Johnsfolly

Ness If you have been getting consistent rains like we have been the last couple of weeks then you should be able to find chanterelles. Look in the areas the Gavin and BH suggest. I also have been finding them on benches below a wooded slope. Once I do find a patch, I like to look along the same elevation on the slope instead of down or up slope. It seems to me that the mycelia grows horizontally and not vertically along the slope. Kind of like trolling a contour at the same depth you found fish. This is a fishing forum.

Did a stir fry with chicken and beef. Vegetables included carrot, zucchini, onion, green pepper, ginger, wild collected oyster, chanterelle, and indigo milky cap mushrooms and store bought enoki mushrooms. I picked up the enoki before we collected more chanterelles and the indigo milky mushrooms yesterday. I had those mushrooms so I used them. While cooking, I was really wishing that I had the Billet-o-matic super wok to superheat and cook this meal. Still I made due. Olivia wanted to take a photo of her plate. So here it is.

Had a guy give me a tip on where to go find chanterelles without even trying. He left with a big bag. So we headed there this evening. First mushrooms were not chanterelles. Maybe some sort of milky cap mushroom with an orange cap but white gills and stem. It seemed like where ever we looked there were lots of mushrooms. This was a mixed oaks flat. Some cedars and low brush. It took several minutes until we found our first chanterelles. Probably got 20 or so in this patch. Kept looking and I found three green crackling russulas. Then another small patch of chanterelles and tons of possibl e milky caps, some Amanitas, emetic russulas, and many that I could not ID easily. Also boletes of almost every size shape and color. But it was this one hidden in the grass that really got me excited. An Indigo milky. My wife and I both spotted the first ones that we found tonight. We found them in tall grass near a path edge. We also found a couple in the mixed oak areas again near the edge. At this point we felt pretty good about what we had found and were headed back to the car. I still was looking off into the oak woods as we were walking the trail and I spotted orange. We go over and we see patches after patches of chanterelles. There were so many that we left the broken tops or small ones. We filled the rest of this basket and my backpack and it did not look like we harvested any. It was phenomenal.

Very likely to be a bolete. Not sure of the species. We have been finding a lot of boletes this year and I am really poor at their ID.

RPS the British made growing maggots and fishimg maggots into an art form. I watched a lot of rough fishing shows when I was over there and was always amazed at the different color combinations of larvae they used to catch fish. I really liked when they would catapult chum with a cupped slingshot. They would often fish the same spot all day long and needed to bring fish to them. It's a different type of fishing thsn we are used to around here. Thsnks for the story. Brings back some memories.

RPS - Great story. Did he bait the swim before he caught that perch? The only fish that I caught in 19 months of living in Northern Ireland was a perch. Their fishing laws and fees were just too high for me to pay and fish a whole lot. Even the one pay trout lake would not let me fish because I could not convince them that a spinning rod casting flies was not bait fishing when they only allowed fly fishing. We regularly caught perch when we lived in PA. In most public lakes these fish were really overfished and in turn most were really small. One of the lakes we were researching in grad school had not been fished in decades. We were able to convince the board to do a fish survey study of the lake. That entailed catching as many species of fish, pumping their stomach contents, weights and lengths, plus removing scales for aging the animals then release back into the lake. My wife and I fished in the same boat (at the time she was just my girlfriend). We were catching perch that were 16 to 18" in length and almost 1.5 to 2 lbs. They fought like smallmouth bass. I didn't get to fish much. I had to process every fish. So once I was done processing a fish, she would hand me the next one that she just caught. I have a picture on my desk at work of each of us holding a 17 and 18" perch. That was a great time. The smallmouth bass in that lake were all relatively old (7-8 years old) and all about the same size, 18 to 22" and about 2- 2.5 lbs. I know that there are some big perch in the northern plains states. I would love to find some more local.

Slider and BH - What type of habitat did you find the indigos? I would love to find some. Do either of you have an idea about the white polypore mushroom in my second picture? Does not look like any polypore that I have found before. Thanks.

