Phil Lilley

Was hoping something was going on behind the scenes... those responses appeared poor to say the least. There are people and guides on the forum who frequent the Bull Shoals forum but not very many compared to other lakes.

Martin- when I think of you I think of mushrooms... I wonder why? Those are great pointers. Deep and crank baits. Babler says he catches the biggest crappies when throwing big stick baits for bass.

Just finished cleaning fish. 4 of us had 33 whites. 7 were sows and 2 of them were spawned out. So were some of the males. We caught most of them on purple. Stood out waste deep, casted out across and just let it bounce the bottom. Caught most of mine at a 45 degree angle downstream on the swing. Tom caught his just holding it almost straight downstream. I was using 1/8th oz heads and he was using 1/16th oz heads. Man it was a great night to be out. Moon was not full but it lit up everything. Lots of activity down there at night- ppl getting stuck in their trucks across the river, boats trying to pull out at the ramp, hearing guys brag about snagging walleye and doubling their limit of whites... you know voices carry along way across water Thanks for the great food and showing us it's done... Doty's!!

Shane (MDC Biologists) said when they shocked he was surprised to see mainly black crappie. I found one crappie that had 2 small red ears in its belly yesterday. It was a female but with so much in its stomach, the eggs were crowded out. One was about 1.25 inch and the other was almost 2 inches.

Was told there's a bunch of nice cutts in the river right now. Must be nice to live so close to such an awesome trout fishery! Thanks for the pics.

Should have kept my mouth shut. They ran water hard 2 evenings ago. I bet it cooled the water down below the dam after the weekend with little generation.

I'm out... too tired. Going tomorrow night for sure. Hope you slay them.

We left the cove at 11:20 am. We were in 2 boats- a red G-3 and an old beat up gray Landau. We caught a bunch of small bass too.

I ordered and received some awesome jig hooks from these guys- and reasonable. http://www.captainhookswarehouse.com/ I got the Matzuo lead heads in all 3 weights. Very sharp and very strong. I'm VERY impressed!! http://www.captainhookswarehouse.com/index.cfm?page=products&manid=0&catid=32&sizeid=0&view=1&offset=11

Heck- I would have given them a couple gallons of gas if it meant not running out of gas on the lake under those conditions. Either that or lend them a car so that they could run up the hill to the gas station.

Heard they hauled out bunches of limits of whites last evening into the night last night- fishing from the Forsyth side of the lake from the bank. Purple swimming minnows was the best. I'm hoping to be over there about 9-10 pm.... If you see me, I'll have some OAF stickers to give out.

Put in at Bridgeport this am about 7:15. Should have been there at 6:30. Fog on the lake- pretty sight. Headed down to first arm on the left and started there. Two boats of us- 5 anglers. Chartruse swimming minnows the best using 1/16th oz heads. At first they were close to the bank, then as the sun came up they moved off. Caught them good for the first hour, then it was here and there. Some up close to the bank is 8-12 feet of water but most were off the bank up to 50 feet in 18-25 feet of water and close to the bottom. There were some guys using minnows out in the middle of the arm- up out close to the mouth and they were catching crappie too. A guy on the dock there catching but he said he was only catching small males. We ended up keeping 36. Half females this time and we didn't catch many short crappie- not as many as last week. Water was clearer than last week- 60 degrees. I bet ya money they're going to be close if not on the banks tonight and in the morning.

I wanted to get out and get some good fish pics today.... with spring time in full swing, trees popping and all. We boated up to Lookout Island with the water off and started there with fly rods in hand. The wind was kicking from the north... south... east and west. I've never been blown so much from all directions! But it made a good chop on the water, the water being off color from the rains the night before. We tied on zebra midges, rusty #16's and started catching rainbows. We set the indicators at 3 feet and fished the bluff side, hoping for big, colorful rainbows but we couldn't come up with any. We caught "silver bullets" one after the other. Good fighters but not picture-worthy. Ran into Steve Dickey, one of our guides on the water, and they were catching rainbows on olive micro jigs. He said they'd caught some nice ones so we switched and continued to catch small rainbows. They did like the micros better though. We broke for lunch about 1 pm- headed to the sushi bar in town. Back out, we fished the lower end of the trophy area around the Narrows and continued to catch rainbows, mostly small but there were some nicer ones. Still nothing good enough to get the camera out. Did take some pics of the dogwoods on the bluff. It's funny how some days all you can catch are small rainbows and all of a sudden, the lunkers appear. Not for us, not today. But catching was very good today.

