Johnsfolly

Great bass Donna! Crongrats! Looks like a Ned rig in its mouth. Can't quite make out the color, green pumpkin maybe? Glad to hear that Champ let's you reel in your own fish. Good luck in the tournament.

Dan Great job on your Feb walleye and it is a nice one! Congrats on your perseverance on getting this difficult bite! I know it had to have been a mental challenge to keep at it. I hope that you are able to get back out there tomorrow or this weekend and get your March walleye!

Livie and I got out again this evening. I started fishing with crickets trying for a redear sunfish. I thought that I might have caught one the other night, but called it a young bluegill. I haven't caught a redear this year and I want to make sure that my fiftieth species this year was a confirmed one. I didn't know what the fishing was going to be like after the cold spell. The wind was beating us up and we got hung up and broke off. Livei did catch one decent bluegill. So we headed down lake to try for crappie. At this point we had the same wager, $1 biggest fish and $2 for most fish. Livie had one bluegill so far to my goose egg. So she was way ahead on both categories. We fished by the dock. First cast Livie caught a tiny bluegill. Now I owe her a hug for the small fish. I know we really play for high stakes. I make a cast past the dock and get bit by a crappie. I'm on the board. Also it was larger than her bluegill. So with one fish the tides turned. Now it's a competition. As Livie mentioned it's not a competition if only one is competing. The fish were in the deeper water off the dock, So we moved onto the dock. Still was a tough bite. The weather did us no favors, but Livie got one crappie and two bluegill and I ended up with four crappie and the largest fish. Instead of calling the competition, we are going to carry it over to tomorrow night. Tomorrow is the last day of my 2016-2017 fishing season. So it's only fitting to carry our competition on the last day that I am trying to finish my goals. Still need a new fish species, possibly a redear or maybe a bluegill/green sunfish hybrid and now just 17 more crappie. So here are some photos. Oh and it did rain on us, but we soldiered on for another bite. My first crappie and only fish up to that time. Lucky for this one we weren't keeping any fish tonight. Livie trying to get another one.

I took my betterhalf on a overnight charter trip out of Key West (back when we were without children). The trip was a 72-hour trip headed towards the Dry Tortugas. At anytime that the boat stopped you can fish. I hardly slept and fished a lot. Sue would offer go below to get some sleep. It seemed liked every time she went below the moon would come out. OK It was the same guy that would undress while she was down there. She really started to hate this guy. We caught a lot of snapper, muttons and yellowtails. It was definitely a memorable trip.

I never let it bother me if she catches bigger fish. The more that she is interested then the more I get to go out. By the way the photo is her holding a king salmon that she caught in Ketchikan Alaska back in 2008. She caught four of the five North American Pacific salmon on that trip, king (Chinook), silver (coho), pink, and a chum salmon. Her chum salmon was the largest salmon we caught that day. I of course caught the smallest, about 7 inches in length about 5 inches longer than our herring cut bait. I saw the rod twitch and began reeling it in. It wasn't a spectacular fight. The guide thought that we might have weed on the line. Of course my betterhalf will always talk about the guide and I talking like little school girls about hunting and fishing while she had to watch the lines and reel in the fish. He had a great Tred Barta bear hunt story when he guided Tred. Below are some gratuitous photos from the trip. My son was not too happy about his bleeding coho. My oldest with a pink salmon. Our little Livie tomato with a pink salmon.

Quillback Great job! Think of working the bank as continuation of your rehab program. Bet that trip was a lot more fun than what you were doing at PT.

I have to say that tonight was just fast food. I still have an hour and a half to get home from my fishing trip. Tomorrow night should be a better meal.

We just finished the following: Tako salad Uni, hamachi, maguro, sake, suzuki nigiri Maguro sashimi Miso soup Soft shell crab, spicy tuna roll Avocado, cream cheese, tuna, smelt roe roll. We weren't cooking. In fact most of this was not cooked at all. May miss this place.

Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.

Now pull them pistols. Real slow. So that I can count the Haaaiirs on the back of your hand.

I would always put a movie with Chief George in above High Plains Drifter. "All I have is a piece of hard rock candy. But it's not for eatin'. It's just for lookin' through." "I'm glad you stopped me when you did. I might have killed her." "They call us "civilized" because we're easy to sneak up on. White men have been sneaking up on us for years." so many good lines: Captain Terrell; "Not a hard man to track. Leaves dead men wherever he goes." Granny Hawkins: "They say you're a hard put and desperate man, Josey Wales. They're goin' to heel and hide you to a barn door. You know what I say? I say that big talk's worth doodly-squat." Alt time favorite line of the whole movie: Fletcher; "There's another old saying Senator. Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

Looks like a good trip. You'll find that there are many of us on this site that really enjoy small water multi-species trips. Keep posting!

So here is my parting shot of the 2016 2017 small game season. this is the doe cottontail that lives in a brushpile in our yard. and Yes she is only about 12 to 15 feet from me when I was taking this picture.

Just means that Billethead will have to tie articulated baits in a rainbow trout pattern to fish the striper spawn. You know that the large brown trout in the river are already eating rainbows.

I will never admit to being the boss in the house. I know better than that. I am trying to figure out, which of my many goals I want to try and get done before my fishing year ends on Tues. Fish the Current to try for 5 more brown trout and catch my 300th brown trout in MO. Fish the Tavern creek/Osage confluence to catch a spotted bass or redhorse sucker either of which would be my 50th species since March 1 2016. Hope that the cold hasn't shut down the bite and hit the lake to try for 21 more crappie to catch 100 for the year. I know these are serious decisions to make. Of course I will help with the shelves first.

Yes dear.