We have a friend that has some serious food allergies. So I have no issue with a guest that needs special care due to allergies. I can't stand folks that choose a lifestyle that insist that you have to adhere to that lifestyle as well and pander to their needs. There was a vegetarian that we worked with in Ireland that would eat bacon and seafood. I'm not sure she understood what it was to be a vegetarian.

Ham Great report. I haven't fished in enough tailwaters to have any real experience getting caught in the flow or gauging when I needed to get off the water. Closest experience was when I had a river come up real fast due to rain that almost caught me off guard.

Congrats on a pig of a smallmouth! That's an awesome fish. Smallmouth do fight hard, but I think hybrids fight harder. Both are great to catch. I also believe that you would never land a 10# bluegill.

Yo-Zuri hybrid in 8# and P-line fluoroclear for 2 and 4# lines. I don't typically fish heavier line. I do have a reel spooled with 6# nanofil, but I haven't fished it often enough to have a full opinion about this line yet.

Ham How long go were they released into the lake? If it was several years ago, then they are likely have a breeding population to still be catching them. They are pretty prolific breeders. Does Bull Shoals go anoxic in the deep water during the summer? If not, the perch probably have a comfortable temp range throughout the year.

Downstream - Out of my three she is the only one that still likes to get out and fish with dad. At least until she finds boys. So I will take any time she is willing to go out with dad. Mitch - You haven't see the zombie-like groups of people running around looking at their phones, stopping and looking around? Pokémon go is a game that folks use their phones to track and capture Pokémon. It's at least getting folks outside to go catch these things. I know you guys recently had an addition to the family, but is your wife leaving the house more frequently to go for walks? If so, she is probably playing the game.

Thanks. Never thought thatI would see any silversides in MO let alone catch one. Just in the right place and lucky.

Nice fish Dan. Hoping to try verticle jigging. Looks pretty productive.

Ham Did not realize that BSL had yellow perch. Do you know of any other lakes that have a perch population?

