never felt like it got above 38 deg. Both Daryk and Livie got to try out their waders for the first time. Livie was actually wearing a pair of waders that My Betterhalf picked up at an estate sale on Friday. I had mentioned to Daryk that with the drought from last year and the cold winter that I was not sure what we would find. I still felt that we would get into some darters and minnows, but maybe not many bass or sunfish. As I suspected the water was running low and very clear. The clarity of the water took Daryk by surprise since he is used to fishing around St Louis and not having much more than a couple of inches or less than a foot of visibility. As we were making a few casts, Livie started hand-fishing by catching a tadpole. After she released the tadpole, a small fish caught our eyes and after several attempts at catching two different ones Olivia hand-caught this slender madtom. Since we really weren’t seeing many intermediate sized fish, I got the micro-rod with a #26 tanago half-moon hook and a couple of split shot rigged up with a tiny piece of red worm that I trimmed so that the hook point was exposed. That bait may last us all day. In the first section of the creek we did not see many fish, when we did it was important to get Daryk used to seeing the small fish, especially the darters. It didn’t take long until we found a darter that we might be able to get a bait in front of and actually catch it. I was able to get it to bite and Daryk was able to see the bait and the fish turn and take the bait before I set the hook. In the meantime Livie was fishing a white/chartreuse 1/64 oz plastic jig under a float and casting into the deeper water under the bridge. She found and caught several creek chubs. I showed Daryk what characteristics to look for on the creek chub, like the dark stripe, large terminal mouth, and especially the dark spot on the front of the dorsal fin. As Livie released her fifth chub, I had her had me the rod so it wouldn’t get in her way. I really just did that just to get the hot bait. I made a cast of two and landed a chub soon after. I then handed the rod to Daryk and he got his first creek chub and the first fish of the day. He and I went back to darter fishing and Livie back with the hot bait caught a bluegill sunfish (though it looks like there might be a little green sunfish in its genetics). There was a lot of smack talk going around, but I finally landed another darter. Then Daryk followed up and caught two right in a row. I initially thought they might be juvenile or female rainbow darters since those are really common in this creek. Looking at the edited photos, I noticed that the dorsal fin on those that Daryk and I caught had very few spines and were much shorter than the second dorsal fin. I now suspect that these were actually fantail darters and will have to get confirmation before I put it down as a new life-list species for me. A couple of these darters looked to be infested with flukes like some of the sunfish and bass. We headed upstream to another deeper pool (only about 2 to 2 ½ feet deep) and started getting into bigger schools of minnows that I had expected to find earlier. Livie caught a bluegill on her first cast, then got hung up in a shrub on the far bank. I went across to get it out and passed through a school of hundreds of minnows, mostly bleeding shiners. Daryk and Livie waded across when Daryk spotted some turtles on the bottom. If JestersHK reads this he will recall that it doesn’t take long for Olivia to get after a turtle or two once they have been spotted. She didn’t get one of the bigger ones because the water was too deep, but she did manage to push a smaller one into more shallow water and did catch it. We both think that it is likely a small river cooter. Since we had a better angle on the fish in front of us, I switched out the larger plastic jig and tied on a 1/125 oz white head and light pink chenile grub body. Daryk caught his first hornyhead chub. There was no spot on the dorsal fin and an orange spot behind the eye. The bleeding shiners kept going after the grub and Livie caught one. I switched the bait again to a #16 ribbed hares ear nymph and both Daryk and I caught bleeding shiners as well. Livie was hungry and we went back to the cars for lunch. After eating Daryk and I went back out and further upstream. I wanted to get into a few more darters. I know that there are rainbow darters, orangethroat darters, and my target species of the day, the greenside darter in this creek. In a small shallow off shoot, I spotted a male orangethroat darter we had spooked and had to tell Daryk where to put the bait until he finally saw the fish. This guy was tightlipped and would not bite no matter how Daryk got the bait positioned. Finally, we went to look for some others. Back in the main flow of the creek I spotted a male rainbow darter. Again, Daryk positioned the bait a couple of different ways to this fish. Eventually the fish turned and struck the bait and Dayrk caught his first supermale rainbow darter. It was the possibility of catching a fish like this one that led him to contact me in the first place. I know that he now has the equipment and the confidence to now go out and catch darters like these wherever he can find them. I look forward to seeing his photos in the future. This post has been promoted to an article

Last night my betterhalf made an American Irish dish corned beef and cabbage. Nice to come in after some cool weather fishing ti a hot delicious meal! No photos since it didn't last long !

Nothing wrong about being persistent under poor conditions and being successful. Congrats my friend on your green bass caught on your Lefty Deceiver. As Rick mentioned that may be the best tribute one could make on one's passing!

Quill nice looking smallies! With fish like those no reason to worry about not getting a green bass to the boat. I wish that I could get out on water like that and throw some of my PBJ Neds. They're just sitting in a bag on the bench at home. Just can't make the time to head that far south while balancing work commitments. Looking forward to more posts.

Those fish are either eating really well or a couple of egg ladened females. Very nice couple of spots! Congrats!

Congrats Seth on a nice bunch of spoonbill! Catching a big one while fishing for crappie is pretty amazing knowing how spread out they cam be once there are boats chasing them. Can't wait to see the video. They are still a bucket list species for me and I did not have any luck last year.

Those are some chunky cutthroats! Great job!

Dan good job. You guys got a meal or two. Congrats!

I could not get the photo to open on the email notification that I received on this story from the MDC. I would like to see this fish. He caught this not too far from where I was fishing for redhorse last weekend and I wish that I had caught it . Or at the very least caught a river redhorse as well as the golden redhorse I did catch. Love the kid's name - Maverick. Good for him and his family.

Looks like your son enjoyed catching that spot! Those are great memories regardles of the total numbers boated!

You ground it out and have a couple of nice bass in the boat! Congrats Dan! Though it is different not seeing you holding a Beaver Lake Striper.

That is an awesome bass! Congrats Basfis! Not bad for a couple of hours on the water.

Had no idea what my Betterhalf was going to make for dinner. I was quite surprised when I saw what was in store. Now I am certain that there will be some BBQ purists that might scoff at this rack, but this was fine tasting rack of ribs that she cooked entirely in the oven. She made a rub consisting of brown sugar, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and a packet of commercial fajita mix. Cooked at 250 deg for over 3 hours. They were tender and very tasty ! I had some potato salad as a side.