Sam

My partner and I went out of K Dock yesterday (Monday) and fished between there and Snapp Holler. Our experience was about the same, we found a few male white bass but really had to work for them. A week earlier we'd limited out in a shallow cove the wind was blowing into, but they've scattered since then. I caught and released a nice smallmouth, my first of the year. An interesting thing happened - my partner caught a 12 1/2" yellow perch. I've caught some little yellow perch out of upper Bull Shoals before but none big enough to keep. My wife and I had fish filets from yesterday for supper tonight, and the yellow perch was real good. It's about like walleye, real white and mild tasting - no wonder the folks up north like those.

Yeah, yeah, those pros can catch the tar out of bass - but that's not a tough sport. Us real men go skunk hunting - with knives.

Well, let's see. We've covered glitter-boat pros, tournament fishermen in general, drunken spoonbillers, and jet skiers (lake lice). I'd like to add the boatloads of ski boat folks who run their boats at top speed, spin them out and yell "wahoo", and keep doing it over and over again while I'm trying to quietly fish and deal with their wakes. Oh, and how about people who run yachts that could easily go to Japan on a lake that's 1/4 of a mile wide? Their wakes can about sink me from 300 yards away. But you know what? We all get along. My wife doesn't fish, and when I take her along for the boat ride she's always surprised by how nice everyone is and how we help each other out. Lots of times I've taken time out from my fishing to give someone a tow to a marina, and I've even given deer hunters a ride across to the other side of a cove, saving them a long hike. A feller by himself at K Dock once did a flying launch in front of me, the likes of which I'd never seen - I gave him a ride out to his unmanned boat, which was rapidly receding into the distance. People at the lakes have been good to me too, and I know I could count on any of you here to give me help on the water if I needed it. It's all good - and anyway, I kinda like the bikini girls on the ski boats.

I saw your white bass report and mentioned it to my partner yesterday. We were fishing upper Bull Shoals, and the cove that was full of white bass a week ago was empty yesterday. We found a few out on the channel drop-offs, but not in any quantity. Those whites move around a lot, but when you find them there's usually a big bunch of them and an easy limit. It's about time for a trip up James, because every year I enjoy crappie and white bass fishing amongst the spoonbillers. It seems like every year I snag a spoonbill with a crappie jig and that's exciting for about 5 seconds (they always jump when stuck). The pre-runs of white bass are fun too - that'll be the males coming up this early, and they're better eating anyway. Thanks for the tip. I ran into a tournament fisherman when getting gas on the way to the lake yesterday. He noticed my Bass Pro ball cap was kind of ratty and one of his sponsors is Bass Pro, so he got in his truck and gave us two brand-new Bass Pro ball caps. See, there's some good in every crowd.

t1365 - If that's the impression I gave with my post, then it didn't come out like I intended. That's not at all what I think of tournament fishermen. I've loved to fish all my life, and that puts me on the same side with everybody else who feels the same way and acts decent out on the water. I only think people are aholes when they ACT like aholes - I run into that pretty seldom while fishing, and less from tournament fishermen than from others on the lakes. I apologize. Let's gripe about the jet skiers (lake lice) next.

No, it looks like that's for national parks only at this point - though it's easy to imagine this being a precedent that might be expanded in the future to Corps of Engineers lakes (like Tablerock), and maybe eventually to all waters. Here's a great opportunity to start a new business - cutting and drilling rocks to make sliding sinkers in all sizes.

My partner and I were crappie fishing out of Long Creek about this time of year maybe 6 years ago. One of the big bass tournaments was going on out of State Park - and I couldn't tell you what tournament, I don't follow them. All we knew was that there was an unusual number of big bass boats tearing up and down the Long Creek arm at top speed, then my partner remembered that he'd heard there was a big tournament going on. We were 'way back in that little sharp cove at the corner, the first one on the left after you launch at Long Creek. We were throwing crappie jigs at the banks and flooded tree trunks, and it happened that we were kind of behind a couple of the tree trunks. A big bass boat with two guys in it came tearing into the mouth of the cove, and they went straight to one of the stick-ups we'd already fished. Both guys looked all around - I don't know why they didn't notice us, then one of them started pulling up a rope that was tied underwater to the stick-up. He started pulling big bass out of the water and passing them to his partner, who put them in their live well. They loaded about four big bass, then took off out of the cove real fast and were gone. We were curious, so we went over to that tree and I pulled up on the rope that was tied to it. There was a dog cage on the end, empty, and with the door unlatched. So those guys had stashed some big bass that they'd caught pre-fishing, and saved them for the tournament. My partner and I talked it over and decided it wasn't our business - we didn't even want the dog cage, so we didn't do anything about it. I wished we'd found that cage when we first fished the tree though - I'd have released those bass and maybe left a note in the cage about cheating. I did cut their dog-cage rope and let it drop to the bottom, so they lost their cage anyhow though I doubt they were coming back for it. And yeah - I know that for everybody like this there are hundreds of tournament fishermen who are honest. Anytime there's money involved in a sport somebody's going to cheat, but because of what we saw that day I know for sure that it happens sometimes. But hey, those guys had a $20,000 boat, patches on their shirts, and wrap-around sunglasses - they must be better fishermen than me.

