Sam

I'm glad you had good trips. Fly fishing seems to be the ticket - my partner and I were there yesterday and the fly fishermen seemed to be doing best, by far. We put in about 11 a.m. and left about 5:30 because we could see that mess at the ramp coming. We fished between the Blunk Road ramp and Ashercane with swimming minnows on lead head jigs, casting, slow-trolling, and drifting with the wind. We only managed 14 white bass between us because they were being picky and acting like white bass. We'd catch 2 or 3, then there'd be a three-hour dry spell. Lots of boats and bank fishermen, some got limits and some didn't do as well as we did. I was REAL sorry to find the private ramp and campground at McCord Bend closed, permanently. A neighbor there told us some campers got drunk and rowdy, started fires and burned down a trailer, and the owner decided to close it. Man, I'm gonna miss that place - I've had some great trips out of there for the last 20 years. I'm not gonna use that Blunk Road ramp again, ever. I'll put in at Bridgeport and run up or use the private three-dollar hole at the first bend below McCord and launch off the beach, before I go through that again. The ramp's just awful, the parking's worse, and it took us 30 minutes to get out AFTER we had the boat on the trailer. Rigs were parked all along the road, two other rigs that had taken out were lined up behind us trying to get out, and three more trucks with boats behind were trying to come in. All three of them had to back up a couple hundred yards with about 6 inches to spare, with trucks and trailers parked on one side and a ditch you could drop a pickup in on the other. I'd say there were at least 100 vehicles, most with trailers, parked somewhere around the ramp - and there's room to park maybe 25. No more of that, for me.

White bass conservation takes care of itself for me - I throw back any white bass over about 14". I've tried all the suggested treatments - cutting off the red meat, soaking filets overnight in salt water, beer, whatever. Nope, we're spoiled by too many mild crappie and walleye filets - big white bass are just too strong-tasting, fishy, and oily for us, but the small ones are OK. That practice works out good for the fishery, too. The biggest ones (that'll come upstream later) are the brood sows. I love to get ahold of those 19"-20", 4 lb. monsters out in the current - they put up a great fight and they'll take me around the boat a couple of times with light tackle. Those alone carry plenty of eggs to populate the whole lake, and I'm not eating them anyway. Heading for Galena today!

Wow, here's a new outrage I just came across. Apparently, the Obama administration is working with radical environmental groups on plans to restrict or end Americans' recreational fishing by Executive Order. The plan is already far advanced and they've quit taking public input !!! http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762

Good report. Boy, it's awfully early for whites to be up there. I've got an 11 y.o. granddaughter who's been asking me for two months (even when it was -7 degrees!) if it's getting about time to catch white bass at Galena yet - now I can take her. That ramp at the end of Blunk Road, I've always heard called "The Park". Blunk Hole, of course, is at the sharp bend on up river where you walk down the bluff to bank fish. No ramp or road there. That's not much of a ramp. I'd rather put in at the private ramp at the McCord Bend campground, down toward where you were fishing. I think the better ramp, better parking, and getting out of the mud are well worth the $2 launch fee, and the ramps are less than a mile apart by water. I'm pretty sure I know where you caught those whites, there's a staging area in there that works year after year. Good trip - thanks for posting about it!

Every year it's the same thing. After a long winter I'm anxious to get out as soon as the weather turns decent. So, I start fishin' in March and start catchin' in April.

I was at K Dock Friday, and I was surprised to see the FLW college tourney trailer set up on the parking lot there. There wasn't anybody around so this poor old raggedy crappie fisherman walked around it - what a rig! That thing cost a couple hundred thousand, I'd say. Kentucky plates, generator running, overhead lights, satellite dish, one side of the trailer slides out to make a stage, sound system, scales, fish tank, fancy paint job with the pros' pictures, flag poles and flags all over the lot. Wow, somebody spent a bunch of money. 7 lbs., huh?

I had about the same experience out of K Dock on Friday. Cold, cloudy, and windy - and the sun started to come out about 2 p.m. as I was leaving. The water temp was 42-43 everywhere I went. I didn't try the jerkbait because it was so windy. I threw a 5" grub quite a bit, no bites. Mostly I crappie fished, and I found crappie bunched up tight on every bit of brush I checked in 20' depth. The scope saw lots of 'em grouped up real tight, and when crappie are like that in the winter you might get an impulse bite if your lure goes right in front of one's nose but if it's a foot away they won't chase it. With the wind and high pressure I couldn't get a bite, and only caught some perch on the edges of the flats. It'll get better - spring's coming!