What if.... A marina on a lake like Table Rock didn't sell gas to a boater and the boater ran out of gas on a big lake, wind was up and white caps swamped the boat and people died.... it could have happened yesterday. Bill said the white caps were rolling on the lake and there wasn't anyone around to help them. If there's no provision for emergency cases such as this one now, there will be in the future if it causes someone to drown... because of (shall I dare to use the word...) gov't red tape.

OK Fish and Game have a cleaning station set up close to Twin Bridges where they will dress/process your spoonbill... they take the eggs and they sell them. Says they made $9 million last year???!! They're building a new station down the road toward Miami.

Ran over to one of my best fishing buddies place yesterday with Vince Elfrink. We even took the girls along to visit while we fished. So Paul Crews, Vince and I put in at Hwy 10 bridge on the Spring River and headed up a couple of shoals and found the whites on the first cast. It never ceases to amaze me how many whites are in the spring at any given time. Paul can usualy find them no matter what time of year. We drifted and casted to the inside bank. Caught almost all male whites from 5:30 till dark- ended up with 45 (limit is 20 per person). We caught fish mainly on chartruse jigs and swimming minnows. They really didn't like any other color. I did catch a few on a rebel blue minnow but they didn't like it as much as I would have thought. The river was also full of gar and buffalo, both breaking the surface with impressive swirls and wakes. Paul thought we saw hybrids also, chasing shad on the surface but there was so much surface action it was difficult to identify everything that was slashing around. The river is low- or actually Grand Lake is low- so just a not to those who are thinking about putting in a 10 Bridge. We got in ok but had to take out at Twin Bridges.

Could you guys help me with this, please? http://ozarkanglers.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=27692

Someone is working on that... supposed to be.

You guys should be fishing this morning...

Too funny...

Nice to see you back on the forum, Marty.

Good question. I think I know what a flat is but I'd have to say it's going to be defined differently by each author or fisherman. A flat to me is an area that is flat- no holes or variant of slope. Depth doesn't really make a difference. It's usually not located on a point, even if the point is relatively flat itself.

Yea- that's news feeds. I have news feeds on oa homepage now and that's an important part of any up-to-date site. I don't do as much as I could simply because of time. To take an article or fishing report and transform it into html format with pics, resizing the pics, it takes alot of time. For instance, the Blue Ribbon fishing report takes me about 15 minutes to post on ozarkanglers. It comes in email form- I have to download the text and pics, resize the pics, upload the pics, format the text and pics in Dreamweaver and upload the article. Text only articles and report are easier but with the new format, I will have images with each feed- I'll require them anyhow. If I have to go out and find pics, that takes more time. Enough of the behind the scenes lesson... Here are a couple of things I'm incorporating- Feature Video MDC, OK, AR Conservation Links SPA/Corp Link Podcasts and Videos Incorporate snippets from the forum Interact with twitter and facebook

What items should be presented on the front page of OzarkAnglers? News Feeds - for sure. Links to lakes, rivers and streams in the Ozarks - yes. What else? Thanks for the help.

Put in at Bridgeport around 2 pm. Stayed pretty much in site of the ramp and fished both bluff banks and bluff ends. Found crappie mostly out from 20-30 feet from the bank in 23-35 feet of water and found them about 10 feet deep to close to the bottom. Caught them on white and chartreuse jigs and swimming minnows. They hit most everything on the drop. They weren't necessarily around brush but brush didn't hurt. We caught 3:1 shorts to keepers and I think we kept about 25-30 (3 of us). Caught a few whites, blacks and a channel cat. I think they are a ways from moving to the banks. Water temp was 52-56. Good color. But I think you'll be able to catch crappie for the next week- they may spawn the first of next week looking at the forecast. But I'm no crappie expert. Didn't catch many over 11 inches. Tossed back a bunch that were 9.9 inches. I'll clean them in the morning.