Stein

Wife and I went out last night to see if the crappie would cooperate and just to get the boat wet. I kept thinking that these rods and reels would make good crappie setups. Just didn't have enough time to rig them up. Wife called when I was on the way home saying she wanted to go fish and I still had to pull the boat out, put in all new batteries, replace jack and in general fire it up for the first run of the season.

If nothing else I can't imagine that the 7's wouldn't cast a light jig better. If I get a chance to get back up to BassPro before the end of June I may swap out one or both. Picked up some Nanofil. They didn't carry the CX in 6 lb so I got the P Line floro coated coplymer, not the 100% floro. Should be fine. If not I'm out $8. On another note, they don't carry any of the ZMan Ned plastics or jig heads locally. Going to have to order.

They had the Air Stream rods in stock so I picked up a couple today. Now that I think about it though, they may have been 6'6" rods, not 7's. I'll have to check tomorrow. I did get a couple of the Trions to try as well.

Heading down 6/30-7/3 to bring furniture and generally move some stuff in with my wife, heading home for the 4th, then back 7/5 - 7/9 with a buddy to fish if that week works.

Richard said he just got a new batch of rods in this week when I talked with him about the jig order. I don't know if they are just a batch of the original ones or the 2nd gen of which you speak. I'll look at the 7' air stream rods. For only $20 more might be a no-brainer and with the $39 reel it's still only a $100 combo. I did see the microlights go up to 7' or maybe even 7'6". I will also probably stick with the 6 lb nano. I've been happy with it thus far.

Just talked to Richard and he is setting me up with a starter kit of 8 dozen jigs, 5 dozen 1/8 and 3 dozen 1/16 and split into 10 and 6 colors each to get me a bit of a cross section. I thought that was the better solution than me guessing colors. From some reading on old threads here I saw that BPS has the graphite microlite rods have been used with some regularity for an inexpensive starting setup. They are on sale for $39 so going to get a couple - probably both 6'6" and one light and one medium light. For reels in a similar $39 price point I was thinking Pflueger Trions, probably the TRI25X over the TRI20X. I'm going mainly on reviews for the lower priced reels. I usually use Shimanos but not really brand loyal or anything. I know some on here said the Abu Cardinal S for a cheaper reel but the reviews haven't been as good. Any opinions are encouraged. I'll probably pick up a CrossFire rod from Richard when I get down there. That's as far as I have gotten. Now for line. Here's where I need more help as I'm clueless. For line, maybe 6 lb nano or some other braided main line? Tip it with a 6 foot or so 4 lb leader? For the leader should I use floro or a copolymer? Or just run one line straight through? Favorite brands for either line are welcome. Heading to BassPro on Thursday so any suggestions to fill the shopping cart are appreciated. I'll probably pick up some rogue-type baits for some of my bigger spinning setups for browns.

And I can't forget Norfork stripers. I go to Canada twice a year to smallie, pike and muskie fish. Stripers will have to satisfy my Muskie addiction. Similar fishing, fish all day for one fish, similar sized tackle, etc.

Ham, My comment on the guide was based on the fact that I didn't want to be presumptuous thinking that people would show a new guy the ropes. I would of course welcome any help to learn something new about river fishing, be it wading or in a boat. From what I have read I can rent river boats down there from some of the outfitters or cabins. I'm totally a fly rod novice and would be just as happy with the spinning rod for trout.

One more thing, from what I've been reading it looks like I need to invest in a couple decent spinning setups. I generally only use baitcasters but the allure of the Ned rig has caught me.

Rob, We must have posted at the same time. Thanks for the input. I guess there are worse things - get up early, bass fish for a couple hours, go to the river for the day, then back to the lake for the evening. Nice to have options when you live this close! Something I've never had growing up in Nebraska.

Thanks Mark and Ham. I'm pretty excited about fishing the White. I've not trout fished other than a couple times on vacation in MT and have a handful of 6" trout to show for it. I planned on hiring a guide at least the first time or two just to get a feel for it, then start looking for a river boat. So it sounds like the lake falls off hard after June. We will bring the fly rods!

I do realize there is an introduction section on this site but I'll pretty much only be in the Lower BS section so I'm putting it here. I've been reading for several weeks and it looks like a pretty small, tight knit group here. Hope there's room for one more. My name is John and I live in Nebraska, at least for a few more years. In anticipation of retirement we considered a few locations and ended up deciding that the Mt. Home area was fairly highly rated so we bought a home south of Bull Shoals just off 178. People thought we were odd buying a house in an area where we had never been before other than the weekend we toured houses for sale with the realtor, but I have a good feeling about the area. I wanted to be close to fishing, a reasonable cost of living and not get murdered on taxes like Nebraska. We close tomorrow but we won't be down until the first week of July. Looking forward to learning how to fish clear water and maybe some trout fishing. I'm 3 minutes from Fairview ramp and 3 minutes from White River ramp near the golf course. This is exciting for a guy that, growing up, would drive five hours to fish a lake bigger than 2000 acres for a three day weekend. For the next five years we will only be down for vacations. My wife goes part time June 1 and I have another 5 years before I can do that. But, I'm 48 and she is 54 so all is well. Looking forward to meeting some of you down the line and maybe get a few pointers for conditions to expect the first week of July. I'm actually excited about fall/winter fishing there. We can't do such a thing unless we want to drill holes in the ice. That was for my younger years where all you needed was a pair of carharts and a bottle of Hot 100 cinnamon schnapps.