Sam

Just to add a little controversy - I eat bass. Ya' betcha I do. I also eat crappie, white bass, catfish, walleyes, big perch, suckers, and most anything edible I can get to bite. My wife and I really enjoy a good meal of filets, and when I go fishing that's what I try to bring home. I use some judgement with that. I don't kill smallmouths. They're just too rare and pretty. I put real big (5 lb.+) largemouths back too - immediately and back to where I caught them, not halfway down the lake. The big ones are usually females, and keeping them means a lot of little bass don't get hatched. Anyway, the real big ones are older fish and probably carry more mercury than smaller bass. But I'll eat every legal Kentucky bass I can catch. I think taking Kentuckies out of the lake helps the fishery. Also, on the rare occasions any legal bass is gut-hooked and dying - I'll keep it. I figure Conservation knows what the limits should be, and it's pretty seldom I get a limit of bass anyway. What I do catch is going in the skillet, with the exceptions above - and I don't feel bad about it. The people who should feel bad are some of the tournament fishermen. Quite a few times I've come in an hour or two after a tournament weigh-in in the summertime and seen dozens of big bass floating dead near the tournament dock. I know they have a hard time keeping fish alive in hot water, but that's a lot more wasteful than keeping and eating them, in my opinion. So you don't need to worry about guys like me cleaning out the lake, but I know where most of the fish I catch belong. Right next to the fried 'taters.

The best I can figure, fish bite best when the weather has been STABLE for two or three days. High pressure, low pressure, rain, etc. don't seem to matter as much as the fact that changing conditions turn them off. Those "bluebird days" right after a rain passes through are especially bad for me. I've had real good luck on dry days when a storm is coming in (dropping pressure), and when it first starts raining that often improves fishing at first. I think heavy rain, thunder, and lightning scare the fish and stop them from feeding. Lots of times I've been catching fish then had to take shelter from a thunderstorm. I've never done any good, though, when I go back out after the storm passes. With the way water conducts sound, a heavy rainstorm must be pretty scary for the fish.

I thought that was a black crappie too, and almost posted something about it - then I enlarged the picture and looked closer. It's a BIG white crappie. The spots on the side form faint lines. Also, it has the long tapered "forehead" of a white crappie, not the blunt nose of a black crappie. The two kinds really are shaped different if you compare them. Here's a photo I posted back in January of two 12" Long Creek crappies. The white crappie is at the top and the black crappie at the bottom.

Night fishing under lights for those deep-water suspended crappie might be just the thing. I haven't tried it. I know that the only time they're getting a little aggressive is late in the day. Both trips, I found the big females suspended and not biting during the day. They're just laying there, and you're lucky if you can get a bite in two hours. But about 5 p.m. they turned on better. Strangely, they then wanted to come up and bite shallow - and I found I was going under them with a 1/8 oz. jig. I started slow-trolling a 1/16 oz. jig (running maybe 7 feet deep in 60 feet of water!!!), and started catching fish. So with the way they're acting, I think fishing at night in those places, with a light, might be the ticket. That's the fun of fishing, for me. Figuring out what the fish want, and trying not to have pre-conceived ideas of that I think they OUGHT to want. Sometimes the solution is pretty strange, and it feels good when you finally hit on it.

I've found big female crappie with eggs my last two trips to Long Creek, but not where I expected them. They're suspended in 45 to 75 foot water, about 14 feet down! If you 'scope in the main lake off points and cove entrances, near flooded trees, in deep water - you'll see them. Those are crappie, but they're biting slow and seldom. Casting or trolling a 1/8 oz. swimming minnow will get you near a limit in a day, but it's only one bite every half hour or so. The females are still full of eggs, but I don't know if they're going to spawn this year. I've read that if conditions aren't right, they can just re-absorb the eggs. It's a strange year for crappie. I've never fished for them in water that deep before.

I always like to catch the ones with the black stripe. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like they're a little bigger and that they fight harder than the others. They're not hybrids. They're a natural sub-variety of white crappie called "Arkansas Blacknose" crappie. They're native to the White River drainage area, so we have more of them here than the folks do in other parts of the country. The black stripe is hereditary, and I've heard that some fish farms and the Arkansas Conservation Dept. use it to keep track of the crappie they've raised and stocked. The "Arkansas Blacknose" variety has been hauled around some over the years. I've caught a few of them in Eastern Tennessee, and a friend told me he sometimes catches crappie marked like that in Southern California.

Marty - "Dinner" is whenever you should show up with some 'shrooms. Crappie filets and morels. Wow.

