Sam

OLD member here - I haven't posted for a long time but intend to get more active again. My fishing partner asked me yesterday if I could find out if there's any activity yet with walleyes in the King's River. We like to have a couple of trolling trips there in late winter. I think it must be about time, or at least close to it. Does anyone here know? Thanks!

We haven't gone around Pro Tem, but partner and I have made two trips recently out of K Dock, trying to fish for crappie and walleye. Zip on the walleyes, and we've really had to work hard for a few keeper crappie. (They're all black crappie, and most of the ones we caught were a little short.) Water temp was 77 a few days ago, and clarity was good. Lake level was 657 the last I looked. We think the lake level needs to stay steady and stabilize for a little while, as it was brought down so fast recently - and once that happens fishing should improve a lot. We keep thinking about all the fish in there that didn't get any fishing pressure most of this year while the water was so ridiculously high. If we can get a stable, normal water level for awhile now, there should be some good fishing before winter sets in.

Yes. Partner and I have been fishing Stockton once a week, and a couple of trips back I let him keep the crappie and I brought home fresh filets from one keeper walleye, two medium-size white bass, and two drums that were about 15" long. Earlier this summer I bought a box at Lowe's containing two "non-stick Copper-Infused Grill Mats" for $10. Those things are great - they unroll side-by-side to cover my Pit Boss Pellet Grill, they keep food from falling or dripping through the grill, and grill marks get on the food right through the mats. Using those, I've been grilling fish filets and they turn out so good I doubt that we'll ever bread-and-fry fish again. It's gotta be healthier for us, too. My wife coats the filets with butter, a little olive oil, seasoned salt, and pepper. I heat the pellet grill to 350 degrees and give the filets about 2 or 3 minutes on each side depending on size. As soon as the meat turns white and will flake apart they're done - cook 'em more than that they'll get tough (especially the drum). That batch of fish was absolutely great, and it's hard to believe but we couldn't really tell any difference in the taste of walleye, white bass, and drum - they were all real good. Drum meat does have a slightly chewy consistency like lobster but not the lobster flavor, so we could tell which it was that way.

We're doing about the same. Partner and I had a strange, but still fun, trip on Thursday, Aug. 26. We stuck with brushpiles and got no walleyes this time but caught and released a tremendous number of barely-short crappie. We kept 26 keepers plus a couple of white bass, but we caught at least an 8-to-one ratio of shorts to keepers and finally quit when we ran out of minnows! It was hot and miserable, our clothes got covered with fish slime, and we're not complaining. We figure we caught over 200 fish between us and the majority were black crappie between 9" and 9 3/4". We didn't get to keep a single black, though the black crappie would have all outweighed white crappie of the same length. The white crappie caught ranged from 9" to 10 1/2", no "slabs" at all. We're wondering how long it will take these barely-short fish to grow to the legal length of 10" - some of them this year and before cold weather I'd think, and certainly before spring. We're strict about measuring, and there are a LOT of 9 15/16" fish in there that I turn back saying "Last time you're gonna get released, little fella!". How fast will they grow?

Thanks for mentioning that. My family got me a Pit Boss Pellet Grill/Smoker a couple of years ago, and I absolutely love it. From pizza to tri-tip roasts to burgers to cornbread to whatever, I've made about everything on it. I even baked a peach pie that turned out good. Next drum I bring home, I'm gonna try me some drum filet nuggets on that wood pellet grill!

No, we're fishing marked brushpiles in 18-22 f.o.w.. There wasn't much of a crappie spawn this spring, probably because of erratic temps and weather, and the fish got scattered, hard to find, and many females were re-absorbing their eggs. Now all that's about over and they are getting back into a normal summer pattern. If you're catching real little crappie, 6" or 7", you're fishing too shallow.

Partner and I have been tearing up the crappie for the last few weeks, but no, they're in the brush. We figure we caught 70+ in about 6 hours one day last week, BUT only 12 of them were big enough to keep. Lots of the ones we're catching are just barely short - 9 1/2" to even 9 7/8", so close we think they may grow to legal size yet this year. Most of the few we're catching and keeping now are slabs, though, up to 13"+. There are very few of a size in between, right now they're either big (few) or too short (many). The good thing is that there are a WHOLE bunch of barely-short mostly-black crappie in the lake. Next year should be a good one!

Thanks for the info about the (possibly) closed ramp. I added that COE number to my contacts and I'll use it to call. We've been launching at North Mutton Creek about once a week, and I like that ramp a lot. I'm kind of glad the south Mutton Creek ramp went private and started charging, which made us start using the north ramp. At both those ramps plus the one at Roark Bluff, though, I always give a thought to the knucklehead who thought it was a fine idea to put concrete curbs between launch lanes. Kind of like snakes, I don't have any trouble with the ones I can see - but those curbs do go underwater sometimes. LOL

My wife and I ate lunch at Ichiban Buffet in Springfield again today, and it was excellent. For the first time ever, we got there right at 11 a.m., their opening time. The restaurant was getting full about the time we were done eating, but at first we had it almost to ourselves. All the buffet dishes had just been put out and the sushi chef was just finishing eight different kinds of fresh sushi rolls. I devoted my first buffet plate to all-sushi and got 2 pieces from each roll (burp). We're going to hit that place right at 11 a.m. in the future, as that worked out so well. The sushi and all the buffet dishes we tried were great and I found a new personal favorite - General Tso Chicken. I dunno who the general was, but apparently he had real good taste!

