Johnsfolly

There are some nice brown trout swimming below the trout parks like Roaring river and the Current. Don't be hesitant to travel. There are fine fish to be caught in the wild trout streams around the state. Flysmallie mentioned Crane creek. If you can take a weekend try Barren Fork, Spring or Mill creeks. Very wary but tough fighting fish in often challenging tight waters. Good luck! Can't wait to read about your successes or near successes fishing Ozark trout waters.

Not sure that I am considered to be seasoned more likely guys might just think that I am salty☺! To those guys I say they bettter just get out of my creek!

I personally would like to to see an alternative to farm raised tilapia and catfish. I am frequently disappointed at the flavor of these species. If you are able to raise a good tasting fish and demonstrate that it could be profitable more power to you and your research. Maybe it a simple issue with water quality but it seems that the quality of the taste of the fish suffers as farms scale up their operations. To get over people's hang up with eating bass you might want to sell under a pseudonym like Kentucky kingfish☺! Good luck!

Awesome photos! Glad you were able to upload them. Congrats on a great trip with your son!

Top_dollar - try what SIO3 mentioned and see if that helps. I often cannot upload directly from my phone due to the picture size. So I download the photos to my laptop and resave them, which makes them smaller size and then I can upload into OAF. If you can afford one, a pocket digital camera usually takes great photos at a smaller size. Lots of threads on OAF about cameras. Ours is an older Olympus Stylus Tough that is drop resistant and waterproof (at least for the water that I typically fish). I find this perfect for a wading camera. The photos are typically 1/2 to 1/3 the file size as those with my phone.

I have seen some videos of mantis catching hummers. Last year we had a large mantis staking out our feeder. I moved it a couple of times before it stopped coming back. Don't know if it ever caught any birds.

It's pretty cool to see their growth and pupation through to adulthood. I would do the time lapse if we had the equipment.

Not a monarch, but a painted lady butterfly on the butterfly bush. We used ot buy and rear these butterflies when my oldest was interested in them. Have had five or six of these guys around with two to three monarchs hitting the flowers daily as well as lots of bees. Our asters haven't started blooming. Once they do we will likely continue to see lots of pollinators.

Thanks RPS. Must have been good since there are no leftovers !

Just finished reading the monarch butterfly article in the latest Conservationist. The article brought back many memories. We participated as a monarch way stop several years ago and we tagged butterflies for a couple of years. That was Olivia's first experience in rearing caterpillars to adults. We have been growing milkweeds as well as other natives like blazing stars, coneflowers, and asters for the pollinators in our neighborhood. I also have a couple of butterfly bushes as well. Their not natives, but do produce a lot of flowers for the butterflies. I noted in a different thread that this year when our milkweed was blooming that we had really poor numbers of pollinators in comparison to years past. Live had only found four monarch larvae earlier. She released those adults back in June. It looked like it might be a poor year of monarch through our yard. However, since the third week of Aug we have begun to see a greater number of monarchs and other butterflies visiting our Folly flowering way station for their migration. Livie has been finding lots of larvae and has been rearing 10 to 15 monarch caterpillars. The last couple of days there has been a push to pupate with at least seven going into their chrysalis stage. Should be releasing the migrating adults in about 10 days. It always amazes me that the adults that will emerge from these late summer larvae are the ones that will head down to Mexico to a place that none of them have ever been. We have a little hope that in our little way we are helping these pollinators.

We picked up a spaghetti squash, Italian basil, and an interesting head of garlic at our local farmer's market on Sat. The garlic was one of about 25 varieties at this one booth. None of us can remember its name. I knew that we had pine nuts at home. So I thought of using the spaghettis squash and making a pesto. We thawed a couple of chicken breasts. I deboned each and cut them in half. I made a marinade of minced garlic, and chives and rosemary from our herb garden. I mixed the herbs into EVOO and balsamic vinegar. Added the chicken and marinade into a Ziploc bag. Massaged the chicken with the marinade and into the fridge for a couple of hours. To make the pesto, I dry toasted the pine nuts and added them to the picked basil leaves and more chives and pulsed the processor. Then I added four cloves of the garlic and a little EVOO and pulsed some more. I then added grated parmesan and the rest of the EVOO, S&P and then blended the pesto until well mixed. I added a little more S&P and a bit of fresh squeezed lemon juice. I had cooked and shredded the squash earlier. Once the coals were ready, grilled the chicken. Reheated the squash and mixed in the pesto. Sliced the cooked chicken and served it with the pesto spaghetti. I took a picture, but poor lighting made it a bad photo.