It's odd that Kings River was so crowded. We fished Long Creek yesterday (4/12) and didn't see the kind of fishing pressure you describe. We put in at Gage's at 9 a.m., and were the fifth rig parked in that lot. Going down the lake, we commented that we "had the lake to ourselves". Later on more people arrived, and most of the day we had several other boats in sight. Nobody crowded us, no problem. When we went past the Cricket Creek marina, there were a bunch of trailers parked - 30 or 40 maybe, but that's normal for the spring crappie run. And when we took out at Gage's, there were about that many there also. I didn't think it was very crowded. Except up in Long and Cricket Creeks above the marina, we had several hundred yards of bank to ourselves most of the time. So far as the fishing, it was slow but good. In the shallow trees up Long and Cricket Creeks lots of smaller crappie are being caught. Some are keepers, some aren't - and we saw a lot of short fish being thrown back. Going for quality, not quantity, we went back to the deep water and ended up with 18 crappie and 3 white bass. The crappie were all at least 12" and averaged 14" with a 15 1/2" one the biggest. I like those SLABS! Our white bass were big also. I caught a 4 1/2 pounder on a crappie rod, what a fight that was. Anyway, the lake wasn't so crowded as to hurt the quality of our trip at all. Question: I usually don't keep big white bass because they're so strong and fishy tasting, but I kept these. When I used to fish the ocean, I noticed that the strong, oily fish like mackeral, bonito, barracuda, etc. were real good when smoked. I've always wanted to try smoking white bass (yeah, I know - it's hard to keep 'em lit. lol), and I think I'll try it in our closed barbecue with these. Any suggestions? Thanks.

I went out of Bridgeport on the James River arm again today, and stayed between the bridge and Virgin Bluff. The fish had a serious case of high-pressure lockjaw most of the day. It was real tough, and real slow. But they can turn on quick when they want to. By 3 p.m. I had only 3 crappies - then I caught 8 in half an hour in the same places I'd been fishing all day. I ended up with 13 keepers, mostly 12" to 14", and one short fish. Slow-trolling swimming minnows in 30' water off flooded trees.

I've found the easiest way to tell a Kentucky (spotted) bass from a Largemouth, even in the dark, is to feel the tongue when you're unhooking it. The top of a Largemouth's tongue is perfectly smooth, a Kentucky bass has a "sandpaper" patch on its' tongue. That's important on lakes like Bull Shoals, where you can keep Kentuckies over 12" but a Largemouth has to be 15".

That $10. Border Waters permit is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Before that, it was costing me $30. each year for an out-of-state Arkansas license to fish all of Bull Shoals and Tablerock. Before the Border permits, lots of times there'd be two boats on the state line at Bear Creek on Bull Shoals. Arkansas and Missouri game wardens sitting there talking to each other. When a fishing boat would cross going either direction - they would run him down and check for fish in possession and BOTH state's licenses. There's no more of that, now. The state line is marked with big yellow MO/AR signs on the banks of the lakes. Taneycomo, which would be Tablerock's tailwaters, is entirely in Missouri.

I wouldn't worry about that. In past years, I've waded the James in a foot of water and had white bass zip between my feet. They'll get upriver if there's any water at all - then they'll be in the deeper pools. Low water should make it easier for waders and fly fishermen. Low water just makes it tough on guys like me who'd like to get a boat to their old fishing holes.

Something interesting about those James River crappie we caught yesterday. We iced them down, and I cleaned them this morning after posting my report. I found they were ALL females, all 22 of them. We saw guys on boats working the banks throwing almost every fish they caught back, while ours were almost all 11 1/2" to 14". I think we're in a pre-spawn situation where the smaller males are on the trees and the banks, and the females are holding, suspended, out in deep water. They'll all be coming into the shallows and getting active soon.

Go east on the highway from where the bridge crosses Swan. The lake there is along that stretch of highway. The corner where the lake turns south and leaves the highway is Barker Hole. Just turn toward the lake before the highway starts to go up the hill (I can't think of the name of the road right now). If it's been raining recently, be careful where you drive. That's the muddiest place I know - I got a 4WD pickup stuck for two hours there once. I only got out by using chains and a come-along tied to a tree. Something like that will sure mess up a fishing trip.

That's exactly where I caught the biggest crappie I've ever caught in Missouri, several years ago. It was a 17 3/4" black crappie female, caught while trolling a swimming minnow for white bass during the spring run.

We went out of Bridgeport Tuesday, 4/4, and found exactly what we've been finding at Long Creek. The crappie are there, and nice size - but you've got to work for them. Surface water temp was 59, about 5 degrees warmer than Long Creek. Big crappie are all over the scope, suspended 12-15 feet down in 30-35 feet of water, outside flooded tree lines. They're biting real slow and seldom, and sometimes they turn off completely for an hour or so. We tried going up the river with no success. I can't even get my boat through Ashercane, so if I'm going to get to my usual upstream crappie and white bass holes this year I'll have to take my 12' car-topper. We caught only 1 crappie by casting to stumps in lower Ashercane. All our other fish came from deep water down in the lake, and we stuck with it and eventually got a nice bunch of crappie. Trolling swimming minnows slow and deep, we came up with 22 keepers and about 5 short ones. Most other boats were working the shallows, the stumps, and the banks. They weren't catching fish any faster than we were, but mostly they were getting short ones. Our keepers averaged about 12", and that's a lot better than we've found on the James River arm in past years. 22 good keepers sounds like a great day, and it was. But we were there from 8 until 6 - two guys fishing for 10 hours. We didn't miss many bites, so that means we were getting just slightly better than ONE BITE PER HOUR, each. That's awfully slow. But boy, there are lots of crappie in there. Just like in Long Creek, when they finally bust loose for the spawn it's going to be good.

