Bassin' fool

Well we started our morning off near the 245 hwy bridge flipping laydowns and bouncing square bills off the rocks. Had 3 chunky short smallmouth on a jig and 2 keeper lm on the square bill. Decided to go try maize creek but with the strong south wind it would have been more of a challenge than I was up for, so we checked out the map and headed up to price branch. Only managed a handful of short fish (all on square bills) before we thought we'd try to make it back to the masters cove before the wind got too crazy. Fished a little bit across from the beach and caught 4 more shorts and had a very nice largemouth get off at the boat ?. Although not the most productive morning it was great to get to explore some new water, i will definitely be returning to Masters and hopefully next time the wind will cooperate! All fish were caught on a translucent white/blue Raw Outdoors square bill and a black/blue 3/8 oz flippin jig rigged with a power bait chigger craw

Thank you! I was looking at my hot spots map but with the lake down I know that isn't very accurate. I will probably try to fish some main lake stuff around the 245 bridge, or I might run up north to price branch. Either way the info is much appreciated, thanks again!

I will be putting in at Masters tomorrow morning for the first time, this will also be my first time on the little sac arm. I was wondering if anyone knew how the bite has been in that area, and if there's anything to watch for as far as sand bars or trees on the main lake where I'll be running faster. With the lake as low as it is I always try to get as much info as possible before going out in a new area just to be safe. Any advice is appreciated, thanks! Edit: I guess I forgot to mention I will be targeting bass and possibly walleye.

Here's my rig, 1986 Ranger 395v Comanche with a 1987 Johnson GT200.

Put in at Roark at 6:45 this morning and found a decent buzzbait bite around laydowns on rocky banks and shallow flat points, anywhere from right on the bank out to around 6 feet. Boated 2 keepers and 3 shorts on white buzzbait. Switched to blue-shad cranks around 8 am and landed 1 more keeper and 1 short in 14 fow over the top of brush piles. Was using rapala DT6 crankbaits. Then tried for some walleye and ended up catching 2 keepers on blue flicker shad in 4 feet of water around 10:30 am. I'm not sure that I have ever caught walleye that shallow so saying I was surprised is an understatement. All in all it was a fun, and what I consider successful, morning.

That's actually one of my "go to" spots. I love throwing wiggle warts around those bluffs and rock slides, might try a wacky worm around there for a little bit tomorrow. Thanks for the input!

I'm planning on heading over to Stockton tomorrow morning (take off at Roark) and was wondering if anybody had an updated report? I'll be looking for bass, and maybe walleye or crappie. Any tips are appreciated!

i was wondering if anyone knew the current lake level at Stockton, I heard that it was down 3.5' but it sure seems lower then that..

I recently bought an older 395v Ranger and was wondering if there was anyone in the Springfield/Joplin area that builds custom flippin deck extensions for bass boats? I've found a company In Georgia that builds them out of aluminum but can't justify sending the boat down there to have work done on it. Any suggestions or tips are appreciated!

I was using a 1/8 oz in a white shad color just casting into the schools as they would roll on the surface. And I've always said that for their size a white bass will fight harder than any fish in the lake.

Caught 34 tonight (kept 20) between 7:15pm and 8. Same spot as listed above on the same rooster tails. I should have enough filets in the freezer to get me through till the crappie spawn! Back to looking for largemouth and walleye hoping to get something photo worthy!

This was in the pm

Got on the water around 6 and had no action at all for the first two hours. Not even a bite, fishing main lake points 12-18 feet with 10 inch ribbon tails, Ned rig, dt10 balsa crank, and spinner bait. Decided to tie on rooster tails and a spoon and try for some white bass. We noticed the first active fish boiling around 7:45, and ended up with 20 in the boat headed back to the ramp at 8:15. They were surfacing in 2-8 fow, straight west of chicken rock near the hazard buoy. Caught on white rooster tail and blue jigging spoon. Probably could have had a limit but with an hour drive home and another hour cleaning fish we decided to pack it in and have an excuse to go again tomorrow!

I will try the drop test in the morning if I can find the time, if that leads me nowhere then I'll probably just haul it to a shop and have it gone through. If it comes to that I was wondering if you had a marine shop and where I could bring the boat to? If you can tell me all of this based on my VERY poor description of what's going on then I'd say you know your stuff! Thank you very much for all your help and advice

I was wondering if anyone had a review on the sixgill rods? The way I understand from a friend of mine, they are currently getting set up to come out with new models of rods and are selling all of their current models at buy-one-get-one free. The prices are pretty comparable to St. Croix

Well I finally got everything put back together and got to get on the water for awhile last night. At full speed the boat performed flawlessly, I was back to running high 50's- low 60's. But I'm still having the same idle problem that I started with. The engine seems to idle alright but when I put it in gear and give a little throttle it will just sputter and die, it almost acts like its flooding itself not losing fuel like I had originally thought. It takes several times of starting up and dying before it will finally "pick up" and run. But after it's been ran at high rpm for just a couple minutes I can go back to an idle and it does great. Is the motor not warming up to operating temp? Not sure if this model has a thermostat or not..