After a successful day on the river on Sat. I was able to convince my wife and my daughter to make a trip down to do more fishing. We were originally going to go to Bennett's, but due to off color water, did not want to make the 2 hour trip and have bad fishing especially when my favorite river was fishing well. This was going to be a casual fishing trip. I wanted to get them onto some fish. I brought three different rods. One with 8#, 4#, and 2# test line. I still had my PBJ Ned rig on the 8# line incase we got into some smallmouth or largemouth bass. The 4# could be used to fish small jigs or roostertail baits for sunfish or bass. I brought along the 2# rod just for the possible microfishing opportunities. Where we were headed has smallmouth, and largemouth bass, sunfish, rock bass, and a large variety of minnows, darters, topminnows, etc. I felt that we could handle most anything that we came across with our set-ups. I was not planning to fish much, but to help out rigging lines, taking pictures, and just enjoying the day. Many folks on this forum know that I have a collectors mindset when it comes to catching multiple fish species. A friend stated that my fishing was my version of the Pokémon Go craze hitting throughout. Even my wife and daughters are out chasing the variety of Pokemons throughout our neighborhood and town. So I was hoping for a variety of fish being caught on this trip. We decided to access a small tributary of the river I fished on Sat. The water was running a bit higher than I normally see in this creek. Took this as a good sign and decided we should look over the one or two holes I could see from where we parked the car. I sent my daughter upstream to a hole with some large rocks on the bank and I assumed down into the hole while I rigged the 2# rod with a tiny piece of hook for my wife to catch shiners in the multitude of schools in this creek. My daughter had the 4# rod and a 1/32 oz olive/black marabou jig. I don't think that she made more than one cast to catch this smallmouth bass. Just as I finished this picture and Olivia released the fish, it was back downstream to Follysbetterhalf to capture her with her first bleeding shiner catch. You'll notice that she is in stealth mode with the large white hat and brightly colored top. Gotcha! Its in the bag instead of a Pokeball. We all moved up to the hole that my daughter was fishing and Follysbetterhalf caught a 10" smallmouth on the Ned rig (no picture due to a quick release once unhooked). She then got hung on a branch near the opposite bank. Instead of blowing out the hole, we left that rod and used the other two. Just as I was noticing a different topminnow in the creek that I don't believe that I had caught before, my daughter took the 2# rod and immediately caught a northern studfish, the topminnow that I had just seen. I also noticed a school of western mosquitofish (look like large guppies) at me feet. Also a fish that I have never caught before. So it was on as to who could catch the first mosquitofish. I also was behind with not catching a studfish. Dad takes the first mosquitofish. Then just after releasing this fish lands his first studfish. Gotcha! Then the girls doubled on mosquitofish. Then we got the Ned free and headed downstream. My wife stopped us by telling us she just saw a small black catfish go under some of the small rocks in the stream. We never found that one, but had a madtom head in our direction. It took 10-15 minutes for my daughter to finally net this guy. We could not tell from the photo if this is a stonecat or a freckled madtom. I will have to contact someone to see if he can help Id this fish. I only count fish that I catch by hook and line, but my daughter likes to catch fish by hand or in this case with a small net (she caught a large male longear sunfish later on by hand, but no picture). One last minnow for my daughter as we head down the confluence with the river, her first bleeding shiner. I found that under the bridge there were a couple of pools with some bass in them and I called the girls to try to catch them. Olivia was first with the Ned rig. Followed by my wife with the 1/32 oz olive/black jig. A couple of fat largemouths. Her nails match the colors on this green sunfish she caught on the jig. After these fish the girls, used Olivia's dive mask to look at sunfish and minnows in the stream and I caught another largemouth with a 1/16 yellow/black jig. When Olivia got the Ned hung up in deeper water of this pool, we sent her diving for it with her dive mask. She said that there was a large bass that came right up to her face. The 13" largemouth that I just caught may have been that fish. We finally got to the confluence and there was more fishing and swimming. My wife caught four smallmouth on the Ned and I caught three myself and lost two large fish. We were just slow reeling it across the golf ball to base ball sized rock. It's definitely a game changer bait. I have got to make some more. Just before I committed to swimming in the deep hole we caught several smallmouth, I had one more fish to catch. I had seen a thinner minnow running along the surface as we were catching the bass. So with a #20 hook and a tiny piece of worm I landed this brook silverside, my third new species of the day. GOTCHA!

Slider Those are impressive baskets. Nice variety of mushrooms. It looks like you found some indigo milky mushrooms. I haven't had those before. How do they taste? Here are some of the pictures from our trip last week. These last two boletes were very large. the smaller one's cap was 3" across.

Awesome picture! Nothing better than a kid holding a fish with a big smile. Thanks for posting.

The last fshing report on Weaver's site was for Tuesdsy the 12th. I couldn't find a post for Thursday. Maybe I missed that one, poosibly on FB. I don't go on FB.

I may be addicted to the Ned rig. More on that latet.

Thanks guys. Since this river system hasn't been blown out, I took out my better half and daughter to a small trib of this river today will post after we get dinner.