Awww, you guys ain't doing it right, somehow. I went out of Gage's with my partner last Wednesday, and we crappie-fished from there down into Arkansas. We got 21 keepers up to 15" plus 5 short crappie. It was slow, and we had to work for them. We don't use minnows. We're just slow-trolling swimming minnows on a 1/8 oz. jig head about 12-15 feet down in 20 to 40 feet of water near flooded timber around cove entrances. Chartreuse was working best that day. I tried casting and retrieving and didn't get a bite that way. We talked with guys in one boat who had two crappie, and minnow fishermen in another boat who had zero. Tomorrow, we're going out of Bridgeport. I imagine the crappie will be shallower there, and we'll be throwing to them. Reports are that all those 9 1/2" James River arm crappie have grown to over 10", and I hope that's right.

Anyone who fishes the James River arm of Tablerock in the spring knows that spoonbills sometimes jump. They don't feed on minnows, so I don't know why they jump - maybe it has something to do with their spawning, or maybe they're just playing. Whatever the reason, it can be real startling when a fish that big jumps near your boat. Last spring, I was slow-trolling a jig for crappie near some flooded trees in the Virgin Bluff area. It was a beautiful day, quiet, peaceful, no other boats around. I was in the front of the boat running the trolling motor on slow speed. Suddenly, an enormous spoonbill jumped clear out of the water, about 4 feet from where I was sitting. The thing must have weighed 80 lbs., and it scared me almost to death. The splash it made soaked me and the whole boat. Worst of all, I'd been eating lunch while I was trolling - and I had cheese and crackers and a Pepsi sitting on the deck beside my seat. The splashed water knocked my Pepsi over, and soaked the crackers so I had to throw them all away. That'll get your attention, when it's nice and quiet and you think you're all alone.

Or Castaic or some of the other famous Southern California lakes where a 9-pounder is a "medium" size lunker. It'd be kinda fun to catch a 15-pounder out there and haul it to Tablerock real quick to check it in. That would cause some excitement and confusion. Seriously, I've been fishing Tablerock every year and season for 15 years now, and a few bass over 6 lbs. are the best I've done.

Unless something's changed this year that I don't know about: TABLEROCK, Missouri side White Bass = limit 15, any size. Black Bass = Largemouth, Smallmouth, and Spotted (Kentucky) Bass combined total, limit 6, minimum length 15". On Arkansas side, Spotted (Kentucky) Bass of 12" or more may be kept - but don't bring them into Missouri.

Phil, that's just what we found there a few days ago. The surface water temp was 48-49 degrees, and the crappie mostly weren't biting. But they're in there, we scoped a whole bunch of crappie in all the deep water staging areas near coves. We brought 17 keepers home and didn't catch any short ones - but it was real slow. When you figure that's just about one crappie per hour for each fisherman, that's pretty slow going. As soon as that water warms up a little and the days get longer, I think they're going to turn on real good. It was April when we were really into them at Long Creek last year.

You know how it is with the white bass run. The little males come up the river first, then the larger males. Then the females come up, with the larger females last. The few that go 'way too far up, to Hwy. 160 or maybe the dam, are going to be small males. You know how young guys always get carried away when they're looking for wimmen.

We put in at Long Creek the other day, and I wondered how the ramp would be with the lake so low. It was fine - in fact, the concrete still extends at least another 5 or 6 feet underwater. It left me wondering how the Corps built those good ramps. SURELY they didn't build a little dam around the ramp area and pump water out so they could pour - but SURELY they didn't pour concrete underwater somehow - but SURELY there hasn't been a lake level of 898 or less since the lake was originally filled in the 1960's. ??????? Those are the only three alternatives I can think of, and the ramps being built when the lake was at 898 ft. or less is the only reasonable one, I think - but I didn't know it was ever that low. Did they build the ramps while the dam was being built, and are they that old? Does anyone know how the Corps actually built those good ramps so far down into the lake? I'm puzzled.

They always get to the Galena area, at least. I imagine it varies according to how much water is in the river, and it's going to be extremely low this year. In past years with more water, I've caught white bass at Horse Creek (Kerr Access), which is several miles above Galena. I'd guess a few white bass may go until they get stopped by the Lake Springfield dam, but I don't know that for sure.

My partner and I went yesterday, 3/2, and fished between the Long Creek Marina (Gage's) and Cricket Creek. We scoped lots of crappie suspended in deep water, right down the middle of every cove. They were all suspended in 30 feet water or deeper, and mostly not biting. It was windy, and we stuck with it using jigs. One or the other of us would get a bite about every half hour, so it seemed terribly slow at the time. Still, we ended up with 17 white crappie between 10" and 15" and one keeper Kentucky bass. Not a bad day, and there are lots of crappie in there waiting for the spawn.