Johnsfolly

Congrats on a couple of nice bows'. Good luck tonight. I'll be thinking about you in waders out at Taney as I get ready to go to sleep !

Glad that you guys got into some fish. Looking forward to some more posts! I'm deciding if I have enough warm clothes to fish the mountains. They're talking about a high of 35.

Definitely a couple of keepers! Do what you can to keep them happy!

Might be a cardinal shiner. Just saying !

HW - very nice chunky smallie. Congrats buddy!

Quill - looks like a very good trip. Glad you got a good shad rap bite. Congrats buddy !

My family wanted me to experience a new café in town before I headed back east. So I tried the Little More Poke Rice bowl restaurant which is located on Broadway in Downtown Columbia. Very Polynesian/Asian. Somewhat like sushi on steroids. I selected the sushi rice, tuna, spicy tuna, salmon, and tempura rock shrimp. Vegetables were pickled daikon, red onion. and mixed spring greens. The sauce was eel sauce and spicy mayo and their spicy topping. It was very good ! They also sell rolled ice cream. Look that one up!

Congrats on a great day in the park! You weren't making too many friends among the guys off to your right ! Thanks for the video. If the weather holds and I get out i'll be happy with one trout on Sat. It would be a wild brook trout!

Another bass fisherman turned to the carp side ! All are nice looking river fish.

Seth I would have thought that the yellow shirt would be the way to spot you in the crowd ! Maybe you need to find one large enough to go over a jacket. Good luck to those of you heading down later today. I'll be out east until next Thurs , but can't wait to read about your successes and near successes.

Knowing both of you I certainly know how she earned that gray hair, having to deal with The BilletHead !

Thats a great bass and a very nice jig! Congrats on the PB! I would definitely fish with you if I was living out by STL. You've seen my posts and know that I love a good panfishing trip especially if there are some more bonus bass like that around ! Don't think that I will find bass (at least not LMB) that size when we finally head out to Maryland later this spring.

Congrats on a nice bunch of fish especially that walleye! Very nice!

They weren't on Saturday .

Very Nice! You have great video and some nice fish! Of course there is the misnomer that there is an off-season for fishing , but I guess thaw as your point! Thanks for posting.

Not a meal that we made at home. We ate at my favorite Chinese restaurant in Columbia, ABC Chinese Cuisine (on Interstate 70 SE outer loop road). In Easton Maryland there are no authentic Chinese restaurants. We do have our favorite dishes. For appetizers, we typically get the honey spareribs, spicy wontons, and pork soup dumplings. We often try something different, but also have some favorites as well, like shredded beef, orange beef or chicken, and one that I can eat every time that I go there - their crispy fish. We also ordered their chicken crockpot (left) and their Hunan beef (right). We also get one or more pots of Jasmine tea. If you get to Columbia I highly recommend this restaurant. There are very few so-so dishes and only one or two dishes that were less than stellar. by the way BH I resized these photos !

I will always use at least one and more often two weights. They get the baits down to the fish and allow me to position the bait in front of the fish. Also the weight can give me a quick visual on where my bait is because with these small hooks its easy to lose sight of the bait. I want to be able to respond when the fish takes the bait and minimize the chance that it will swallow the hook. This stream had a good flow so I actually have two sinkers on the line. The one that you see is about 3 inches above the hook and other another 3 to 4 inches above that one. I don't know exact weight but these are larger ones maybe 1/32 or 1/16 oz each.

Here is what my rental car looks like when I am travelling lately. I will have a couple of rods, maybe waders, my tackle bag with a variety of lures and baits. Mostly I am a bit of a generalist when I travel, so have to have a little bit of everything to have a chance at any fish that I might encounter. One of the rods in the car is for microfishing. I just could not get this sculpin to bite. you can see the tiny piece of gulp worm on a size 20 hook just in front of this fish. No matter where I positioned bait it just did not bite ! Maybe next trip.

Very nice walleye! Congrats on catching a nice dinner.