Bull Shoals trout = walleye food.

Yep, that would have made me mad. Things like this kinda stick in my mind, I'll remember hearing about it. Next time I buy an outboard motor, it'll be much less likely to be an Evinrude or Yamaha because of this. I hope other fishermen who read that story feel the same way, and that these comments somehow get back to those companies. As was said, you're a better man than me. They'd have had to call the cops to make me move that boat, and I don't think the cops would have made me do it.

Personally, I kinda prize my "one that got away" fish, because those are the ones that may grow a little every time I tell the story. The ones I get in the boat don't do that because they get measured. But I'm not a tournament fisherman. I don't have any tackle-company patches on my shirt, and I don't even own any wrap-around polarized sunglasses.

That's exactly the kind of fishing I do most often. No spider-rigging or fancy stuff for me, though - crappie in upper B.S. are in the brush, mostly, and that part of the lake has a lot of brush, underwater bushes, and stick-ups. I sure wouldn't want to have a bunch of poles set and troll into a brushpile. That happens often enough with just one pole, and I'd think a spider rig would be a real mess in that situation. Even more exciting would be trolling into a school of white bass and getting 4 or 5 big ones on at once. I'm not gonna do that - but I'd give a six-pack of Sam Adams to watch someone ELSE do it. Naw, I keep it simple - just one light-action rod with 10-lb. PowerPro line, and a Swimmin' Minnow on (usually) a 1/16 or 1/8 oz. jighead. I pour my jigheads on light gold-colored hooks so the 3-lb. diameter PowerPro will straighten the hook out instead of breaking off - 'cause there's lots of hang-ups when you troll where the crappie are. With a 1/8 oz. jighead, a bunch of line out, and my 5-speed trolling motor set on "2", I can slow-troll as deep as 12'. Mostly I troll shallower than that though, because crappie will come up for a lure but they won't go down for one if you're trolling below them. Over the years I've found about 50 spots between Beaver Creek and Bear Creek to slow-troll for crappie, and when I find a good bunch of them then I'll stop and cast to them. I've caught a lot of crappie limits out of upper B.S., including a few already this year.

They showed the weigh-in last night on KY3 News, and said 1200+ lbs. of bass were caught in the tournament yesterday. They had pictures of fishermen holding up big bass by the lower jaw with the jaw yanked 'way down - I've read that really damages a fish's jaw and its' ability to eat. Weighing the bass, they were handling them in and out of baskets, dry - and guys were waiting in a long line with their fish in plastic bags to weigh them. Of course I realize these fish are legal size and within the limits, and the fishermen have a right to take 'em home an fry 'em, legally. They're not doing that, they're making a great effort to return them to the lake alive. That's good, but I can't help thinking that messing with so many breeder bass like this just before they can spawn, and on such a massive scale, has to be bad for the bass fishery. Tournaments like this bring a lot of money to local merchants, and I guess that's what it's all about. I'll just fish mostly for other species and stay far away from such invasions while they're going on. I guess if I were one of those making money off these deals, I'd feel different about them. That is, I wouldn't mind seeing a public resource damaged if it put money in my pocket - but there's something kinda wrong about that.

Phil, it's your website - do whatever you think is right with it. I only come to look at the Tablerock and Bull Shoals sections because that's where I fish. I don't care about most of the other lakes you have on there now, and I sure won't care about any that are farther away. But I have enough fishing friends I usually know what's going on at those lakes before it's ever posted on Ozarks Anglers. So if you make changes that make this website less useful for planning my fishing trips, I'll simply quit coming. If that happens, it won't be long before someone else puts up a website that fills the same need for local anglers, and I'll find it. On the other hand, if your new website is easy to navigate and still useful to me without having to plow through a bunch of stuff about lakes in Oklahoma and Illinois, I'll stick around and contribute occasionally. So I'd say - do whatever works best for you.

We got into the whites the other day, and I tried several colors and sizes of swimmin' minnows and maribou crappie jigs as well as a bigger roostertail. I finally settled on and did best with a 1/8 oz. roostertail, black with silver blade, fished as slow as I could to barely keep the blade turning.

Friday my partner and I went in my boat and caught easy limits of small-to-medium white bass (all males) in a cove the south wind was blowing into. The crappie we caught the same day on channel drop-offs were all females. People were coming and going fishing that same cove from the bank and each fisherman would only stay about 30 minutes, have his limit of white bass, and leave. Today (Sunday) my wife wanted to go for a ride so I grabbed my rod and went without the boat. The wind has been blowing hard ever since we were there two days ago (though a little more from the west today), and I figured that cove would still be full of white bass. Nope, I fished it hard from a couple of different banks and couldn't get a bite. No one else bank-fishing while I was there caught a fish, and four boats fished the cove while I was there and they didn't catch anything either. Things sure can change in a couple of days - maybe the rain that came through last night is what caused it??? White bass are always that way for me - they turn on and turn off, they move around a lot, and you find them where you find them. I've read that the whole striper/white bass clan were originally ocean fish that adapted to fresh water, and that's sure the way they act to me - they remind me of salt-water fishing. It was good to get out anyway, and supper tonight was small white bass filets from Friday with fried 'taters and onions! I think they eat real good when they're small, but I turn the big females back - they're too strong-tasting for me. Lots of fun to catch, though.

