Sam

The thermocline, water clarity, layers and so forth are things I don't know much about but I'd like to. We were in the Joe Bald area a couple of days ago, mostly looking for white bass, and I saw things on my 'scope I don't understand. The surface water temp was 69-70 so I wouldn't think the lake would be anywhere near turning over. As I understand it, water is the most dense and heavy at 39 degrees F., and water warmer or cooler than that is lighter and comes to the top. Such a change would be the lake "turning over", and it shouldn't happen at this temperature. The other day there was a layer at 40 feet. That seems deep for a thermocline, but everywhere we went there wasn't much above that on the scope and constant scattered fish showed right at 40 feet. Was that the thermocline? If it was, why were most of the fish below it? I thought there was little oxygen below a thermocline, but in the deep channels we scoped what I thought were big bunches of bait and white bass from 47 feet down to 120+ feet deep. That doesn't make sense to me. Also, we struck out on big perch by the chunk rock banks though we've caught lots of those in the fall of past years. I've got an 8" mark on the handle of a light rod and if a black perch (green sunfish) is 8" or more, into the live well it goes. This same week last year we had a trip where we brought 55 big perch home, but this time we couldn't catch a one. I think it's because the water was so clear, I could see every gravel on the bottom in 10' of water near the banks and I could see my jig in the water. These are things I'd like to know more about. Maybe someone here can share some information and I can learn something. Thanks.

We finally got around to checking the Point 9 area for white bass yesterday. There's a WHOLE lot of them there, and I don't doubt the report of those guys who saw them busting on the surface last week. Trouble is, when we were there the white bass were deep and not feeding. According to my Humminbird, white bass are all in that area in the deepest channels - 150 to 165 feet of water, and the fish were from 47-48 feet on down, just thick. It looked like big bunches of bait down there too. I caught one by trolling a plug, he must have come 'way up for it. We tried spooning for them, as did several other boats, with no luck. We left about 3 p.m. and they might come up later in the day, I don't know. I'd say there's lots of white bass to be caught there, but you've got to be there at the right time. We soon switched over to casting and trolling crankbaits near the banks, on points, and flats. The bass kept us entertained - lots of short spots and a few largemouths and smallmouths. We had a few keepers (released) of all three species. It was a good day, but nothing for the skillet.

When fishing around docks I'm real careful to not touch the dock or do any damage. Quite a few times over the years I've taken shelter from bad thunderstorms by pulling my boat into an empty dock slip, both commercial and private. I realize I've got NO right to do that - but I'm talking about getting under a roof and out of a real toad-strangler until it passes. Several of those times I've met the dock owner/operator, told them I was sorry to have trespassed, and thanked them for the shelter. So far, every one of them has said it was no problem and they're glad they could help. I always run into a lot more nice people when fishing than I do problems.

Now I know where you're talking about - that's some serious smallmouth country there. Right or wrong, it seems like Conservation is trying to help the bass fishery and they actually know where some bass live. I was afraid they were building crappie brushpiles where they don't belong. I wish they'd take some advice from top Tablerock guides, including Bill, before they do such things - because then they'd get the knowledge of folks who make a living finding and catching bass every day. That might be a lot different from the book learning, sampling, and maybe diving that biologists are basing their information on.

It's been real tough for me. I've had three REAL slow trips in a row out of K Dock - and I mean fishing hard all day for all species and coming up with maybe one fish, total. I'm heading for Tablerock on Thursday - it might not be better, but it can't be worse.

Bill, by debris do you mean they're dumping rocks and concrete, or is it brush? If they're building crappie brushpiles, I'd think the smallmouths would still be in the areas outside the brushpiles. They might even benefit from an extra food source as the brush would attract more small perch and crappie. Still, if it's a good smallie bank they ought to put the brush somewhere else. Crappie brushpiles can go most anywhere, but there's no use messing up a good bass bank by making it hard to drag a lure through.

