Johnsfolly

Saw the plump male a couple more times, but not in the last two days. As plump as he was he might not have gone much further south than Shreveport LA this winter.

You should consider whether you register that fish with the trophy anglers guild.

That is a great trophy. I agree that its likely 5 to 6 lbs. If you had a good girth measurement that would make a great reproduction mount. The coloration is remarkable.

Oneshot - seems like you have the rainbows patterned. Not matter what fish you are geared up to target, redhorse, goggle-eye, etc. you are going to catch trout. You've become the Niangua trout whisperer.

SS great posts. Congrats on your successful hunts.

Last night dessert - bananas foster. Used red bananas, Bacardi dark rum, Chinese five spice, cinnamon, butter, and brown sugar. Flamed off the alcohol and served it over panna cotta gelato.

Ness - those don't look like local crayfish. I have to turn away before I start drooling.

Congrats to you and your lady! This was a great report.

I haven't tried a sabiki rig yet, but have a couple and will try them some point in the future. I think that they will work well for shad and minnows. I wouldn't be surprised if you could catch trout on them as well.

MJR - I typically fish within an hour or two from my house for most of my fishing on the weekends. If I can get some time off of work I will travel down south to the Current, Niangua, and 11 pt. rivers, Crane creek, etc. The fish I caught last night were caught in Little Dixie lake in Callaway county. Gans creek, Grindstone creek, Bonne Femme creek, Hinkson creek, Hominy Creek, and cedar creeks are all close to my house. Both Gans and Grindstone have good populations of the orangethroat darters. Gans is where I started my darter obsession. With persistence a 9' flyrod with my spinning reel, a #26 tanago hook, and a micro worm piece, I was able to succeed in catching a blackstripe topminnow this morning. I got a fair number of strange looks from the bikers and joggers in the park that I was fishing. Maybe it was the camo hat and jacket and me being hunched over staring intently into the water. This is a new life list species. This catch puts me at 5 new life species towards my goal of 15 for 2016. It also represents my 100th fish species that I have caught with hook and line.

I got out for two hours to try to catch some crappie with a jig and float. I also set out a bottom line with a nightcrawler and circle hook. I ended up with a couple of yellow bullheads, a channel catfish, a couple of bluegill, and several white crappie with all of these being new species for 2016. I didn't take any photos. I am going back to the creeks at least one time this weekend and hopefully get to add some more fish to the list. Good luck to those getting out this weekend.

I got out to Little Dixie at 6:40 pm this evening. The was a constant north wind. So I fished along the dam near one of the east fish attractor brush piles. I put a nightcrawler on a circle hook and cast it out using a very light drag. Last year under similar circumstances with this wind direction we saw large fish just off of the bank. My hope was to catch some crappie and some large bottom fish. My other rod had a jig and float combo. The black and green jig was about 14 to 16" from the float. The stiff wind made it difficult to gauge if I had a bite or not. My retrieve was a reel and drop then reel and drop back to the bank. I did have a crappie hit the jig on my second cast, but it went silent for some time. The worm got picked up and the fish swam off with the bait. I tightened the drag and it pulled tight. After a short fight I landed a fat yellow bullhead. I got one other bullhead and a small channel catfish on the bottom bait. The crappie fishing picked up when the wind died down and the lake flattened just when the sun went down. I caught a half dozen white crappie all about 6.5 to 8", a couple of bluegill and a couple of green sunfish. If the lake flattened sooner, I should have caught a few more fish. I can't complain with 13 fish in about 2 hours of fishing.

Like you said - some chunky fish! Nice photos BH!

Just thought I could help out. By the way don't tell my son about the quail. He wants to have California quail.

BH - I missed this post earlier. Great stringer of white bass! I haven't fished a place that I could fly fish for whites. Sound like fun under the right river conditions.

The male was back right at dusk sitting in a dead branch just above the feeder as if he owned the place. He's pretty plump. I'm surprised because usually they are real thin after their migration.

We have had rains everyday and the ground is still good and moist. I would suspect that around us we may still find fresh morels through this weekend. I will probably go back to fishing (saw a couple of topminnows that I may be able to reach with my 9' flyrod) and let my wife and kids continue the myco-foraging expeditions. That is until some new mushrooms, like chanterelles start popping later this spring and early summer.

Thanks for the information. May explain how the mushrooms move from one location to another as the mycelium is feeding along the fallen tree or root system.

BH you need to get some chickens to produce your own farm fresh eggs. You want a couple of ours? We have 12 layers and two roosters in a suburban neighborhood outside of the city limits. I came home from a business meeting/dinner last night and found we now have three chicks in a warmer, Wife and daughter believe that they are all females. What we don't need is another rooster or two. The chicken yard is too small and the neighbors are somewhat tolerant to crowing at 5 am everyday by two birds, but maybe not three or more. If I was really serious in my offer, I'm sure that there are a couple of birds that just aren't as popular to my kids that they could probably go to a new home.

Nice catch of walleyes!

Well we tried the dryad saddles tonight. I sliced it real thin and cooked with a little butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. They do have a melon like smell when I cut them. It was decent tasting and not too tough even though these were older mushrooms.

BH - do you know how old the mycelium of a morel can live or how old they must be to produce the fruiting body? We were wondering that as we were hunting. I hadn't ever looked into their age before.

Just had our first male visiting our feeder this evening.

One thing to note is that this snake like other venomous snakes tend to float on the water surface. Water snakes will only have their head out of the water. Gutsy photos BH!

Last year I could not find a single morel. To my credit, I did catch a lot of fish and a variety of fish during the morel season. So this year my wife taught me that to be successful at morel hunting that I need stop looking in the water and look on the banks. I did finally succumb to going out with my wife and daughter to go hunt morels on land. The first spot, I just couldn't find any early on. My wife started finding them and even got to the point of pointing one out to me and offered that I could pick it just to get the feel for it. Now I knew what to look for to find these morels. We did find many more. Even I found several. However, my daughter and myself still found less than my wife. These morels were found in a public park that gets some attention from other mushroom hunters. So we were pretty happy with our bounty. We did find this other mushroom on this trip. Any one have a thought as to what this might be would be appreciated. My wife has been obsessed to go out to a location this year where my daughter found a really large morel last year. So we had to go to this potentially overlooked spot. We (I) only found two morels, but they were big ones. We were pretty happy with our total number of mushrooms including a few dryad saddle mushrooms that we are going to try.