top_dollar

Get over it.

Humminbird has suction cup transducer mounts which work well for me. Get a battery and a suction cup transducer and whatever unit you want. Works really well for me.

It's organism. Not organisum. No u.

I think you may hit on an important point when you said "conventional wisdom says go further from the access". Most experienced bass anglers follow that rule. Generally you will often see kids, or non bass fishermen hammering the access, but most serious bass guys find "better" water. My thoughts are that popular access points really dont get fished as hard as one might think. St louis county park ponds are the way imo...both get pouned by bait guys sitting on buckets, but thats about it.

I snuck down to river yesterday about 530 til dark. Its extremely low. My favorite spot to wade is a little stretch maybe 200 yeards long. It has 3 little riffles that now are little more than ankle deep. Each has a nice little scoured out pool maybe 4-8feet deep with debris and good current. I always sneak to the most downstream pool and quietly wade upstream against the current. I have found that i catch 2-3x more fish wading upstream. As i move to the last riffle it quickly gets too deep to wade. Fortunately i am able to scurry up the bank and walk along the bluffs. Fishing this way is quite a bit like hunting. The quieter i am the better i do. One technique i use is to move to the spot where i want to be and stand without moving or casting for as long as i can stand it. Normally after a few minutes all the little river minnows are swimming around your legs like nothing happened. It feels like hunting to me cuz when you walk through the woods everything hides, but if you sit down and shut up for 20 minutes the woods comes alive. This evening i stuck with the jig worm and a jerkbait. My first cast with the worm into a swampy looking pocket produced a lm less than 10 inches. Then another 30 minutes without a fish. Switched over to the jerkbait. First cast, crushed...another largemouth. This one bigger maybe 13 or 14 inches. I was worried though as the worm got me a first cast bite then nothing. That was not the case here though as the jerkbait caught me 8 bass before dark and of course 1 overzealous longear. 1 smallie was about 17inches, but skinny. The rest were 8-13 inchers.

Lets do some math..... stockton lake has about 300 miles of shoreline. Missouri has about 15000 otters. Lets go ahead and assume this year they all decided to go to stockton. That leaves 50 otters per mile of stockton shoreline. That doesn't seem like very many. How many otters does it take to ruin a 25000 acre lake? How deep to otters dive? Do they eat walleye off the bottom in 40feet? Or suspended crappie? Or are they confined the the fish that venture into the shallows? There are alot of assumptions one must make to blame their lack of fishing success at stockton in the otters.

Thats a total bummer.

They taste quite similar to crappie and walleye. Excellent to eat. Especially smaller ones. I cant say that they (or any fish) tastes better in the winter, but i do believe that proper handling and storage of meat is alot easier in the winter, leading to more folks thinking it taste better. When it is hot outside, it is of utmost importance to keep the fish on ice. You simply cannot have dead fish, or fillets, not on ice during the summer months for any amount of time. I cringe all too often when i see people with a bucket of fish at a filleting table in the summer and no ice in sight, by the time those fish are filleted, washed, and frozen that mean has been out in the heat for hours. Its ruined. My summer fish go in a cooler of ice immediately after I catch them. I store them packed in ice for several hours up to a day. Not ice water, but ice. If the fish are kept in a cooler with ice it needs to be drained and re-iced often so the fish are not just sitting in ice water. The fish should be thoroughly cold when you fillet it. That way, the meat is already cold when it comes out of the fish. The fillets get tossed on ice, and when all the fish are cleaned are rinsed in clean ice water. Keeping fish fresh is super easy in the winter time....the fish is cold when its caught, the fish metabolism is so low that they stay alive for hours or days out of water. It is typically cold outside when they are being filleted, so there is just so little chance for the meat to spoil in the winter leading most people to believe that fish taste better in the winter, when in reality they just eat spoiled fish all summer. All that said....posting this topic on this thread is going to start a 20 page female doggy fest about eating bass. It is probably better to post it anywhere else.

It worked! Thanks.

I cant upload pics, it keeps saying upload failed. darn it all.

I fished saturday with my son as i do most weekends in the summer. I cant take the summer heat so i like to wade creeks and swim until fall and winter. We mostly played construction toys on a gravel bar and looked for crawdads and minnows , but he has some skills with a spinning rod, and has been addicted to the tug for a while now. We got a few smallies, lm, longears, and rock bass. Nothing bigger than 13inches. Although i have caught smallies up to 19inches there, they are exceedingly uncommon in my experiences. We were on the upper section of the river above leadwood, mostly clear water 1-4 feet deep with some deeper holes to 8 maybe 10 feet. My typical setup (for me and the boy) is a 5ft 6inch med light spinning rod with 4# mono. I attach a 1/16 oz no collar ball head jig with #2 owner that my brother pours for me. The business end gets either a 2.5-3 inch swing impact minnow, a 4 inch chompers drop shot worm (lately the biospawn plasmatail has been getting the call), or the last 2.5 inches of a baby brush hog. Usually the swing impact or garlic worm (what the boy calls the chompers worm) works the best. Fishing is normally really good for numbers of small fish. The boy by himself can usually manage a couple of fish in the hour attention span he has. He caught the big fish from saturday about a 12 inch smallie, on the "garlic worm"

A worm is a worm. Geez. Hiring a guide, being persistent, and keeping your expectations realistic will improve your catch rates. Pick a technique or 2 you like best and stick with it. When you go out, just try to do a little better than last time you went and dont worry about lmtout's (or others but usually him) report of 200 walleye. If you caught 4 today, but 3 last week, you are doing better.

Is that your PB walleye outta there? If not what was? Incredible trip BTW.

Consensus.....throw your favorite topwater bait, the one you think looks most awesome. Throw it in the river and throw it anytime you want. Youll get some. I prefer to walk with a top dollar gunfish or pad crasher, and i use the keitech noisy flapper as a buzz bait.

What do you mean by "dead water"? Pretty outstanding day by my standards fishing the big!

Thats my favorite rod as well. They are perfect for wading and canoeing small rivers and creeks, as well as bank fishing where you are in close quarters. I also prefer short rods for jerkbaits and WTD baits, it works incredibly well for both. They are also quite affordable as an added bonus.

I caught one saturday afternoon while wading the river on a lipless bait in a riffle. I really think i just snagged it in the mouth, but idk. I could be wrong, but i believe it is called a northern hogsucker? Had to google it.

Giant slab crappie, sail boats and musky fisherman is what kinkaid is all about. Its a great lake.

What an awesome report. Thanks for posting. Your reports are probably my favorite on here.

Ive caught a few out of taneycomo amd various rivers using live worms.

The lack of understanding of the first amendment here is staggering and embarrassing. I know big words are hard to read, but pick up a freaking history book.

This thread has no place on the table rock forum. It should be moved elsewhere.

Neat thread. I hate summertime and if i cant get in the water i can't take the heat. So, i spend most of my summer wading and floating the upper big river. Fishing is good for numbers of smallmouth bass, most 8-12" in length, bigger than 15" is a really good one. My personal best from that stretch was an 18" sm and a 19"lm. 1.) Upper big river. Above leadwood. 2.) Canoe/wade 3.) Cool and clear. Usually bout 5ft viability. Main river/creek stays fairly cold 4.) Top dollar (any small walker or buzzbait). Keitech swing impact 2-4". Weightless wacky worm. And 4" drop shot worm on a small ball head jig (Jig worm).