This morning I got up and knew we had double smoked ham and swiss cheese. So it was omelets. I used Follyfarm fresh eggs (thank goodness for the oncoming spring for eggs again) that I mixed in garlic powder, basil, oregano, smoked paprika, and montreal chicken seasoning. I diced a little bit of onion and minced a couple of small cloves of garlic. I sauted the onions and garlic until translucent then added the diced ham. Cooked until warmed through then set aside. I added a little bit of bacon fat (since I was making bacon as well) to a small skillet and then a third of the egg mixture. Cooked until the egg was just firm, then added the ham, and onion/garlic mix to one half of the eggs. I topped the ham with the sliced cheese then folded the omelet in half, covered to melt the cheese. For my son's and my own I added red pepper flakes onto the eggs before adding the ham and cheese. Served with bacon.

Last night went and met some friends at our local brewery for some drinks and food. I decided on their Dark Star, a dark kolsch. Then some giant Jenga with Follysfirstborn. Yes she is almost 22 years old.

Friday night's dinner was tribute to the Eagles super bowl win - cheesesteak! We thawed out a couple of BilletHead prime rib - aka Canada goose breasts ! I sliced the goose as thin as I could and seasoned each layer of meat with pepper, garlic powder, and Galena Street rib and chicken rub. I got the Galena street rub as a gift and just now realized that it is Penzy's spices. Minced garlic and sliced onions and green peppers. I heated a couple of tablespoons of goose fat (also from BH) in a non-stick skillet on medium high heat and cooked the meat. I removed the meat with a slotted spoon to a plate, drained off most of the liquid, added the onions, peppers, and garlic. Once the onions were getting a little color, I added the meat back into the mix and added 2 oz of tomato paste, about a 1/3 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of worchestershire sauce. Once cooked, topped the mixture with provolone cheese and covered to melt the cheese. Served on whole wheat hoagie rolls.

Sounds great. Just have to work out the logistics. May have to wait until stuff gets settled.

You don't see too many posts on OAF about a missed opportunity, but I had an experience that was both exhilarating as much as it was disappointing. With my 2017/2018 fishing season coming to an end, I had planned a trip with a friend to fish a creek feeding into the Osage that gets a decent run of redhorse suckers in the spring. The Missouri pole and line record river redhorse was caught in this creek back in 2016!. We made these plans a couple of weeks ago. I was concerned about the rain earlier in the week, but thought that the additional water might get those fish thinking about running upstream to spawn. The creek was coming down each time that I checked the gage height. I did not pay attention to the rain that came in on Thursday, which pushed the creek up again. As we were driving to the access, there were several indicators that we may be in for a challenging day. The first was the running water in the dry creeks along the road, then going over a creek that was running high and muddy when it was often no more than a low clear running creek, standing water in the lowland fields, then we came to a low water bridge over a dry creek that had water running over the road way. My buddy had no issue running through the water. We came upon standing water in the road. Again no issue driving onward. The next creek low water crossing was covered by rushing water. Now we did not go any further, but turned around and went the long way to the creek. Along the way past several flooding fields along normally low running creeks. This was what we encountered when we got to the confluence with the creek and the Osage, high, muddy and full of debris. The river was running less muddy than the creek so we fished the seams between the two waters. We fished worms using 1 oz weights. Throughout the day we really only had 6 or 7 "real strikes" from fish. We couldn't get a hook set. On one of those strikes on my rod in the river I got into a yellow fishing line. I pulled in a much as I could about 30 to 35 feet of line. It was still hung and it broke off. About an hour and a half later, I get a strike and set the hook and it feels like I have a fish, but still a weird pull. As I am reeling it in In notice that I am hung on the same yellow line. That could explain the feeling of having a fish. As I am reeling it up, I feel a surge on the line. So I am tangled with the yellow line that has a fish on the end! I begin reeling it in and the head of the fish broke the surface. The head was about 7 to 8 inches wide and there were distinctive bone plates running down the back and sides of this fish, a STURGEON! This fish was close to four feet in length! it begins pulling drag. The fish broke the surface a couple of more times and my line frays against the yellow line and it's gone. I was heartbroken. I'm not really sure how I would have landed this fish. He must have spooled the previous fisherman. Although I missed on landing a bucket list fish, I have a fishing encounter that I will never forget!

I'm with you on that as well. No fear about caving in to catch any aggressive fish !