Johnsfolly

I hope you guys have a great time! Not able to make it, but would like to see about next year's event.

Still I hope that you have a good time and let us know how you do.

That's an awesome rainbow. congrats on a great fish and the persistence to get it on another fly.

Mic - GA has a great interactive fishing map with aerials that I used to find shoal and red eye bass. I caught shoal bass fishing the Upper Ocmulgee River in Jasper county north of Macon. The section I fished was pretty fast water with a lot of rock. I was successful using top water walking baits. Hopefully this helps a little. Good luck and let us know how you did.

Throw in a couple hundred or thousand triploid fish and feed them up with high fat forage you should be able make some giant spots. Of course then everyone can catch 6-10 lb spots and they would no longer be special trophy fish.

I definitely will have to revisit this river.

Congratulation to Cayden on his first deer. Also congrats to everyone that shot and recovered deer this season. I agree that we are blessed with bountiful game and opportunities to pursue them. We all have to remember that all of that can be taken from us with a single vote.

Bill, I agree with everything you've said except for the 2 fish per day per license suggestion. That would work well if there are multiple members of my family fishing with me. However, two fish would not be enough for myself to bring home to serve to my family of four (or five if my oldest is home from school). At Taney I prefer to fish the trophy area and would only be tempted to keep fish below the slot limit and two sub 12" inch definitely would not serve as a meal in my house. I do support your encouragement for your clients to harvest fewer than the legal limits. If fishing with my family (2 to 5 fisherpersons) I would likely only want to harvest four to six fish total depending upon their size instead of the 8 to 20 that we could legally harvest in MO.

Those are a couple of impressive bucks. Congrats on your season so far!

Ham - we drifted over three or four trout that were larger than 18 inches and one that was probably 24+". I agree about the average size being much better. These fish had some shoulders on them.

That's a nice fish from the bank in a heavily fished lake. Should be proud.

Ham - great fish. Did you come up from the lake and how far upstream did you catch that fish?

That's a great stringer. Congrats. Better than being stuck at work.

Nice hybrid. What did you catch it with? Did you catch many others? Any whites or walleye?

I have been busy and mostly procrastinating about reporting on our float trip of the North Fork of the White River back in October. I have been working on a goal to catch a trout in each of the MDC designated trout streams in Missouri since the fall of 2013. I was just down to the blue and red ribbon sections of the North Fork to complete the task. On the 1st of Oct. I took my wife and our youngest daughter down to Sunburst to pick up a canoe from Justin. Justin dropped us off at Kelley Ford and the trip began. Many of you might know that I also track the various species that I catch and how many of each fish on a yearly basis. My daughter is also working on her own species list this year. I wasn't expecting much in species diversity on this trip, but was really hoping to finish off my trout goal. Day 1 - The weather was fantastic, mid-60's, mostly sunny and probably more clear than I wanted. I always prefer an overcast day to fish. The water was fast and clear. My wife is a far better canoe operator than I am and neither of us have canoed a challenging river run in more years than we like to recall. So with that in mind and Justin’s warning about the “Falls”, we set off downstream back to Sunburst Ranch. I have to point out that I wade fish about 98% of the time, so I was not real adept at canoe trout fishing. We seemed to pass a bunch of great trout water and I saw many trout as we quickly passed over them. My wife and daughter were having a good time taking in the scenery and fishing some along the way. They did eat all of their lunch prior to 10:30 am. My daughter did catch fish with her hand net or bare hands, including several banded sculpin and an orange-throat darter. Since her goal was 12 different species of fish brought to the hand or net, the darter qualified as a new species for the year. The banded sculpin was a confirmed species. We have looked over several sculpin that she and I caught this year and determined that we have both caught ozark and banded sculpin based upon the descriptions in Plieger’s Fishes of Missouri guidebook. I was fixated on catching trout, but did catch a large banded sculpin as well on a 1/125 oz chartreuse microjig. I caught the only trout on the float. The first trout was caught on a 1/8 oz brown marabou jig just below the low water bridge. So I was finally able to mark off the blue ribbon section of the North Fork from my list. I caught my largest trout on a #2 Mepps Anglia spinner in a pool just below the River of Life farm. The fish was approximately 16” and was one of the thickest trout I have caught in some time. One other trout was caught on a 1/16 oz black marabou jig further downstream. We were able to negotiate all of the rapids including the “Falls’ successfully. On a couple of the more white knuckled runs, my daughter would want to run them again. Both my wife and I declined to portage back upstream just to run those rapids again. As we were paddling up to the take out point at Sunburst we were able to witness a bald eagle harassing an osprey. Day one ended with us tired and hungry. We enjoyed the float and are planning on a return trip. Day 2 - I still had to catch a trout in the red ribbon section below Patrick Bridge. I started fishing just below the bridge right after sunrise. I caught a small 7" rainbow on a Rapala UL Minnow jerkbait in a perch pattern. I had just completed my trout goal. As my wife can attest to I am pretty adept at resetting goals once one has been completed. As part of this overall goal, I have identified all of the streams and waters that have brown trout in them. Since I have only caught browns in the Meramec, Current, Roubidoux, and Capp's creek, that is only 50% of the number of creeks and waters (including Taneycomo) that routinely have browns released in Missouri. So to catch a brown in each of the remaining waters, i.e., North Fork, Roaring River, Niangua, and Taneycomo has become the next goal. So knowing that browns are stocked in the North Fork, I continued fishing the minnow bait. I fished down towards the confluence of the Alethia Spring branch (here's a picture of the spring). There was good rocky structure downstream of the bridge and it didn't take too many casts to catch a 14" brown trout. The fish stuck around a little while next to those posts in the water (i.e., my legs) where it was released to recuperate before it swam back out towards the rocky structure on the far bank. I didn't make too many more casts before leaving to meet my girls for breakfast. After two days, I finished one goal and started working on the next. I look forward to fishing this river again.

Good luck on any legal critter that passes in front of that box blind.

Sounds like a great time and great photos!

Congrats on the deer! No such luck with my wife and I. Hopeful to get out again later this week.

Next time I find a bunch like those, I will have to try broiling them. I've got some old bay in the cabinet.

Congratulations on a great buck!

Tell you son congratulations on his buck. I took my son out Sunday morning and we didn't see any deer. Too busy on the computer to go out again that afternoon.

Marty how did that one taste? I found that as they become yellow they can get really bitter.

Marty - great deer! I haven't been back out with my bow. Too much work. Did take my son out in the fog during the youth season. We found a great scrape line, but no deer were spotted. I couldn't get him off of the computer to go out that afternoon. I have moved towards using lighted nocks to be able to see if and where I hit the deer with my shot. Maybe its just bad eyesight, but I have trouble following the arrow in flight without the lighted nocks. They have helped me both during normal and low lighting situations. Also I like to post the lit arrow at the spot where I figured the animal was standing when I shot it. That was a tremendous help after dark finding our way out of the woods after we recovered a doe that I shot on a piece of public property that I had never been too prior to that evening.

Slider congrats on another doe. I would love to have a couple of those myself. Have been working too much and missed some of the best times to go out this year. Good luck on a buck if you go out for gun season.

Marty and Duane - Congrats on filling the freezer. Marty - I once saw a gray fox climb 10 feet up a hickory tree to check out a squirrel nest. I saw this same fox several times in late Oct/early Nov all around my tree stand. I never saw3 him around my tree stand after the fur bearer season opened or else he may be now living in my basement.