A subculture has grown up around bass fishermen and bass tournaments because of all the publicity and money involved. Catch and release is part of it, as are $30,000 glitter boats that'll run 70 mph and fishing vests full of product patches. It's kinda like auto racing, and there's nothing wrong with that. More power to 'em. Bass fishermen want to preserve their fishery through catch and release and that's a good thing. Also, they realize that bass tournaments might get outlawed if they were keeping the fish. There are so many tournaments and some of them are so big, they'd be taking an awful lot of big bass out of the lakes otherwise - wholesale slaughter. As far as a weekend bass fisherman keeping his catch, that's up to him and I don't see a problem with it. I don't fish bass tournaments, but I'll drive two states away to fish a crappie tournament. In those, if a guy wants to fish from a 12 foot car-topper with a 7-horse outboard, that's fine. Also, the weigh-in is followed by a big fish fry complete with fried 'taters and hush puppies. It's all in what you enjoy most - and it's all good.

Going in the afternoon this time of year, watch and listen for surfacing white bass. If while fishing you hear a "waterfall" in the distance, look around quick to see where it's coming from - then charge over there and get in a couple of casts while they're boiling. Stay in the same area and they'll come up again sooner or later, and they'll hit your 1/8 oz. jigs (or most anything that moves) when they're feeding. We call that "chasing the boils", and it's a blast. I have a 50 hp motor too, and my boat's longer than yours but it's aluminum. It won't take big waves like a heavier boat, so I still fish anywhere on the lake but I avoid areas like Indian Point, State Park, and Kimberling City on weekends and holidays when a lot of party boats and jet skis are out. At those times I'll be up James River, Cricket and Long Creeks, or over on upper Bull Shoals. Those places are safer and a lot less annoying when there's a lot of traffic.

This may not be an issue with bigger boats, but on my boat I always take the front fishing seat down before running from one place to another with the main motor. When that seat's up, it blocks a lot of my view from the driver's seat - I have to peek around it, and it can block my view of other boats, stumps, and swimmers. On some boats, including mine, running with that seat up is dangerous.

I just heard an unconfirmed friend-of-a-friend report here in town. Two guys said that at Point 9 there were lots of shad on the surface and white bass busting into them all afternoon yesterday. They caught white bass until they got tired of it, and left with the fish still biting. I think I'll go check it out tomorrow. Has anyone seen that going on, at Point 9 or anywhere else?

Electronics, laptops, WiFi, and all that are fine - just don't get to playing loud music on the lake near where I'm fishing, please. That became a pet peeve of mine fishing lakes in SoCal, where there's a boat every 100 feet, the boom-boxes are so loud they put ripples on the water, and the song is usually "La Bamba". Grrrrrr.

I got one wound up in my prop about 2 a.m. one night. It was between two stumps in a side cove entrance in deep water, not tagged, and tied so low on the trees that nobody would have seen it in daylight, let alone at night. After half an hour leaning over the back of my boat working with a flashlight and pliers, I left it in about 50 pieces. There was a 5 lb. channel cat on it that went in my livewell, too. Fair enough, I figure.

I haven't heard that anyone is stocking yellow perch - maybe at some time in the distant past, because they got in Bull Shoals somehow. Upper Bull Shoals is the only lake around here where I've caught yellow perch, and they're real scarce there. In 20 years of fishing it, I've averaged maybe one yellow perch per year, usually about 7" long. That 11-incher this spring was a "record" for me. I'm not catching any more of them now than I ever did, and as much as I crappie fish if there were many yellow perch around I think I'd catch them more often. Wish there was some way Conservation could replace the weight-per-acre of gar in Upper B.S. with the same amount of yellow perch. Then we'd have a bunch of them!

I caught an 11 inch yellow perch near K Dock this spring. That's pretty small for eating, but it's the biggest one I've caught and I've heard how good they are, so I kept it. The filets were real good all right, right up there with walleye. 13 inches is bigger than any I've seen. I hope yellow perch will get more established in Bull Shoals and ones that size will become common. They'd be a real good panfish to go for if that happens.

That's the difference, I nearly always fish between Beaver Creek and a little ways into Arkansas. I hardly ever get up by the dam. I've caught a few white bass that I thought might be small stripers. Anyway, they seemed more streamlined and the stripes were solid. I've never caught any above maximum white bass size though, so I'm not sure.

