Sam

Well, you're SURE right that he should have left it alone. It was just the one guy, doing something stupid without permission. We weren't out there to mess with wildlife. Still, this isn't an empty continent anymore - people are everywhere. The same thing could happen if someone, even a kid, just put a hand or a foot in the wrong place (see the guy who turned off a water faucet, above). Far as I'm concerned, the existence of those poisonous snake species isn't worth that happening to even one person. I guess there were grizzly bears once where I live, and long before that saber-tooth tigers, and long before that dinosaurs. They're gone, I'm glad, and poisonous snakes need to go too.

Phil may want to move this thread somewhere out of the Tablerock section, but since we're having fun talking about snakes I'll tell why I kill all poisonous snakes on sight. I didn't used to be that way. I figured a snakebite would be like a big wasp sting - it'd hurt, swell up, turn red, and you'd either get over it or not. I found out different. I'm from around here originally, but I did a whole career and retired from a Sheriff's department in Southern California. We had a big murder investigation going once - we knew who did it but we couldn't find the bodies. Information made us think that two people were buried in an approximate area of semi-desert, so we called in all extra personnel, the reserves, the mounted posse, search-and-rescue, and a helicopter and did a two-day intensive weekend search of that area. We had about 400 people walk the area slow in a line, 5 yards apart, looking for disturbed ground, clothes, or any clues. One of our reserve deputies was a snake enthusiast and he kept a bunch of snakes at home, including poisonous ones (nuts, in my opinion). As our search line advanced, some of the deputies called out that there was a BIG rattlesnake and this guy went running over there. A few minutes later he came back down the line carrying a big snake, holding it behind the head and it was rattling like crazy, thrashing around, and trying to get away from him (like I said, he was nuts). That thing was about 5 1/2 feet long and as big around as your arm. As a supervisor I asked him what the heck he thought he was doing, and Deputy Dumbass was all happy - he said it was a rare "Mojave Green" and he was going to the kitchen trailer to put it in a plastic bucket to take it home! Well, I didn't want him to turn it loose and he was holding it so I couldn't shoot it. I probably should'a just shot HIM and saved the workman's comp claim. Anyway, I let him do it, and I heard plenty about that from MY boss later! A couple minutes after he left, guys over that way started hollering that he'd got bit and then I heard a shot. I ran down there and sure enough the snake had twisted away from the snake-collecting deputy and bit him on the hand. Then another deputy killed the snake with a shotgun. The guy's hand was red and swollen like you'd expect, with a couple of fang marks, and he was hurting bad. We got him on the helicopter and found out by radio where was the best place to take him for a snakebite (Loma Linda hospital). As the helicopter was taking off, another reserve deputy who was a professional photographer asked if he could go along to photograph the whole deal, and I said OK. The guy lived through it but he nearly died and he was in the hospital for a month. The photographer made a project out of it and he made us a slide show for training purposes. He took identical close-up pictures of that hand, starting while they were in the helicopter and the emergency room, and then returning to the hospital for a picture every day for a month. I'm telling ya, that was no wasp sting - it was the awfullest thing you ever saw. In less than a week, the flesh of that hand started to rot and drop off. It looked worst at about 3 weeks - a skeleton hand with bones and tendons bare, and green and black areas of meat falling away from the bones. You could see right through the hand between the bones. After numerous surgeries and grafts and about a year, the guy was left with kind of a claw that he couldn't move instead of a hand. He had to leave the Sheriff's dept., of course, and in real life he'd operated a road grader and he couldn't do that anymore either. I've read that snakes inject venom intentionally, and this was a big snake that he had really upset. It gave him the full load, and he shouldn't have been fooling with it anyway. I know Missouri copperheads and cottonmouths aren't that bad, though a big rattler might be. But that's why I always kill poisonous snakes on sight, because I think about a person, and maybe a kid, going through something like that. We just don't need those things around, in my opinion.

I've never met a poisonous snake I didn't kill if I could. We lived out west for years and I killed hundreds of rattlesnakes, but around here it's mostly copperheads and cottonmouths. If I see 'em, they're dead. Harmless snakes are another matter, I leave those alone. I see lots of garter snakes and a few other harmless species on our place, and there's a big black snake that lives around our patio that I'm almost friendly with. When I think about the pain and trauma poisonous snakes can cause people, especially kids, and how they can kill pets - I just don't see any use in them. If poisonous snakes get killed off, I'm sure non-poisonous snakes increase in numbers to fill that "niche" in an area's ecosystem to control rodents and so forth. That's fine with me, and I'll do my best to help that happen.