I've often thought maybe we could have Deer Tournaments, too. Deer are a public resource just like bass are, conserved and managed by tax dollars for all the people - there oughta be some way to bet money on them, too. Everybody in the tournaments could hunt with tranquilizer guns, and every effort would be made to avoid killing any (many) deer. They could be hauled to a central weigh-in, revived, and released miles from where they were shot. They'd probably have to fight other bucks and have a heckuva time ever getting back to where they came from - but hey, we wouldn't kill them.

I know it can happen, if only rarely. In fact, with all the walleye-chasing I've done on Bull Shoals, the best one I've caught was by accident. A few years ago my partner and I were fishing the spring crappie run at Snapp Holler, and we were catching crappie throwing 1/16 oz. Swimmin' Minnows up by the bank. I got ahold of a 6.5 lb. walleye and finally got him in. That was on my lightest crappie pole, a little 5'6" ultralight rig with 6 lb. monofilament. It was quite a tussle, but I sure enjoyed it and it's something to remember.

And that's exactly why I haven't caught any keeper walleyes out of Tablerock in all these years. You've got to fish for them specifically. In June, I'm doing exactly what you say - but on Bull Shoals. After June I'm usually on Tablerock, but night-fishing for bass and working the brush for crappie. I think walleyes are seldom caught when you're fishing for other species. You've got to target them, and since I haven't done that on Tablerock, I haven't caught any there.

I'm sure that's it - location. I've never fished very far up the White, and seldom up King's either. When fishing on the James for crappie, I've sometimes caught little (10") walleyes - stockers, I assume. Come to think of it, those are the only walleyes I've ever caught from Tablerock. I've sure never found any on the main lake.

When it comes to walleyes, the two lakes sure fish different for me. The only two ways I know to fish for walleyes are by trolling a deep-running plug, or slow-trolling Roadrunners tipped with either a nightcrawler or a minnow. When I do that on Bull Shoals, I catch walleyes. When I do that on Tablerock, I catch bass and white bass. I know they're in there, but I've never caught a keeper walleye out of Tablerock. I've caught lots of keepers out of Bull Shoals, even though they have to be 18" there. I've even caught keeper walleyes out of B.S. throwing a big Roostertail from the bank in the spring for white bass. So for me, Bull Shoals is a walleye lake and Tablerock isn't.

Mike, I almost answered him earlier - saying that I catch walleyes now and then but he needs to get ahold of "powerdive" for the real scoop. I'm glad you jumped in there, you'll be able to help him better than most anyone I know.

Yep, we're all fishing for our own satisfaction - and how that works is up to the individual. I don't care about trout fishing, myself, but that's because I'm not really into it. Those guys who trout fish below the Dam with their tippets and little scud flies, well, I don't understand just what they're doing but I know it's a real challenge to catch big trout that way and it takes a lot of skill. More power to 'em - I'll never knock anybody else's hobby, and certainly never knock anybody's choice to master the specialized skills needed to target and consistently catch just one species. Others, like myself, enjoy catching them all and while I'll probably never have the skills to win any bass tournaments, that's a valid choice too - 'cause I'm having lots of fun out there and we enjoy the panfish filets.

It's still real early, and while some good catches of white bass and crappie have been found - it's still more missing than hitting right now. Also, this time of year the weather out in a boat is miserable a lot more often than not. If your wife's like mine, she'll enjoy a trip where she catches fish without being too uncomfortable. With that in mind, I'd wait a few weeks to take her. Watch the trees for easy fishing - when the redbuds are blooming it's white bass time, and when the dogwoods bloom she oughta catch a bunch of crappie.

Tablerock's a real good crappie lake. I'm like you, I'll bass-fish 'til the cows come home and have a great time doing it, but I'm not a specialist. I'm just as happy catching bass, white bass, walleyes, big perch, goggleyes, catfish, or grabbing suckers. Big slab crappie are my favorites, though, I'd rather have that kind of trip than any other. Best of all are the trips (which do happen sometimes) where I can put a limit of crappie in the live well in short order - and then go fishing for something else. To each his own, but I've always thought the guys who won't fish for anything but bass are missing a lot.

slabhunter - From your name and avatar, I know you're a crappie fisherman too. Be sure and bring your crappie pole, you might find some. Crappie are pre-staging right now. Look for spawning coves with pea gravel banks 5-10 feet deep. They're not on those banks yet, but they'll be within 150 yards of so of them, on drop-offs to deep water in about 16-20 feet, bunched up around brush and underwater bushes. They're not everywhere, just bunched up in spots - but they show up real well on a scope when you find them. The water's cold, so move your jig real slow - white's the color.