I love sushi, but I'm not interested in the hi-filutin' kind - no raw fish for me. There are plenty of real good sushi rolls to suit my, I guess, "American" taste. They're not authentic Japanese I'm sure, but not gonna give me worms either. My wife and I really like Ichiban Buffet on the west side of Glenstone just south of Chestnut in Springfield, and we go there for lunch about once a month. The lunch buffet costs $8 (more at night) and the buffet includes about 40 dishes plus Mongolian BBQ and a salad bar. Also included is a counter in the west wall where a sushi chef is making and putting out sushi rolls cut into slices. Around 8 or 10 varieties of sushi are offered, and they're common Americanized ones like California Roll, Philadelphia Roll, Salmon Roll, Spicy Crab (my favorite), Dragon Roll, etc. They're all good in my opinion, and they're freshly made. I usually fill my first buffet plate with sushi then move on to the other dishes, but a person could certainly enjoy an all-sushi buffet if they wanted to. Many places charge almost $8 for one sushi roll, so I think the same price for all-you-can-eat sushi with lots of variety is a real good deal.

Here's an article in Game and Fish Magazine with some drum recipes - it's pretty well known that they're good eating. We've tried the one that involves boiling bite-size pieces of drum fillets in Zatarain's Crab Boil, cajun-style. Good stuff! https://www.gameandfishmag.com/editorial/freshwater-drum-recipes/330372 In other news, I didn't catch any drum at Stockton Lake today, but I DID catch a bunch of crappie and my personal best-ever walleye, a male just over 25" long. We were slow-trolling 1/8 oz. white jigs tipped with minnows along rocky banks in 17-20 feet of water. I was lucky to get it in the boat on a light crappie pole with 4 lb. test line, and I'm still grinning about it. ☺️

All my life I've sort of despised the Freshwater Drum, and I bet many here consider them a "trash fish" like I always did. I think it's because every Drum we catch is a disappointment at the time - they're a strong, hard-fighting fish that we struggle to get in, especially on light tackle. When I get ahold of one I always think I've got something GOOD hooked (thinking/hoping - "Well, it's strong as all get-out, it's not coming to the top like a bass, it's not fast like a white bass, not really jerking like a catfish, so maybe, just maybe, I've got a BIG walleye!"). Then I get it in and it turns out to be a dang Drum. ☹️ But I did a little thinking and then some online reading. Drum are the only freshwater members of the croaker family, and their two closest relatives are Redfish around Florida and the Gulf Coast and Yellow Croaker in the Pacific. I've caught both while saltwater fishing, and they're both good eating. Drum rib bones are NOT forked like those of carp and the meat isn't full of tiny bones like suckers, etc. They filet out like any normal fish, and the fillets are thick white meat with a good texture and mild flavor. There's a thin layer of darker meat on the outside of each filet that can be trimmed off if you want - I didn't. So, this spring and summer I've been keeping and filleting Drums when I catch them. My wife and I have frozen some and eaten some fresh, working our way through the many online recipes I've found. I'm not going to include links to recipes - just search for "freshwater drum recipes" and there's plenty. I've got orders from my wife to always bring Drum home now, and she describes the flavor as "a little like catfish but milder". We like 'em!

It's over, but I think it hardly happened this year. Falling water temps in mid to late April really hurt the spawn, I believe. Two weeks ago we were catching some scattered, undersize male crappie in 9-10 feet of clear water in some of the coves - I think they were guarding a few nests back then, but they were not concentrated. Occasional keeper females at that time were widely scattered and on humps and ridges in deeper water. This past Thursday, the 13th, the two of us got limits of barely-legal walleyes and caught many more short walleyes. We caught 4 legal crappie, 11" to 13", in 18'-20' of very clear water plus about 10 short crappie. When we cleaned the four crappie we found they were one male and three females that were re-absorbing their eggs. There is no post-spawn crappie pattern going on that we can find.

Thanks! I put it in my phone contacts. 🙂

Does anyone here know the name or phone number of the small gas station / convenience store on Hwy. 76 about a half mile back toward Branson from the intersection of Hwy. 76 and K Hwy.? I want to call them and see if they have minnows for sale now. If we can find a day without much rain this week we're planning a crappie / walleye trip out of K Dock. I saw on the news last night that Bull Shoals is at 657', so that's about normal level now and they've really let the water down fast. Also, I heard an unverified report here in Ozark that two guys caught 25 crappie out of K Dock a couple of days ago, average length 11"! Except for a few walleye trolling trips around Swan Creek last February/March we haven't fished Bull Shoals for a LONG TIME. The water level has been so high for so long, those crappie have had a long break from fishermen.