OK - shows what I know. We didn't do any bass fishing, and the locals were real surprised that I threw that 13-incher back. I'm glad to hear that's a lot better fishing lake than I thought it was. We did catch plenty of crappie, but they were generally smaller than around here with just a few big ones mixed in.

The last week of April I spent three days on Lake Greeson in SW Arkansas, crappie fishing. On my very first cast with a crappie jig I caught a 13" bass and released it. No big deal I thought, but kind of a good omen for the first cast. It turned out that was the only bass I caught on that whole trip, and it was kind of skinny. We got to know the people who ran the motel and the cafe in that little town. I mentioned catching a bass on my first cast to them, and their reaction was "Man, that was a good one. Why'd you throw it back?". Then the next day another customer came up to our table at the cafe and told me "I heard you caught a good bass and threw it back!". Wow - I got famous for a 13" bass! That's the mentality - if something's big enough to clean down there, they keep it. They've got that lake pretty well fished out, with a lot of little fish left. When it came to crappie, my partner and I wouldn't keep any under 9" (which seem like dinks to me), but the locals do. So, if multiple fishermen contributed to that bass picture and stayed within their limits, I guess that's considered normal. We had fun anyway, but that trip sure made me appreciate our lakes and fishing here. I won't be going back there.

At 660-663 K Dock is still OK to launch. The water will be up to the top of the ramp, the parking lot shrinks a bit and the low road will be underwater, but use the high road to get there and there's still room to park. K Dock becomes just about impossible from about 664-671. The parking lot goes underwater and the low road is too flat to launch off of. But when the lake gets up to 672 or so there's an easy place to launch in that dip where the little creek crosses the low road - where the low road and the high road split.

Yep, they were all about 13"-14", and we iced the fish down and cleaned them this morning. I gave these filets to my partner as I've got a bunch of them in the freezer already. I told him about my new trick with white bass filets that I've already mentioned in a couple of threads here. Soak the filets in Club Soda (Seltzer Water) for 2 hours before breading and frying. That pretty much turns white bass filets into crappie filets and I can't tell them apart when I'm eating them side-by-side on a plate! GOOD eating.

Marty, thanks for the tip. My partner and I fished your area yesterday (Tuesday, June 8) and used your bluegill technique. Things may have slowed down a bit from when you got into them, but we caught 7 BIG bluegills. Mostly though, we were catching bass on a swimming minnow and 1/8 oz. jighead around the same gravel points. 3/4 of them were smallmouths 13" or 14" long, a ball to catch and release on light tackle - bass fishermen have a great class of smallmouths coming up in lower Tablerock. I don't know just how many bass we caught and released, 25 or 30 maybe. Then to add to the entertainment, we each kept a rod rigged up with a 1/4 oz. white roostertail and we'd chase white bass boils when they erupted. Between chasing the boils and trolling the roostertails in the same areas where the white bass were coming up, we added our limits of white bass to the livewell. We were catching some 13"-14" bass that way too, while fishing for white bass. That was a good trip - counting the 30 white bass and 7 big bluegills we brought home, plus the bass we released, we must have caught close to 70 good-size fish. That kind of day keeps a feller entertained!

You know how hard it is to get up out of deep water and onto the bank - not that time it wasn't. I probably looked like a cartoon character, running on water. Once up on the sandbar I wasn't about to quit moving, and I was trying to get the stringer unclipped from my waders when I saw the snake let go and head for the river. He was really going and I turned around and missed him with a couple of rocks - his lucky day and mine too, I guess. Before my time, my dad was fishing with a preacher on the James River on a Saturday. The preacher got his lure caught in a bush, didn't see a cottonmouth in there, and got his hand bit when he reached for the lure. Dad said the hand and arm swelled up and he was hurting pretty bad - a doctor tried to get some of the poison out, cleaned the wound, and bandaged the hand. The guy was feeling better the next day and he went to church and preached with a bandage on his hand - so I think maybe cottonmouths aren't quite as dangerous as they look. I still don't like them one bit, though.

