Sam

I'd planned to go to K Dock today (Friday), but I didn't because we've had two days of torrential rains here in Ozark and I figured some of it must have got down there too. I like to troll, and that's impossible with a bunch of floating trash washed off the banks and in the water. Anyway, this turned into a "bluebird day" after the rain - high pressure and a north wind usually isn't good for fishing. I figure I'll let things settle down, get past the holiday weekend, and try it next week. Has anybody got a report from that area? With the water cooling down, I'm hoping white bass will start "boiling" soon and maybe a walleye or a crappie could be found.

Nope, no pike that I know of. I caught a 3 lb. rainbow once down by Yokum Creek, and that was a surprise. From the trout's size and the distance from Powersite Dam, I'd guess it was a Taneycomo stocker that had been in B.S. for a long time. The only other "weird" fish I've caught out of upper Bull Shoals are bowfins, and I could do without those.

Yellow perch. I've known guys from up around Wisconsin who talk about their winter ice fishing for "perch", and I couldn't understand it because what we call "perch" (bluegill, green sunfish, and such) hardly bite when the water's cold. Turns out, it's yellow perch they're fishing for. I've caught occasional small ones for years out of upper Bull Shoals. This spring I caught my biggest one ever (still only about 11") and I kept it because I wanted to see if they're as good eating as I'd heard. The filets were real good, a lot like walleye. I hope the yellow perch in Bull Shoals will take off and get bigger and more common, I think they're a good fish.

Zipstick - I'd say the chance of that 14-pounder coming out of Tablerock is about the same as the chance of I-10 running through Minnesota. It seems like someone up there was even confused about the state - 99%+ of Tablerock is in Missouri, and except for a few miles on the Long/Cricket Creek arm, there's not much Tablerock bass water in Arkansas. I bet a biologist could have looked at that mount and seen that it was a Florida-strain bass, caught from some warm location. Just sayin'.

How did you know there were 4 of 'em - count to 8 and divide by 2? In the summertime, my partner and I usually come into coves from the main lake pretty fast. Once in awhile there'll be a party boat and some females scrambling to find their swimsuit tops and put 'em on while giving us old men dirty looks. We don't mind.

Sorry you banged up your trailer. That's an annoyance every time I go to K Dock. I don't know why they've got that little dock crowding the ramp so, and the ramp concrete drops off into a hole on the other side. I've been putting the trailer within inches of the dock, but that's hard to do. I'm gonna just start launching off the gravel with 4WD. It looks like the weather's going to be cooler later this week. I think it's time for me to try trolling that deep/slow in-line spinner rig.

I leave the red meat alone. Like you, I've never been able to trim it off without pretty much making sausage out of the filets. I think it's fish oil from their diet of shad that makes white bass so strong tasting. When I clean white bass, the meat is oily and it smells just like my hands do when I have to handle a shad. The carbonation in club soda or seltzer water takes the oil right out of the filets. Now, I haven't tried this with any whopper white bass - the 18" to 20" ones that I like to catch but throw back because they've got so much red meat and they're so awful strong tasting. I'll keep throwing those back, as there's bound to be a limit to what club soda can fix. Anyway, those big sows are the breeders that probably oughta be released for the good of the fishery. But with filets from white bass that are around 14" or smaller, a 2-hour soak in club soda works great. When I've brought home mixed bags of fish this year, we've had w.b. filets on the same supper plate as crappie filets - and my wife and I can't tell the difference! I might mention that the fella who told me about this said to use 7-Up. We tried that, and the sugar in 7-Up gave the filets a little sweet taste that we didn't like - so the next time we used carbonated water (club soda or seltzer water). That was the ticket!

I've said the same thing for years, but I've got to liking them a whole lot better since spring. A friend told me this trick and we found he's right - soak white bass filets in refrigerator-cold fizz water (club soda or seltzer water) for two hours before breading and frying. This turns white bass filets into crappie filets. Really.

9 a.m. Saturday morning here in Ozark, and while I was getting gas there were three speedboats/party boats gassing up, three more passed on the road, plus one trailer-load of jet skis - all headed for Tablerock. We're 35 miles from the water, and if it's like that in every town around here I can't even imagine what the lake's going to be like today. It's a great day for me to stay off Tablerock. You'd think with school having started things would calm down, but I guess that just concentrates 'em on the weekends.

That's what I'm looking forward to, "chasing the boils" out of K Dock. We did that all the way through November last year and had lots of fun trips. This weighted slow-speed inline spinner rig I'm working on should be great for white bass, too. I may attach a hook to the weight in front also, just to experience the Chinese Fire Drill of having two W.B. on at once!