I don't frequent Forsyth since the Fox and Turtle went belly-up. Man, I miss those breakfasts! Anyway, I left plenty of time and money behind there last week when my truck broke. I'm trying K Dock again in the morning. It'll be a high-pressure, sunny, bluebird day, and the cows are laying down. I don't care, I'm ready to get out whether I catch anything or not.

If you catch a trout and didn't buy a trout permit, just throw it back unharmed. Walleyes have to be 18" to keep, and the limit is 4, crappie have to be 10" and the limit is 15, no minimum size on white bass and the limit is 15, largemouth and smallmouth have to be 15", spotted bass have to be 12", and it's been so long since I kept a bass I can't remember what the limit is. 6 maybe? Fishing licenses expired the last day of February, so make sure you've got a new one. That's about all I can think of.

I think if you fish long enough, old ideas become new again. I remember my dad and I spooling up our reels with the NEW monofilament line and using our old thick black braid that came before it as a backing. That's because monofilament was too expensive to fill a whole reel with, about 1958 or so.

Not much room. You're up on the front deck, next to the trolling motor.

I've been using 10 lb. PowerPro, and it doesn't exactly float but I think it's so thin it gets caught up in the surface tension of the water. It's only the diameter of 2 lb. mono. Slow-trolling a crappie jig, the line will stay on top in smooth conditions and keep the jig from sinking. The cure is to put the rod tip underwater and give it a yank, breaking the surface tension and letting the line sink. It doesn't do that much if there's a chop on the water. I like braid because it lets you feel everything. Sometimes if they're biting light, my partner using mono can't feel a bite - and I'm catching fish.

My ball glove in high school said "Mickey Mantle" on it. You mean ....... that didn't make it catch any better???

Yeah, that's what braid does to me. Generally, I'm crappie fishing with a smaller lead-head jig, but the principle is the same. I usually let the jig sink a little, get the line tight, then put my rod tip underwater and give it a yank or two to sink the braided line. Once the line's not floating, the jig sinks normally.

HEAVIER? Now, that's why I've got to upgrade. That's probably the only modern bass rig that I've ever HELD - and I was amazed how featherweight it is compared to what I'm used to. I've got to catch up with the new technology. If my bass-fishing equipment was any more primitive than what I've been using, I'd be wading the creeks and using a tree limb for a club.

I just got back from BPS, on the first day of the sale. Going by some of what I've read here, I got a new bass rig and I think I'm gonna like it. Bear in mind, I'm retired and can't afford real expensive equipment. I got a BPS Extreme Combo - left-hand 6.4:1 reel and a 6'6" medium-heavy rod with a fast tip. During the Fishing Classic it's cheaper to buy these separate, so that's what I did. As a combo, the regular price is $159.95 and it's on sale at $20 off for $139.95. But the reel is on sale now for $59.94 and the rod for $69.94, so I got the combo for about $130. That left-hand reel feels GOOD to me. I guess I'm so used to spinning tackle that a right-hand baitcaster feels backwards - and I think this is going to work fine for me. I brought it home and strung it up with 12-lb. Maxima mono for now. Went out in the yard and tried a few casts, and there's gonna be a learning curve while I get it adjusted and get used to it. I've gotta say the fifth backlash wasn't near as horrible as the first two, it was hardly cuss-worthy at all. I'll learn. Bass Pro wasn't crowded bad at all today, but I bet it will be tomorrow and I'm going back for some soft baits and things. I saw some guys trading in reels, but I decided not to do that. My old round reels are Daiwa Millionaire II's and a couple of Ambassadeurs from about 20 years ago, and they're kind of classics now and they still work good. I wouldn't let one go for $10. I also stocked up on Roostertails for white bass for the year. BPS quit calling their knock-off Roostertails "Uncle Buck" - they're called "Tournament Series Micro-Spins" now, but they're the same with a wider spinner blade and a bigger hook than Roostertails. I like them better, and the BPS knock-offs are on sale for 94 cents now.

