tjm

that intrigues me, makes me wonder if sun exposure is a factor (e-w sections should be warmer) and I wonder if the fish stay in those exact sections throughout the year?

The key factor may be in temperature, if much of the stream gets to or stays above low 70sF SMB wouldn't be comfortable there and catfish like it up to mid 80s, I think. I don't always carry a thermometer anymore but back when I did I learned that 3-4 degrees could determine if a stretch held fish or not.

What kind of crayfish are in that stream?

Oh I could leave if I wanted to, but it wouldn't be because someone brushed the chip off and made me pout. I hope not to ever indulge schoolgirl drama on a forum with adults in the audience. When I haven't posted for a while, I doubt anyone will notice. I don't think anyone gets to take that blame/credit, Bill is a grown up, sets his own course.

Hurt feelings are always self inflected, only I can make me get emotional over the words of another. It doesn't matter how much I blame someone else, it's always up to me. If I pout up and leave don't any of you try to take credit for it.

Not exactly the point of whether the fish care, my point is that the delicacy is in the user not in the fly fishing. Probably half or more of my current fly fishing is not for trout and with a 12-15# tippet. But still 3X/8# is good for down to at least #16 and I rarely need to go smaller than that for trout. I've also caught thousands of trout with #8 & #9 rods and lines. And thousands more on 6-7 weights. Fly fishing for trout is only as delicate as the user wants it to be. ( I did get pretty delicate with the 9wt in still water, using #24 flies on 8X tippets 16' leaders a lot, but if fishing streamers an 8-12# tippet would be better.) As to trout caring about line size, a long time (50 years?) ago before I started fly fishing, I ran experiments using bait and nylon mono varying from 20# test to 1# test in very clear water about 5' deep but where I could easily watch the fish approach and take the baits. I found that line size and visibility did not affect the trout taking the baits, if all baits were on similar line sizes, but if the line size was greatly different the fish would take on the bait with the smallest line first. On very bright days the shadows from even the finest lines seemed to put the fish off. The only reason I found for ever using smaller tippets is to allow more freedom of movement to the fly in a dead drift, for less drag. With spinning gear the smaller lines make casting easier. 6-8# worked fine for me back then, yet I see many folks using much lighter more delicate lines. I think it is creating the romance of trout fishing and that they are somehow special.

Mayfly hatches in the billions of insects can show up on weather radar looking like a major storm. But, a study of them between 2012-2019 in the Upper Mississippi River and Western Lake Erie Basin suggest that the number of mayflies in the Mississippi River region has declined by 52 percent since 2012 and in the Lake Erie area populations have gone down by 84 percent.

There are fly fishers that never go smaller than 3X for trout and my 5X at 5# test isn't as delicate as most spin fishers using 3# test for trout. Although trout aren't my favorite fly rod fish.

Determinate/bush tomatoes do that just get so tall and fruit all at once, indeterminate/vine tomatoes grow until frost and fruit all season. I just don't recall that I ever planted bush types. Probably because I use varieties that "we have always used"; and that is because I have an idea what to expect from them. I also prefer staggered fruiting.

As I said, I always make mine run horizontal at an easy pick height, don't like to bend over, nor to use a ladder; don't know why but my vines are always 12'-15'. But if you do cut, you can make every cut piece into a new plant. I've rooted a single leaf and grew it to harvest, fruit same as the parent plant. Come to think of it though a ladder would make a good trellis if supported at a convenient height.

Did you fix it yourself like everyone else that has a picture?

Well, I thought it was the same one, unusually large small stream small mouth at ~19" and from under the same under the same large rock, 4-5 times per week all summer, three summers in a row. Markings always the same, but a bit larger as time passed. Often at the same time of the evening. And in a tiny eastern trout brook, small enough and clear enough that you could count the fish, took the only rainbow in one pool three times one day and again a couple days later. I think the only way to avoid re-catching the same fish is to eat them all, and I'm not much of fish eater, so, I'll just have to take the chance that every fish might be one I've caught before.