It's time for a snake story. The only good thing I can think of about increased population and fishing pressure here in the Ozarks is that people pretty well have the snakes stomped out. They used to be thick around the streams, and fishing these rivers with my grandpa in the 1950's and 60's I'd take a pellet gun or a .22 along and shoot snakes. We didn't mind the brown water snakes so much, but there were lots of cottonmouths too, and those things just look mean. Once I turned 16 and could drive I got to do a lot more fishing, often by myself. One trip, I'd borrowed my dad's fly rod and was fishing below Bell Ford on James, between Fordland and Marshfield. I was standing at the top of a hole, wading belly-deep with chest waders, and I had a metal stringer with snaps clipped on a loop at the waist of those waders. The whole stringer was underwater, and my fish were tugging on the stringer - tugging hard actually. Yank, yank, YANK. Wait a minute - I'd looked at those fish not too long ago, and they were pretty much dead! I got ahold of the stringer and pulled the fish up to see - and a cottonmouth as big around as my wrist had the bottom fish, a 10" goggleye, almost swallowed. When I pulled the snake's head above water he started thrashing around and hitting me with his tail and body, but he wasn't letting go. Now, the snake was attached to the fish, which was attached to the stringer, which was attached to me. If I'd been thinking rationally I'd have unsnapped the stringer from my waders and let it go, but somehow I wasn't thinking rationally at the moment - I ran. Up on the bank and about 40 yards down a sandbar, the snake got tired of rocks hitting him in the head as he was dragged behind me, and he let go. I turned and chucked a couple of big rocks at him, but he escaped back into the water. I threw that bottom fish away, and during the whole incident I never dropped or damaged my dad's fly rod (I knew better). I know this story is out of place here on the Tablerock forum, but I thought you guys might enjoy it. It was a close encounter of the worst kind, but at least he couldn't bite me while he had his mouth full.

The last time I fished Tablerock on a Memorial Day weekend, I was real lucky to get back to the ramp with party-boat waves coming over the front deck and the bilge pump running the whole way. I've decided to never try that again, but I'm glad you got a good trip out of it.

I know that's right for the big bass, but I was never much of a bass fisherman. No, there are lakes in SoCal just 4 or 5 miles long that have hundreds of fishing boats on them every day. With all that pressure, we'd still often get limits of nice crappie, pound-plus bluegills, and good-size channel catfish. The lakes there are more productive per acre of water, for whatever reason. I wouldn't trade, though. On our big lakes here you can often get off by yourself to fish instead of having 40 other boats in sight, half of them with radios blaring.

I think that's it. I was born and grew up here in the Ozarks, then moved to Southern California, then moved back here 20 years ago. I fished a lot in both places, and they're entirely different. There are few smallmouth in SoCal of course, and the lakes are reservoirs just a few miles long that sit on sandy soil - big farm ponds, really. Per acre of water though, the SoCal lakes are far more productive - they grow more fish, quicker and bigger, than the lakes here. I think that's because our Ozarks soil is so poor in nutrients. Also, because of population growth and increased fishing pressure, fishing in these Ozarks streams isn't near as good as when I was a kid. The water table has dropped because of so many wells, and lots of fishable water is just a trickle now. I'm afraid all the septic tanks have put pollution in the streams too, because they don't support near as much life as they did 50 years ago. As a kid catching crawdads by hand while the family fished (because that's what kids do), I could fill a bucket with them - they were all over the place. Now I see maybe 1% of the crayfish there used to be. The land here is being used in a different way, too, and I think that has an effect. When I was a kid, farmers were growing field crops and there were few cattle. Much of the land was still woods and native brush and there were lots of bobwhite quail to hunt. Now there's a lot of cattle and fescue grass fields, and fescue doesn't support any kind of wildlife. I think that affects the streams, too.

I think the problem with keeping fish alive in the summer is that hot water won't hold oxygen, and our livewells pull in water from the surface of the lake. I had some trips last year where the surface water temp was about 82, and I can't keep fish of any species alive for long when it's that hot. Sometimes in the summer I take the grandkids fishing and they'll want to swim, so I'll beach the boat and we grab life vests and bob around in the water a while. I've noticed then that the hot water is right on top and our feet are cool. I bet there's a 10 to 15 degree difference between the surface and just five feet down, so any fish we catch aren't being caught out of 82 degree water - we're putting them in hot water after they're caught and it's no wonder they die quick. I've thought about making a simple PVC extension for my live well intake, so it'd pull in cooler water from 4 or 5 feet down in the summer. It would be a real pain because it'd have to be stuck on the intake every time I stop and taken off every time I want to move the boat, but I bet it would keep fish alive.