What did Jeff Foxworthy say " you might be a redneck if you would rather fish than have sex." Now I have always considered that there is a redneck mindset and that I often share that thought process. I'm not sure I totally agree with him, but I don't mind fishing first if you know what I mean! Of course one of my other favorites is "You might be a redneck if you ever rested your fishing pole on a "No Fishing" sign."

After 22 years of marriage and 10 years of cohabitation, the bedroom would be the last place that she would look for me .

Wow so this is how is its going to be. It's a good thing that that my betterhalf doesn't listen to you guys. Also I could always use the ladder to get into my bedroom window if she does change the locks.

After the successful night last night, I was able to get out again at lunch today. The wind was whipping the water surface. I couldn't keep a bait in a good location. So no bites with the float. Did catch one crappie going without the float. Not the numbers that I was hoping for. The wind died some this evening and I got out with my daughter Olivia, aka Livie. Again I headed for the fish attractors that we could reach from the bank. We had a small wager, $1 for largest fish (could be luck) and $2 for most fish (more related to skill and luck). I had on the black and green 1/64 oz jig under my float and she was fishing a bumblebee black/yellow jig under her float. I caught the first fish, a white crappie on my first cast. Then another on my next cast and another of the following cast. Livie was struggling on getting a good cast and following drift with the slight wind and skirting the brush pile. I then caught a bluegill and three green sunfish including this chunky one, which was the biggest fish of the night. So at this point Livie has only caught one crappie at this time. So we switched spots and she started catching one crappie after another. I broke off and lost a lot of time retying. So she was catching up pretty quickly. Then it just became how many fish can we catch before we lost enough light to still see our floats. Livie caught 9 crappie. I ended up with 10 crappie, 3 green sunfish and one bluegill. So I ended up with the largest as well as the most fish. The joke was that no matter who lost the bet, we would have to ask mom for the $3 to pay the other person. The real win was getting out and catching some fish with my daughter. Hopefully we don't get the really strong winds this weekend and we can get after these crappie again.

Good luck on your NFOW trip. Expect to hear about big trout coming to hand and those that got away. Show us some of the beauties that you catch. Hopefully you can land some nice browns as well as rainbows.

Here I thought that football season was over. Not on the Meramec! That's a great fish! congrats on your personal best!

Well the small game season has ended. I did get out a couple of more times before the season ended. I got out with Jeremiah (my daughter's boyfriend) and Herbie (brother in-law) and hunted Davisdale CA in Howard county. We went out the first weekend of February. It was very windy and I decided to hit this property since there is good population of rabbits. With the wind, I felt that the squirrels would be less than active and that we might be able to get a rabbit or two. We hunted several draws and tried to stay out of the wind, but we just weren't finding any squirrels. We busted through several briar patches and brushy areas but only kicked up one rabbit and did not get a shot. After pushing the brush above a draw we set up along a creek. I was next to a couple of large oaks. I looked in the notch of one of the trees and saw what I thought was hair. It turned out to be a sleeping raccoon. Of course this was a couple of days after the end of the furbearer season. When I headed back to Herbie, I saw him pull up his shotgun and he shot twice. Jeremiah got down into the creek bottom and he shot once apparently for the killing shot on the only squirrel that we would get on this trip. As we were heading back to the vehicle, we saw a herd of deer off in the distance. We saw at least 25 deer in total with four bucks. Two of them had really nice antlers. The wind really affected our hunt, but it still was a memorable day. The last hunt that we did this year was just Herbie and I on the last Saturday of the season. We went to a local piece of the Mark Twain national forest land. Herbie went along one split of the creek branch and I went into a cedar thicket on the other side of the creek branch. I immediately saw several squirrels when I entered the thicket. No shots. I eased up to a large cedar and waited for more activity. I had one get down on the ground about 30 yards from me. I was able to sneak about 10 or 15 yards closer and got a good shot. I picked up the squirrel and moved deeper into the thicket. I knelt down next to another thick cedar and saw a couple of squirrels chasing each other about 80 yards away. I hunkered down to see if I could get a chance at either one of these guys. As I was watching them, I saw movement to my right and saw a doe enter the cedars. Then one of her fawns then another. The last one was only 35 yards away when It noticed something not right at the base of my cedar tree. She spooked and took the other two does with her. As they left the cedars, they met up with another six deer that were getting ready to enter the cedars. Fortunately they might have spooked the squirrels towards me. I had one in the tree just above me and I shot that one and saw the other 20 yards to my left, but no shot. So far within 250 minutes I had two shots and two squirrels on the ground. Herbie took a long shot and missed one before I met up with him to move to another timbered creek bottom. We both got a couple more shots and I ended up with another squirrel and Herbie lost one and got one. We only hunted until about 10 am when the squirrels just get back to their nests. So we ended up with four total. three grays and one young fox squirrel. I have them in the freezer and will have to find a good day to get them cooked up. I have the idea that I might make a Sichuan squirrel dish ala Hank Shaw. I didn't get out again do to travel for work. I never did pull the trigger on my release on the yard rabbit or any of the local squirrels. I enjoyed this year and hope that I will be able to get back on them in May.

My wife asked me to pull something from the freezer. I pulled out four chicken thighs. With the protein in place I scoured the pantry and found some containers of Thai coconut tomato soup. So I got the idea for a thai style cacciatore. I told my wife what I was thinking and while I was still at work, she skinned the thighs and browned them in a little oil. She then added sliced onions, ginger, and garlic. Once the onions were translucent she added the thai coconut tomato soup and braised the chicken at 350 deg until the meat fell off of the bone - about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. She served the chicken over rice and with drop biscuits.

I remember your photos with the gobbler posing in front of the glass doors. that would make me laugh and cry .