GSPHUNTER

Thanks for the info!

I'm heading to Norfork for Memorial Day weekend with my wife and three kids. We are staying in the mid lake area so I can run north or south if needed to find fish. I've been checking sites for updated fishing reports and can't find anything past the first week of May. This time of year things can change pretty quick. This is my first time coming down to Norfork and looking forward to it. I'm not looking to get a detailed how to, but would love to hear from anyone that has been out in the last few days on how they did. I'd love to find some walleye down there, but it doesn't seem like guys are catching a bunch of them, rather a few here and there while targeting stripers.

I'd refuel for that pay day for sure. Might even be close to running two tanks in my boat.

$16k

I saw quite a few blue cats at the mouth of the gravois Sunday morning. All in the 2-5 pound range.

Had about 6” visibility up in the glaize on the lower half. Not sure if it cleared up any farther up.

Keep in mind when looking at those tournament results that the top 5 are a pretty small sample of what the fishing is really like. To say the fishing is great because Marcus pulls in close to 27 lbs isn't a very good overall picture. Look at the what weights did in that AIA tourney or the Alhonna tourney after the first few places. Last year in the AIA, the top 20 spots would be be filled with 20 pound bags. Most of the guys I talked to over the weekend were struggling big time, myself included. It was tough. Glaize on Saturday got up to low to mid 50's From the toll bridge down, I was seeing 45-47.

Anybody out over the weekend have anymore insight? I'm going on the trip with Champ and looking forward to getting out. Just curious if anyone is catching any eyes.

Wow, I would have never guessed it was that thick. Last night was super still though. Perfect conditions for building ice.

There is nothing equal in terms of wakess. A wake from a 50' sea ray plowing water, a wake from a ballast filled, wedge enhanced wake board boat spinning circles in a cove for four hours, and a wake from a bass boat running at any speed are all different but I would agree that two are equally damaging. All three are different wakes, but you pick which one you want crashing into your dock or boat. It's literally insane the ignorance of boaters on the lake. My dad has always said, he would love to take his 28' Formula inside the wave breaks of every marina on the lake and plow as much water as it could and see the response he'd get from the idiots that keep their boats at a no wake marina, but see nothing wrong with throwing a 4 foot wall of water 60 yards from other peoples docks. Our family place is in Racoon Hollow, which many guys on here know has zero docks along the camp Sabre side of the cove. Growing up we tubed, we would ski, wakeboard, knee board, air chair, you name it we did it. We would always run down the far bank with no docks on it. Turn around and head straight back down the bank with no docks on it. Our no wake buoy was lost in one of the recent floods down there and the dock sits on one of the points in the cove, so it's in a prime location to get buzzed. Last summer I was down and had my Ranger tied up in our slip, and I was messing with rods or something in the boat when a wake board boat started their laps. Taking water over the bow while he made passes 20-30 yards of the end of the dock got old quick, so I pulled the boat out to about where our buoy would sit and waited for him to come by again. I was watching him as he made his turn, and he was watching his wakeboarder the entire time! I had to throw the boat in reverse to get out of his way. I lost it! He was at the very least decent enough to come back by the dock and apologize, and even listened to my speech about running the far bank in that cove, which he proceeded to do. My only concern would be the unintended consequences of the law. Would it put even more pressure and wave action in coves that either can't get the support of the other lake shore owners, or fall just outside of the 800' rule? Take 30% more coves away from wakeboard boats and now all of a sudden there that many more in unrestricted coves.

Did you try switching frequencies on the two units. On my 998’s I can run them on separate frequencies and never had interference issues. As someone else eluded to, it sounds like you have your bow unit wired with the trolling motor somehow. If so, you need to run a dedicated wire back to the starting battery.

Definitely stained. 3-4 foot visibility

Thanks! I'm heading down in about an hour. I'll be right around that area too. My family has a place right across the lake from you in Raccoon Hollow.

Nice one, what end of the lake are you on and what's the water temp down to with these cooler night?

There also used to be grass in parts of the lake in the Gravois. I took a long ride up toward Ha Ha Tonka a few years back and saw cages where it looked like they were trying to re-establish it up there.

I agree that it would eliminate headaches of fish care through the day and the other issues you mentioned. But, I think part of the reason you don't see a big push to change is that the fishery is doing so well in the midst of 60 tourneys a month as you say. My ultimate guess is that this is a culture thing more than anything else. Trying to change peoples minds on religion, politics, and the like is the same way. For years it the standard deal is bring a sack of 5 fish to the scales and getting your picture taken with them. I'm not saying it makes sense, but neither do many things in life that we do, and for some reason those seem to be some of the hardest things to change. I remember reading sometime ago when you said something to the effect of "when are people going to get over seeing a guy on stage holding two bass over his head?" I think that is the ultimate question.

I'm all for progress and think people get stuck in their ways far too often, but what is the realistic damage caused by tournament fishing? If there was ever a lake that would be a good case study, it would be Lake O. Every single weekend day from February through May, there is some kind of tournament on the lake. Just a completely uninformed guess, but I would be willing to guess that 50% of those boats/anglers/fish are out of PB2. The only reason I mention that is that guys still run all the way to the dam and catch big sacks of fish. In every one of those events, it takes 20 plus lbs to win and often times close to that to even get a check. That tells me that there are not only big fish, but big numbers of those big fish that have most likely seen weigh in scales at least a few times in their life. Nothing drives me more crazy than watching guys walk down a cat walk after they weigh their fish and just give them a dump back in the lake and turn around to walk away. I always bend down and pretty much let the fish swim out of the bag. Last tournament I fished, I put a fish back in the back to return to the live well to sit for about 15 minutes in some heavily oxygenated water before releasing it. Overall though, what is the real effect of the tournaments on the lake? Bags are huge for an Ozark fishery, big bags are plentiful, and there are still a lot of these big fish spread around the lake. Is it an ethical thing of keeping fish in the box all day or are there more concrete examples of problems? I watch MLF and I'm a fan of the system they use, but like others, wonder how you trickle that down to amateur events.

To all of the A Rig haters... Why the disdain for this method?

The Gambler motor deal definitely happened.

Awesome. Thanks for the info. I tried doing a google search on Sunday while I was down there, but nothing was up yet. It was wild to see and exactly what that article described. That area around Sabra reminded me of the days when there was still white foam on the lake and big rafts of it would form, but it was drum. I'll second and third the comments on catching a ton of drum this spring too...

If anyone was down over this past weekend, they had to notice all the drum floating. There were a few small catfish and other species, but primarily drum that were all 9"-12" for the most part. I was hoping to find an explanation for it on here. I was guessing that with little rain and warm temps it was an oxygen level issue. It was crazy how many were floating in some areas. The south facing bluffs around Camp Sabra at the mouth of the Gravois had to have close to 500.