Some of our local stores here still have giant Bull Shoals stripers on the wall from the 1980's, when I guess they were quite the thing. I've fished upper Bull Shoals for crappie and white bass real often for 20 years now, and I've never got ahold of one - I think they're kinda like Bigfoot and the Easter Bunny. If I did ever get a big striper on it'd just break me off. If a 40 lb. striper fights in proportion to a 4 lb. white bass, and I assume they do, I'm not fishing with any tackle that could get one in.

I went out of K Dock again on Wednesday, 9/22. I'd say the lake is in a transition stage between summer and fall, the surface water temp is back up to 82 (it was 78 last week), there are minnows all over the surface and only gar after them. Crappie fishing was tough, I only caught one keeper. I found and marked 4 new brushpiles between Snapp Holler and Hogan in 18-20 feet of water. They're big brushpiles, about 20 feet across and 8 feet tall, and I think maybe Conservation has been putting cedars out. They're springy when I hang up on them, like cedars, and I think I would have known about them if they'd been there long. I couldn't get any crappie off of them this time, but I'm real glad to know where they are. I only saw white bass boil on the surface once, and they quit by the time I could get there and didn't come back up. I found where the bass and white bass are hiding, though. If you go along where any big flat drops off into the main channel and stay in about 20 feet of water, you'll cross side channels where the depth drops to 35 feet or so. Bass and white bass in about equal numbers are suspended in those side channels, 20-25 feet down over a 35 foot bottom. I jigged with a 1/4 oz. Little Cleo spoon in a bunch of those side channels and came up with a limit of white bass and as many bass. The bass were mostly 10"-12", but I caught three keepers including a 16" smallmouth. A dropshot would probably work good now for bass fishermen. It was a good trip - the white bass limit and the one crappie I caught are in the 'fridge, and the bass are still swimming in the lake.

Surface water temp was 78-79 everywhere I went. The water had a little color to it, not bad. Finding those crappie made it a good day all right, but it was almost a strike-out day. I talked to other people coming in at the ramp, and I guess I was lucky to catch anything at all. Being flexible has saved many a trip for me. I had no intention of crappie fishing that day, but changing with the conditions and being willing to go after whatever's biting is better than targeting just one or two species, I think.

3inonegod - If that's what you think, you haven't been around here much. There's more freely given help on this forum than any other place I know. Look at the post I made in the Upper Bull Shoals section today about how I found a limit of crappie yesterday. I've got no reason in the world to share that information except to try and help somebody else have a good trip - and others here post good, helpful information a lot more often than I do. You're all wet.

I've got a Humminbird question for Doug or anyone else here who knows. I bought a Humminbird 597ci this spring, and I like it a lot. The problem is that nearly every time I start my main motor, the 597ci turns itself off. I can't turn it back on, either, until I remove it from the mount/power source and put it back. Then it'll turn on OK. I'm sure that's a safety feature - it turns off when the voltage drops. The power to my depthfinder comes from a fuse box under the console, and it's got its own circuit - the whole fuse box is powered by the main battery, which also starts the outboard motor. I could power the depthfinder from the trolling motor battery, but if I did it'd probably turn itself off when the trolling motor goes on. What can I do to fix this? Thanks.

I went yesterday (Monday). My idea was to do some trolling and maybe chase surfacing white bass or to find those walleyes powerdive was onto a couple of weeks ago. I was unsuccessful at both. As far as white bass, I caught one little tiny one smaller than your hand. There are big bunches of minnows on top all over the lake with nothing chasing them except gar. No surfacing white bass at all - I still hope that will start soon like it did last fall. So I tried trolling for walleyes in several likely places and struck out there, too. I scoped a bunch of fish all along one rocky bank so I tried trolling a Bandit II (pearl) along there in 20 feet or so of water. Lots of fish on the scope, and right away I caught a 16" largemouth. Well, that was some encouragement since I hadn't been able to get anything else going all day - so I kept trolling up and down that bank looking at fish on the scope. I had several soft bites that didn't get hooked, and on the scope I'd see what looked like some crappie piled up on bushes. Naaah - couldn't be (I'm a little slow sometimes). Finally I hooked a good fish on the Bandit II, and it was a 15" crappie! That changed everything - I switched over to slow-trolling a swimming minnow on a 1/8 oz. jighead and ended up limiting out on crappie, including a few that matched that first 15-incher. It seems like I should have figured that deal out quicker.