I haven't fished in Missouri since the end of May. Issues at work and high water have kept me off the rivers and streams that I fish during the summer. Made plans to fish a small river on Sat. to fish for smallmouth and plans to head to Bennett's on Sun to fish with my family and some guys from work. I really need to catch some smallmouth and bought a couple of Whopper ploppers to catch the summer top water bite and got the jig heads and Zman plastics to make my first Ned rigs (sorry Dave I picked up another jig head at Bass pro shops in town, I'll see about getting some of yours if the Ned works for me). Floods at Bennett's have the water higher and more off-colored than I like to fish. Ended up not going down to BSP. So I kept my eye on the water levels on the other river with a mid-week 1.5 foot spike, but dropping. So without any more rain the water was still low enough to wade and the fishing should still be good. 3 am Sat. I am up listening to a heavy downpour. Checked the water level - no change. Check the local weather down at the river - 15% chance of rain. Contact friend to update what was going on and discuss options. Stay on plan, meet at 4:30 and head south to the river. Drive through the rain questioning the weather. With a few planned trips blown out by rain already this year, I feel the jynx. "It's not you. It's me!" Rain lightens up as we pass through Jeff City and stops as we get to Westphalia with still a ways to go. May be it will be good and dry day after all. Keep heading south and turn into the access - no rain. With four fisherman, we spilt with two headed downstream and two headed upstream. I was headed upstream with a guy that does not fish this type of water and has never fished this river before. The long deep, 2-4 foot, slow section of river usually holds some bass. I started with a fluke in baby bass, which is my personal favorite bait for a river like this one. I can cast this bait across all sections of this river and far enough upstream or downstream as needed. It matched the bleeding shiners that dominate the forage and is large enough to attract bigger fish and not too big to catch a lot of mid-sized fish unlike the super fluke. I pointed out a large rock pile on the far bank and mentioned to my partner to cast his plastic crayfish bait to the pile while I fished less productive water upstream. He just couldn't get his baitcaster to get that bait to the pile. It could be a long and unproductive day if he can't find a bait that will get some distance in his cast. Clear and shallow water requires longer casts to not spook your target fish. Most fish you won't see until it takes your bait and you land it. I put on a Whopper plopper (perch 90) on the line and since the river is deep to our bank, make a cast up stream parallel to the bank. I wanted to see how this bait would fish in this river. I could cast this a long way. I like the action. I'm a little concerned about the line in the water running the bait beneath the surface. I keep my rod tip high to keep the line off the water and to maximize the top water action. Nothing on the first cast. I cast cross the middle of the river but still far upstream. As I get the bait to within 15 feet of me, I see a bass following as I pause the bait. It explodes as I crank it a little more and the fight is on. It's a 10-11" largemouth with a pot belly. My first on the WP! No more fish following at this spot, move upstream about 50 yards and catch two more fat largemouths casting to the other bank. I mention to my partner that he should try to fish one overhanging tree that I had a couple of blow-ups. Nothing for him yet. This slower water typically holds more largemouth and not many smallies. I came to catch smallmouth and continued to head upstream to water that was faster and with more rock and boulders than logs. The water upstream was a little faster, but still had a bunch of logs along the one bank. I made casts with the WP and had blow-ups on most. A couple of really big and fat (see a pattern here) green sunfish hit the WP along that bank. I get to a spot where a tree is laying halfway across the river. There are rocks and boulders along the bank and into the river being covered by the tree. I make a couple of WP casts and only get one or to pops and no hook-ups. I see a couple of smallmouth swimming behind me. I switch to the fluke and land my first smallmouth of the day. Casts to the log and rocks led to several more fat green sunfish. One of my casts hooked over an overhanging limb with the bait suspended in the water. I had a largemouth rip the line off of that limb and head downstream. This was the first 12+" bass of the day. Again it was eating well. I caught several more fish on the fluke. I tried my Ned rig and hung up in the bigger rocks without getting any strikes. I was able tog get it back by walking upstream each time. My partner was now fishing a crankbait that he could cast well. I had him hopscotch above me upstream. He caught a couple of green sunfish to get his first fish of the day. I knew that were going to get into really decent smallmouth water just upstream. Unfortunately we hit a hole that usually is 2-3' deep where the river hits a bluff at a 50 degree angle. It was only 18" deep in most