That's awesome budddy! Congrats on a great night fishing Taneycomo!

Congrats on a successful night and follow up trip today! Glad that your buddy caught a really nice rainbow. Not a bad PB on your first trout fishing trip☺! Can't wait to see what you catch tonight.

Good find Dan! I found some unripe ones last weekend. Have to get back out hunting the creek bottoms hoping to smell some Ozark "bananas".

Looks like you were fishing 600 lb test line on that 16" cramkbait☺! Congrats on that monster.

I've got a big meeting on Monday, but would love to get down to Crane this fall or winter. Can't wait for your report.

The adipose fin is a small fatty fin behind the dorsal fin and just in front of the tail.. Should be right around where your hand was in the photo. Triploid fish are fish that have three sets of chromosomes instead of the normal two sets in a diploid fish. Because of that they are or tend to be sterile. Since they do not often try to spawn, more of their energy goes into body size and they grow bigger and faster than the normal diploid fish. Fisheries departments will release triploids for a given purpose. Triploid grass carp are realeased for their ability to eat the weeds of a pond or lake. Because they are triploids they themselves should not overpopulate and overeat all of the vegetation. Triploid browns are released to grow large and provide trophy quality fish in a shorter period of time. Phil Lilly can provide more information about these browns in Taneycomo. This topic has been discussed a few times before on this site.

I always seem to have a lot of different baits with me but really end up fishing just a few. I got into using a whopper plopper last year. Easy to use and got it crushed a lot. Will keep a few in the tackle bag. Still my favorite top water are WTD baits and use the Spit-n-image the most. Not sure that they even make that bait anymore. I like that the tail drops when you stop the cadence. Sometimes gets the bass triggered when that tail drops. After that I enjoy fishing a fluke. Running fast at the surface is fun. Then let it die and just get inhaled. The Ned works great as well. A few of the creeks that I fish have the best bite from 10 to 2 pm.

Great job night fishing Taney! That's a really nice brown! Did you see if it had an adipose fin? Looks like it may be a triploid by its coloration and I believe that their adipose fins have been clipped. What were you guys fishing out of?

I think that there are a couple there that I would eat if given the chance! Hopefully you get the chance to throw them at some smallmouth.

See that BH has tried to hijack this small game thread☺! No more dove talk! And no teal talk next eeek either! Now let's help Tho1mas with his problem. I have done both of those methods and found the same as you have that squirrels unlike rabbits just don't like to be skinned☺. So don't really have a faster way to get that done. I do wet them down before I skin them and that does minimize the hair on the meat IMO. I do wish that I lived closer to be able to help thin your population☺.

Good for you getting out to fish a small creek. Congrats! would love to have seen the gar. I missed a couple when I was I Illinois. Haven't had a chance at one here in MO in several months. You have got to love just keeping it simple and catching fish!

JHK - Thanks for posting that Taney smallmouth photo. Also glad that you got a white bass photo from that trip. That was a great multispecies trip. Who would have thought that we would have caught so many different species on a night trip to Taneycomo! I caught walleye, that smallmouth, a green sunfish!, rainbow trout, that big white sucker, and white bass. No browns. So a return trip is in order!

I hope that there are a few in our future☺! I'm pretty certain that there will be another Taney trip!. We didnt take any photos of they white bass that we caught.

Yes please send me his information. Sue gets them by the 5 to 6 lb bag from the Amish. Doesn't hurt to have additional sources. Do you think that you could keep them fresh longer with vacuum sealed batches?