We got an extra deal going on several white bass trips on upper Bull Shoals last fall. There for about 6 weeks white bass were boiling in the main channel in the late afternoon - but they wouldn't bite except when they were feeding on the surface. More likely, we just couldn't find them when they weren't on the surface because they were swimming fast, down deep somewhere. We were chasing boils, getting in a few casts, then they'd quit and we'd wait for another boil to chase. Fun. Doing that, I hooked a good channel catfish that was feeding under the white bass. I had some nightcrawlers along, so I rigged up an extra pole with a split shot sinker and a nightcrawler. We'd chase a boil, throw Roostertails until the boiling stopped, then throw the nightcrawler rig and let it drop down deep where the boil had been. We were catching one or two good (3-4 lb.) channel cats under most every boil - and went home with white bass limits and catfish limits, too. That's a trick I'm going to remember.

I kinda avoid using plugs like a Shad Rap or Rattletrap for white bass, though I know they catch fish. There's another reason. Have you ever been in a surface boil of white bass where they're going nuts all around the boat - and you're frantically trying to unhook one that ate ALL THREE points of a treble? That drives me crazy, 'cause the boil may stop in the next 10 seconds and I want to get another cast in! I figure with multiple trebles, that deal would be twice as bad and I'd probably hook myself to the fish, too! And yeah, I've caught big bass and catfish too, that were hanging around under those white bass boils - that really adds to the fun.

Trolling to locate them, or casting into boils - a 1/6 oz. or 1/4 oz. Roostertail. Anything around white or chartreuse is good for the body and tail color, but color doesn't matter much as long as the spinner blade is chrome, not brass. For the spring run up the rivers, sometimes 1/8 oz. or 1/6 oz. Roostertails as above, but mostly maribou crappie jigs worked slow. I think there's a color progression during the run - white at the beginning, chartreuse in the middle, and purple toward the end of the run. Toward the end, that little "purple beetle" soft bait with a twin tail on a 1/16 oz. or 1/8 oz. lead head jig hook is hard to beat. When it comes to Roostertails, I like the BPS "Uncle Buck" knockoffs better than the original Roostertails. The blades are wider and they spin easier, and more important, the hooks are bigger. With original Roostertails, I change out the treble hook - dunno why they're made with such little hooks. For trout, maybe?

I agree with techo that quality in a spinning reel is less important than in a baitcaster - and I do most all my fishing with spinning reels. The thing is, when you cast a spinning reel the bail is open so the reel doesn't matter then. Being smooth on the retrieve and the bail flipping over smoothly is about all that's important. Even the drag on a spinning reel doesn't matter a whole lot - I back-reel more than I rely on the drag. I've got quite a collection - Daiwa Excelers in three sizes, several Shimanos, a Pfleuger President, and they're all good. But they don't fish much better than the off-brand spinners I've picked up for $15 each off the BPS "reconditioned" rack.

Yes, and I often like to fish the inside of channel swings even better than the outside. If a flat drops gradually and gently off into the main channel, that's not so good. Lots of flats, though, drop from 15-18 feet right down to 40+ feet where they meet the channel - that's the old riverbank. Such places let predator fish (bass, crappie, walleyes, and white bass) hunt baitfish and find water temps they like on the edge of the flat, and still have deep water to go to nearby. The steep underwater drop-off is the key, and fishing sudden drop-offs between flats and channels gets you out in the middle of the lake where there's less fishing pressure. Lots of fishermen just pound the banks.

OK, but it might not be real soon. My mom passed away in 2007 and all the family stuff had come down to her, now it's come down to me. There's a couple of big TRUNKS of photos, and the Tablerock Dam pictures are in there somewhere. Now, if you wanted to see what my great-uncles looked like in 1912 - I think I saw those pictures on top.

Ha. I'm old enough I remember driving across the old bridge, lots of times. Well, my dad was driving - I was a kid. We didn't take any pictures of the old bridge, but we took quite a few family trips to watch Tablerock Dam being built. We'd go on the side where the trout hatchery is now, or maybe just a little upstream from there, have a picnic, and watch the big cranes working. We took a bunch of pictures, and if I ever come across them I'll post some.

OK, here's what I don't understand about SI sonar. In Doug's image of the old bridge, above, he's in 147' of water and right over it, right? The sonar is showing the right side of the bridge in one image, and the left side in the other. But in both images, you see the bridge from the side like you were hundreds of feet away from it. You can even see underneath the bridge, and how could you see that from above? Does the computer re-configure the picture to show what it WOULD look like if you were 'way off to the side? I'm confused.

Naaah - that's a whale shark from the ocean. They're big, but they only eat plankton. Here's the story on Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/giantcatfish.asp