places due to an influx of gravel. I switched to a black/olive 1/16 oz marabou jig and landed my first northern rock bass, my 36th different species for this year. He caught his first smallmouth just upstream from me in this same hole. We kept going upstream. I switched back to the fluke going weightless and he put on a pink super fluke with a weighted swimbait hook. This river has lots of 12+" bass, many 13-15" bass and a few 17+" bass. I saw a seam in the current that suggested a deeper water trough and cast my fluke upstream from that seam and I soon had on my first 14+" smallmouth of the day in hand. I caught one more 12" smallmouth in the this hole. It's just beautiful water. Fishing the weighted super fluke just wasn't getting my partner any bites. I gave him a 7" berkely black powerworm with a chartreuse ribbontail as we headed to the next hole upstream. There were water willows along the closest bank and I had him cast parallel to that cover. A 13+" smallmouth hit the bait as it hit the water. unfortunately it broke off as he was landing the fish. Out of the black/chartreuse worms, I gave him a green pumpkin ribbontail and he caught a largemouth off of those same willows. I had two largemouth take my fluke just under a sycamore overhang on the other bank. Now we were into some fish. Upstream at the tail of a long deep hole with lots of rock and wood along the one bank, there were more brush hanging over some deeper water and I landed my largest smallmouth of the day (15+") on the WP. I switched back to the fluke and got into a pack of smallmouth. Most were 10-12" and one looked like it would top 18". I landed four right off the bat with the fluke, I kept throwing at the large fish, but the smaller ones would hit the baits. I put on a plastic crayfish and caught two more smallies and a few green sunfish. The big fish stayed around but again could not get to the bait. I switched to the green pumpkin power worm and he finally hit the bait, As I was reeling him in he came off. I just had to watch it swim away. My partner was caching his own smallies at the head of the pool. Could it get better than this? I leapfrogged up to this hole. There was fast water coming into the head of the pool, with a log laying down deflecting the water and big rock, mid-sized rock, and pea gravel bottom. The hole was probably 2-3' deep and I could reach the water just at the head of the pool with my casts. I put back on the WP and it was on. I caught five fat smallmouth all between 11 and 13" and a 13" largemouth. once they stopped rising for the WP, put on the fluke and then the crayfish plastics and landed a couple more smallies. I then put on the Ned rig, since there was a gravel bottom. Made my first cast up by the/under the log and slowly reeled back in bumping along the bottom. Before I knew it a smallmouth was swimming away with the Ned. I caught five more smallmouth and a rock bass all on the Ned in just about as many casts. I lost another smallmouth and two largemouth. One of the smallmouth I had caught with the WP earlier. My first attempt at building a Ned rig. My first fish on the Ned. Ned Rock bass. I showed the Ned to my partner as he came back down stream towards me. After 5 1/2 hours of fishing we had to head back to the truck so that my partner and my friend could get home by 1:30 pm for work. On the way back downstream I had to try the Ned for the big bass that was still cruising around that hole. First cast another fat rock bass. On the far bank there was a 12" smallmouth hanging by a large rock. I said to my partner to watch the bass and I made a cast just in front of him and it pounded the Ned. He couldn't believe that I just called the shot and caught that fish. I had a witness. I will definitely have to fish the Ned some more. Ended the day with 54 fish total and five different species. I did not microfish and would likely have caught many more species, since I saw at least three different darters (orangethroat, rainbow, and greensides), two chubs species (creek and hornyhead chubs), two sucker species (northern hog and possibly white suckers) and probably three different minnows. I caught 26 smallmouth with three that were 14-15" and 10 that were 12-13" in length. I didn't catch as many largemouth bass, only 10 fish with four between 12-13" and one 14" fish. All of the largemouth, and most of the other fish had paunches filled with the minnows and crayfish that fill this river. All fish were released to hopefully grow bigger for the next time I get down that way.

We went to a new area and found a bunch of different mushrooms. About a dozen chanterelles, wood ear, a few oysters and lots that I could not id. I will post photos later. We did find some giant boletes and possibly peppery milkys. Did not anticipate being run out of the woods by mosquitoes. They have not been bad anywhere else, but they swarmed us tonight. Only were out for about an hour. We had just bought a couple of thermocells, but didn't bring one or two along with us. Pretty dumb. We'll go back with repellent and my microfishing tackle to get more mushrooms and the couple of different minnow species in the small creek.

Great photos! That is a fat brown trout. Congrats on her PB trout! Sounds like you had great time.