I know the answer to that, because I felt the same way and discussed it with a Conservation agent once. He explained that they have to manage for the good of the species, not the individual fish. It's a shame to waste a dying 14" bass, but they'll still write you a ticket if you're caught with it. The reason is that if they made exceptions for undersize, dying fish - some people would routinely keep short fish and then if they got caught they'd say the fish were dying. So, Conservation sticks with the law and writes citations, regardless.

I've got nothing against bass tourneys either, but in the summertime I like to night-fish for crappie and catfish. Quite a few times, coming back in at 2 or 3 a.m., I've come across bunches of dead bass where they've been released after a tournament weigh-in. To be fair, I've never seen this at all except in summer when the water's hot. Several times I've scooped up a limit of bass that are belly-up but still moving a little - I figure someone might as well get some good out of them. Doing that is probably illegal, but I doubt a warden would write a ticket for it under the circumstances. I'm telling ya, fellas - tournaments are great, but I think clubs ought to consider knocking it off when the water's hot. It's a shame to see 25 or 30 dead bass floating, some 5 or 6-pounders, and I've seen that more often than I'd like to.

Guess you haven't noticed the glitterboat-seeking missile rack on the rear deck of my Tracker. It's right next to the small depth-charge rack for schools of white bass with lockjaw. I upgraded to a Humminbird 597ci last month, and I've made 7 or 8 trips with it. I sure like it, but I'm still trying to figure out how to use it best. Like many of my new electronic gadgets it's a lot smarter than I am and the 300 page manual in English, Spanish, and French kinda makes my eyes cross.

Not 7-Up, soak the filets in Club Soda (or Seltzer Water, same thing) for two hours before breading and frying. You'll be surprised how good they are.

It sounds like that trip worked out great, Bill. I think there are a lot of people who don't fish much but maybe fished as kids like I did. Fishing these rivers back in the 1950's, most folks kept and ate anything that was "big enough to clean". Things have changed for the better now, and people just need to learn. We got into surfacing whites too last week - that's a lot of fun. Running to the first boil I told my partner "Man, those whites are TINY", because three-inchers were coming clear out of the water and I thought they were white bass. Turned out that the three-inchers were shad, with big white bass after them. Hey, I'm onto a new trick this year that you might want to tell your white bass-eating clients about. I've tried all kinds of suggestions in the past for making big white bass filets taste less fishy - cutting off the red meat, or soaking them in salt water, beer, or whatever, and got so-so results. A guy in St. Louis on another forum told me to soak them in 7-Up for two hours before breading and frying, and we tried that. It was good and it took the fishy taste out, but the filets were kind of sweet from the sugar in the 7-Up. So instead of that we've started soaking big white bass filets in CLUB SODA for two hours before breading and frying. That's just carbonated water, and when that's done you can't tell white bass from crappie filets when they're side-by-side on a plate. They're so good I've quit throwing the big ones back now.

Several times in my life I've thought of new things that needed to be made and figured out how to do it. If I wasn't so old, retired, and lazy now I think I'd try to invent and manufacture something for the bass tournaments of the future. With computer technology this idea is feasible and shouldn't be too expensive. Every boat in a tournament would take a gadget out with them. This thing would measure, weigh, and photograph a bass and put a date and time-stamp on the image. It would be tamper-proof because only the people running the tournament would have the passwords. Bass would be recorded and released immediately, right where they were caught. Mortality rates would drop enormously, only the occasional gut or gill-hooked fish would die. The gadget would be programmed to group the pictures of the boat's five (or whatever number) largest bass together into one photo, and when a bigger one is caught the smallest fish would be "culled" from the group. It would be programmed to keep each angler's fish separate or to put them together - whichever way the tournament is being run. Weigh-ins would still be exciting - in fact, people could see better what's going on. Anglers would turn in their "gadgets", one at a time. The photo of their fish, with weights, lengths, and time of catch for each, would be projected on a screen. In a corner of the screen a smaller copy of the photos would appear in a list ranked by weight of the catch, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. When a boat turns in their photo, it would fill the screen for everyone to see and also be inserted in the winner's list in the right position. The program would also look for and rank individual fish for "big bass" prizes. I'm telling 'ya, fellas, the technology exists for this - it's not even very complicated. I think this is the way bass tournaments are going to have to go, and I'm posting this here hoping someone, somewhere may read this and start working on the "gadget".