That explains it - the difference is the amount of line we've got out. With a 1/8 oz. jighead, it's not possible for me to troll at a 45 degree line angle, and if I tried to keep the line short the jig would be 2' underwater right behind the boat. When I troll like that, sometimes I hook a bass and it jumps before I've had a chance to reel in much line. When that happens, I'm always amazed at how much line I've got out because that bass jumps at a surprising distance 'way back behind the boat. I wouldn't be able to slow-troll this way with mono line - it takes a thin no-stretch braid to work right. I'll fish the weighted in-line spinner rig the same way, and I think it'll get down there OK.

Thanks, Powerdive - that 1 oz. per 10' figure is something I'll keep in mind. Interesting. I wonder if there's something in the dynamics that's different there, because with a bottom bouncer you're staying in contact with the bottom, while I don't want to touch bottom with my rig. Maybe it takes a lot more weight to keep a rig in touch with the bottom than it does to keep it at a certain depth? I don't know. The reason I wonder that is that my experience mostly comes from slow-trolling a swimming minnow on a 1/8 oz. jighead, usually with 2-lb. mono diameter 10-lb. PowerPro braid line. I do an awful lot of that for crappie, and I've got the depth figured out. I cast out as far as I can behind the boat, then give the rod two big sweeps to get out more line. I have to troll at .9 mph (by the GPS) to get the tail of a swimming minnow to wiggle - and with that rig I'm running at 12' deep. That's exact to the point that in 13' of water I probably won't bump bottom, but if the depthfinder shows a spot at 12' the jig will bump when it gets there. Running at 12' with 1/8 oz. of weight seems like a big discrepancy from needing 2 oz. to get to 20', so I'm puzzled. I don't doubt what you're saying as I know you do this all the time - I'm just puzzled. As you say, I'll have to try various rigs on the water to figure this out.

Nice catch, P.D.! I'm going to get down there and try to emulate your success. Powerdive, Forsythian - I've got a new scheme going. Trolling a 1/4 oz. Roostertail is one of my favorite techniques (for various species), and sometimes I run a worm sinker and a swivel a couple of feet above the Roostertail for trolling. Trouble is, a Roostertail has to troll at least about 2.1 mph with the main motor for the blade to spin, and even with a weight it doesn't get down more than 6 feet at that speed. With the surface water temp at 90 degrees, trolling at 5 or 6 feet won't do it, even for white bass. The fish are down around that thermocline. I read about the Worden Vibric Roostertail that's made to spin at a much slower speed. I picked some of those up today at Bass Pro, 1/4 oz. white. Now, in my tackle-making gear I've got some 1/4 oz. chrome lure bodies (like for making Roostertails). I'm thinking of running my 10 lb. PowerPro line through one of those lure bodies, tying on a swivel, then about 8" of monofilament and one of the Vibric Roostertails. That would give me 1/2 oz. of weight, it should look like a small fish chasing a tiny minnow, it should spin at slow speed, and I think I can slow-troll it at close to 20 ft. deep with the trolling motor at about .9 mph. That sounds like a walleye rig to me - as well as white bass, crappie, etc. What do you think? Here's what the Vibric Roostertail looks like: http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_2870_100006002_100000000_100006000?cm_ven=bazaarvoice&cm_cat=RLP&cm_pla=2870&cm_ite=productname_link

T-Rockjaws - It's obvious you're doing everything you can to keep your fish alive, with good success. I suspect that not too many fishermen put in as much effort, though. How common are livewells with a recirculate feature? That would make a big difference and I didn't know about those, as my livewell just sucks in hot water from a few inches under the lake surface. I've thought about rigging an extension on my livewell intake - a hose with a weight on the end, or maybe a piece of PVC (though I'd probably knock that off on a stump). If I could pull water from just 5 or 6 feet down I know it'd be a lot cooler, have a lot more oxygen content, and probably keep the fish alive.

That you and your partner would take the trouble to try and save that big bass is great. I sure admire people who'd do that. Not trying to start a fight here - but there's an underlying problem. What's with these summer tournaments, where we KNOW bass mortality is going to be high no matter how hard fishermen try to keep fish alive? I've seen dead bass floating lots of times after summer tournament weigh-ins. The worst I ever saw was a good 200+ POUNDS of dead bass after a night tournament at K Dock on Bull Shoals, including some 5 and 6 pounders! I know it's usually not that bad, but I'm sure every hot-water tournament kills fish. Over on Bull Shoals last week the surface water temp was 93 going down to 89 at 2 a.m., the hottest I've ever seen. In those conditions if you're catching other species to eat that's fine, if you're catching and releasing bass that's fine, but you can't haul bass around the lake and release them all alive. It can't be done, in my opinion. I know I couldn't keep any fish alive in my live well that night - I ran the pump the whole time and I had dead walleyes and crappie. I think organizations ought to rethink and reschedule these mid-summer tournaments, or take pictures and throw 'em back immediately, or something. Just sayin'.