I would too. I'll mention it to him, and if he'll shoot a video I'll post a link to it here. He's got me thinking about making a lure that "taps". Everything he said about big bass not biting very often goes along with an interesting article I read years ago. It was in some sporting magazine, and probably others here read it too. The article was written by a guy in the conservation department in Texas. Texas invites fishermen to donate live bass that are over 10 lbs. to a state breeding program. They figure those bass carry the genes to make more big 'uns, and they stock lakes with the offspring. The author was in charge of those captive giant bass, which are held in a series of ponds. In taking care of them, he got to know the bass as individuals. Like any animal, they've got their own individual preferences. Some liked to take cover around logs, others liked weeds, others liked rocks - and even when they were moved they'd go find the same kind of cover they liked. Same with food - some only ate crawdads, others only ate perch. Some would eat only at a certain time of the day or night. Most important though, he was surprised at how seldom they ate - some of them would feed only once a week, and even the "hungriest" ones only once every 2 or 3 days. He said approaching weather fronts would change that, though - they'd get more active when the barometer was dropping. I think big bass feed pretty seldom, and they watch lures go by most every day of their lives.

I dunno about those specific fish, but I was at a friends house yesterday and he gave me a different point of view. He's not a fisherman, he's a scuba diver who's been diving Tablerock for years. We got to talking about what he can see down there that would be helpful to a fisherman like me. First off, he says there's a lot of dead water. In areas where there's no cover and especially with a mud bottom, there are very few fish. The exception to that, he says, are white bass - they're just moving around in bunches and not relating to cover so they might be seen most anywhere, just passing through. In areas where there's structure and cover, he says it's amazing how many fish there are. He likes to sit on the bottom near some good brush and watch the crappie. According to him, there are crappie in every underwater tree and brushpile that's at the right depth, and the big crappie stay in the thickest cover and keep the smaller ones chased out to the edges. When it comes to bass, he thinks fishermen have no idea how thick they are. His favorite spots for bass-watching are steep rocky bluff banks with ledges and underwater trees. He'll dive on one of those and sit on a rock or ledge just above the thermocline, which he says you can really feel - there's a sudden temperature drop below it, and the fish stay just above it. He says bass are real curious - he'll sit there quiet and tap two rocks together or tap on his air tank, and here they come. He said bass are just thick around such places including a lot of big ones, and they'll come up inches away from him trying to figure out that tapping sound. He sees some real big catfish in such places, too. His main message, he says if you're fishing in a spot with big rocks, flooded trees, and lots of cover - bass ARE looking at your lure, every cast. You might go half a day without a bite, but they're in there and they're looking at it. The surprising thing, I guess, is how seldom they bite - because he says there are a whole lot more big fish than we think.

White or pearl colors work best for me, though I'll sometimes use lure dye to add a chartreuse or blue tail. I got real interested in making crappie jigs a couple of years ago, and I came across an article that said most fish can see all the colors we can plus one more. They can see ultraviolet. That's important because the red end of the spectrum has a long wave length, so it doesn't carry well through water. Not too many feet down, red appears to be black and it can't be seen at any distance. Ultraviolet is on the opposite end of the spectrum, it has a short wave length and it penetrates water real well. Have you noticed how sometimes white or pearl lures look real bright on a cloudy day? I have, and the article explained that's because ultraviolet light penetrates clouds better than visible light - and some white or pearl substances change ultraviolet just enough as they reflect it back to put it in the visible spectrum. Then we can see it, and those objects look real bright on a dark day. I think the same thing happens underwater, and fish can see white or pearl better than other colors and from farther away. Not sayin' they always like it better, just that they can see it better.

Yep, I should have gone. On Wednesday here we got 8" of rain and another 5" on Thursday. 13" in two days caused places to flood that I've never seen flooded, and I figured upper Bull Shoals would be full of stuff washed off the banks. The storms must not have been as heavy down there. The weather looks good for the middle of next week, so I'll probably go then. Last year from mid-September into November we had a lot of afternoon trips where we chased surfacing white bass in the K Dock area. I think listening for that "waterfall" sound and "chasing the boils" is a lot of fun, and I'm hoping that'll start up again soon. Catching bass, crappie, or walleye is fine too. As long as something's biting, I'm easily entertained.