SKMO - That's a real, real good point. I bet natural selection is at work - bass that won't hardly bite a lure get to live and reproduce, while bass that are more prone to bite lures keep going through the C/R process until it kills them or until someone cooks them. That makes sense - and maybe that trait gets passed down to their fry! Since I don't keep bass, I don't fish for them much. That's not because I'm a conservationist, it's because all my hobbies are acquisitive - I've got to feel like I'm gaining something. So I fish for the dinner table, I deer hunt, I play poker, I restore antique tractors, and I grow a big vegetable garden. Even back when I was golfing I didn't care much about the score, but I sure liked finding some extra golf balls and taking them home. Putting fish back in a lake that were already in the lake when I started just doesn't seem to accomplish anything. Someone here said stats show it takes an average of 8 hours fishing to catch a keeper bass on Tablerock. I think I can generally do better than that, but even so I'm not going to get the boat wet to take 1 or 2 bass home - that's not practical, and that's why I don't mess with trout fishing (limit 4) either. I concentrate on other species where I've got a good chance of taking home a limit that'll make some meals. I don't care what those meals cost me per pound of fish, I just want to take something home.

Bass are a lot tougher and easier to keep alive than trout. There's a whole range - trout croak if you look at 'em funny, while you can't hardly kill a catfish. Bass are in the middle somewhere, so their mortality rate might be less than 5%. I bet such a low mortality rate refers to immediate release though, not to being hauled around all day.

We were finding spawning bluegills in little cuts in steep banks, places where a small creek or spring has washed some gravel in, and we were finding them in about 8' of water. We found others on flats near deep water, back in coves, at the same depth. I think I'd rig a 5 year old with a long cane pole with line tied to the end almost as long as the pole. Tie a minnow hook on the end, and bait it with a piece of nightcrawler. Then even if you don't find bluegill beds, it's easy to go along chunk-rock banks for perch and let the boy swing the bait out and watch the line sink. When that line twitches and starts to take off, he can set the hook and raise the rod to bring the fish in. With 3 kids and 6 grandkids, I've found that a reel just complicates things for a 5 year old. Start them off with a cane pole, the way I started, and a kid will be happy and get hooked on fishing by catching 3" perch off the chunk rocks - and you can always do that. Doing that this time of year, he's liable to get ahold of a good catfish too and that would really be a thrill for him. Hope you have a great trip.

Just to state the obvious, the fish survival rate for catch-and-release fishing is a WHOLE lot better than the survival rate for catch-and-eat fishing. Hey, while we were looking for goggleye beds out on Point 7 this Tuesday, my partner caught a fat 17" smallmouth! He caught it on his little wimpy 5' crappie rod with 4-lb. test on a swimming minnow and 1/16th oz. jighead. Since partner weighs about 100 lbs. dripping wet, it was fun to kick back and watch that fish take him around the boat a couple of times, and to hear the colorful language every time it tried to spool him. I lipped the fish, unhooked the little gold wire hook, and brought it in the boat just long enough to lay it on the ruler. That smallmouth was hooked in the lip, released in about half a minute, and within probably 25 feet of its nest. You can't tell me that one didn't survive - and it's sure good to see a beautiful fish like that in there and know it's still swimming!

I don't think bluegills on the nests are too picky about bait. 1/3 of a WalMart nightcrawler on a gold wire minnow hook, fished on an ultralight rig with no sinker - flip it out there, let it sink, watch for the line to twitch or take off, and set the hook. We cleaned 40+ eight to nine inch bluegills yesterday and got into surfacing white bass too, going out of Mill Creek. The water was clearer there so the 'gills are nesting deeper, at about 8'-10'. We were disappointed, though, to find the goggleye spawn is over for this year. Surface water temp was 67 going up to 70.