Hence the 50 hp 4-stroke. I can troll all day at about 1000 rpm 2.2 mph, use hardly any gas, and the loudest sound is the little stream of cooling water hitting the lake.

Nice. I'd have had to throw the trout back - no trout license. I've always wondered why (except for walleye and white bass fishermen) folks don't troll more here. I do it a lot. Back when my dad was alive, we fished the lakes in SoCal and we'd troll (usually with Bombers in those days) to locate bass. When we'd catch one we'd stay and work that area with crankbaits and soft plastics, and we'd catch a lot of bass that way. For me, trolling covers a lot of water and locates fish - bass, walleyes, and sometimes even crappie or a flathead catfish. This spring, trolling a plug located an area of big nesting goggleyes for me, so I switched to a swimming minnow and limited out. We didn't have white bass in CA, so that's another way trolling often keeps me entertained here.

I've caught channel catfish right out from the launch ramp at Bridgeport, all along there below the bridge where the channel drops off from the flat. I'd just get in the edge of the channel in 25-35 feet of water and drift a nightcrawler along the bottom below a good-size splitshot sinker. When you find eating size channel cats there, you'll usually find a bunch of them in the same spot. I've caught a few flatheads around there also, but they're more around the rocky bluffs and flooded trees. That's worked for me all along that area, down to Virgin Bluff and up to where Flat Creek runs into James.

And I hope you troll through a school of 18-inch white bass! I've done that, trolling by myself, with two poles out - and I think it's something that everyone ought to experience at least once.

The Corps is going to reserve the right to give a ticket to anyone abusing the lake by dumping junk in it, so they'll have to tell you not to put anything in the lake. If someone is dumping old washing machines, tires, bedsprings, etc. I think they oughta get a ticket. But when the Corps itself puts barge-loads of cedar trees in there for brushpiles, I wouldn't think they'd cite a fisherman for doing the same thing responsibly and on a small scale. I'm just guessing, though.

In my experience, anytime you ask a government agency IF you can do something you're in for a hassle. They're not gonna tell you that you can put anything in the lake - if they did, people would be dropping junk cars in there. It's always better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. If you can get a bunch of free PVC plastic pipe cut-offs (good luck with that, with no construction going on), they make the best brushpiles. There are all kinds of articles and diagrams on the web about building brushpiles out of those, and there are even bases made for them with sockets to fit the PVC. PVC lasts a long time where cedar breaks down and soon disappears, within a short time algae grows on PVC attracting minnows (and the minnows attract crappie), it's nearly invisible to a depthfinder so mark the GPS position and it's all yours, and you don't get hung up on it. Cedar brushpiles' mission in life is to reach out and grab crappie jigs. I've only read about this stuff, you understand. Purely an abstract discussion.

Good luck, Champ. I've got a friend here in Ozark who had that 15 or 16 years ago. The docs fixed him and he's fine. I avoid the 10' summertime Tablerock wakes by fishing at night, and/or heading for Bull Shoals. I've found that Tablerock Dam, the length of Lake Taneycomo, and Powersite Dam break those waves just fine and they don't make it to Bull Shoals.

I know - that's the Darwin effect at work, I think. There's no way I'm going to handle a poisonous snake, but I hate to see that kind of pain and damage happen even to idiots. I'm not afraid of a snake I can see. The danger of getting bit for just putting a hand or foot in the wrong place is what's bad. The worst situation I ever got in was going rock-climbing with friends in the Mojave Desert. I soon figured out that leading with your hands and then your face, blindly climbing up ledges in an area lousy with rattlesnakes, is a bad idea. I didn't do that again.

I'm getting some satisfaction from the fact that the result of your saving/protecting a poisonous snake is temporary, while my killing one is permanent. Next one you save, just drop him off over here.

"(1) No bird, fish, crayfish, mussel, amphibian, reptile, mammal or other form of wildlife ....yada, yada" In my opinion, governments are real good at wanting to run everything, passing laws that say so, then not wanting to pay for the consequences of their actions. In this case, is the State government saying they'll pay for any damages caused by their protection of poisonous snakes? When someone gets bit, will the State pay all medical bills, rehabilitation, lost work time, etc.? No? Then they don't get to say.