I was fishing the north end of the H highway bridge

Walcrabass, did that storm you are talking about happen to be the summer of 2009? If so I was on Stockton that day, couldn't catch a cold if it was January all morning then caught a limit of crappie in 30 minutes and knew something was up. I was lucky enough to get back to the ramp before it got too bad but my cousin lost his cobra to a faulty bilge pump that day. I'm sure I'll get her goin but it'll always be something else, my dad always told me that boat simply stands for Break Out Another Thousand!

I got on the water about 5:30 this evening and had two keepers in the boat by 6:00, caught several small bass on a spinnerbait in 6-8 fow to start with then switched to a green pumpkin 10" power worm and had two keeps (one right at 3 lbs) in the boat in my first 5 casts. I decided to fire up the boat and start over where I had previously caught a few shorts on the spinner bait in hopes that there would be a couple bigger ones on the bottom. And that's where it all went wrong. The main feed fuel line fitting somehow fell off the fuel pump and left me dead in the water. Luckily the trolling batteries had a fresh charge and I was only about a mile from the boat ramp. All fish were caught in less than 8 fow, the bigger of the two keeps was in right on the bank less than 2 feet deep, not sure if they're starting to get on the fall pattern or if I just stumbled across a couple resident fish that haven't fled to deeper water at all this summer? Hopefully we'll get the ol Johnson fixed up and find out for sure this weekend...

The timer base traveled from idle position until it hit a stop (assuming that's the timing adjustment?) and the throttle cam roller looks like it's been recently replaced. After the fuel line replacement and fresh spark plugs she started up on maybe the second revolution without being choked and ran until it was at full operating temp without a single sputter or miss, and had MUCH better throttle response. Thank you very much for your help, and now I have a good excuse to take her out one night this week! ?

Ok so now I'm about to make myself sound pretty stupid, took the engine cover off in the driveway this morning and pulled the breather cover off the front of the motor to see if I could find which carb was leaking. Pumped the primer bulb twice and shot a stream of fuel out of the fuel inlet line about an inch from the pump, also had one plug wire that got pulled off when I put the hood on last time so I had no fire on one cylinder. The compression checked out good and even on all 6

I took the boat out last night for a short boat ride just to refresh my memory on what was going wrong and here's what I found. I had the same idle problem as listed above, but now it seems to fall in its face when I take off, it took quite awhile for it to get on plane and build rpms and once it did it never got above 4,200 rpm. The boat usually runs around 58-62 mph depending on temp and water condition but never got above 48 on calm water last night. It still ran very smooth but acted like it had no power, I'm not sure if that changes anything that I need to look for or not but I'm going to do a compression test today and go from there. The other thing I noticed was when I pumped the primer bulb till it was firm it started dripping fuel out of the front of the engine. No lines seemed to be leaking anywhere so is this normal or do I have a problem with a carburetor?

What it sounds to me like is that it's just losing some fuel pressure somewhere, I know the primer bulb never seems to get very hard and I have to pump it almost every time I start it, I've worked on a few outboards just never anything this big. What confuses me is that it runs like a top once it gets goin but I'll check those things out too and see where it all takes me

I have an 87 model Johnson gt200 on the back of my ranger that won't hardly idle while in gear. It runs great at full throttle, and will even idle good after it's been running awhile but I have to choke it every time I start up (even if it's only been shut off for 10-20 mins) and hold it about half throttle till all the smoke clears before it will idle while in gear, also it sounds a little slobbery when I take off until it gets on plane and a little higher rpm then it smooths out and runs fine. Was wondering if anybody has ever had this problem or knew what's causing this? I've only had the boat a little over a month so I'm not ruling out operator error either..

Let's start out by saying it was SLOW. Water temp at 89-90, caught a few short fish on finesse worm in 18-20 fow around standing timber then moved up to 10-12 fow about an hour before dark. Started catching a lot better fish on a 10" black/blue ribbon tail worm around brush, and even a black/silver senko whacky rigged. All in all we ended up with about a dozen shorts and 3 keeps