The "O" in the blue circle? That stands for "Oneshot 1" ; like an initial, my posts have a "T" beside them. Silly isn't it? It's really a place to put an avatar picture and we didn't use it for a picture so the software uses a picture of our initial.

Build a horizontal trellis with your stakes/poles/macrame cord, I do this every year. I transition to horizontal at about shoulder height and often "stack" vines from two plants on the same section of trellis/rack. I've always wondered at those little funnel shaped tomato cages as my plants would have out grown them before reaching bloom stage. Better caging can be accomplished with cattle panels set parallel on T-posts about 2' apart with the plants in between. Vining tomatoes are called "indeterminate" because they continue to grow and produce until frost kills them. Fed and watered well they grow long and wide. The tallest tomato that I ever saw was many years ago when my uncle got into an argument with his best pal over pruning suckers and as the result on a bet, he set one tomato at the end of his house and fed it heavily with sheep dung. He would prove that an unpruned plant could produce more than a pruned one. That plant grew so rapidly that uncle started driving nails in the house wall and tying the vines to them until the entire gable end of the house all the way to the roof. Could not see the house at all and had to use ladders to harvest, but he got bushels of tomatoes off that single plant. Aunt canned twice as many as normal and they gave tomatoes away to others through out the summer.

Any defense on our own soil would destroy our own country, read the post above about we destroyed the Netherlands to get to Germany. Always better to bomb some other country than the one we live in.

Fully agree. I'm almost always suspicious of those people mouthing their "thank yous"; I wonder if their parents were the ones in the airports and bus stations calling names and spiting on servicemen.

So if you catch one of these crossing the road or in the middle of a hay field/pasture, is it still eligible for state record status?

The fish deserves no blame, nor does it deserve any quarter. Kill as many as you can. It's not blaming the fish to eat it, that is the whole entire purpose of a fish's existence. Fish spent zillions of years evolving to be perfect when baked or fried, we shouldn't let all that development be wasted.

I've been known to just pop the battery doors half open on the Phonaks in some restaurants and at any gathering in a school gymnasium.

My hearing aids don't help with that, too much. The sound will be loud enough to hear but garbled by having to go around the speaker. I don't have to be looking at the speaker but it sure helps if they look in my general direction. I don't get weird sounds from the creeks either but inside restaurants the distortion is so amplified that I wish for shooting muffs. What is and isn't distorted probably depends on the frequency range and severity of hearing loss.

Yeah, it just isn't something I am familiar with or understand. I was wondering about the leader twist that gurglers give to you and that has not been a problem for me, in the far away past, when I had leaders twist with dry flies, and I had a a lot of it, I eventually found that shorter stiffer leaders helped. I thought a similar change might help your gurgler twist; but I guess not. And now I'm confused, too, for if the leader is twisted from the start, how does it become more twisted during the cast. Perhaps someday we'll be on the same water and you can show me. Til then, I'm just not smart enough to "get it'.

Yeah, I'll keep fishing gurglers too, without twist.

I think by spinning you mean a twisted leader? I first took "spin" to make or construct. A knotted taper. I haven't any use for complications and straight or tapered mono leaders have worked for 50 years, so I'll keep using them.

For kicks, some time when you think a gurgler might work; spin up a leader using about 4' of 18-25# butt and about 2'- 3' of 12# or use just 5'-6' of >12# nylon with your floating line. Given the light leader taper, I'm not surprised at twist. Had that a lot with dry flies back when. I've used floating leaders as short as 3' of 15#-20# when surface bassing in the wind. I only lengthen the leaders when fishing on the bottom with floating line, and then I run a lighter tippet of 6-8# ; so that I can break off structure easier. With a Teeny sink line 3'-4' of 15# nylon is plenty for me. Trilene green is good, although a stiffer nylon will resist twist better.

Per the USGS they are in a few other AR drainages as well some of them are Big & Little Piney Creek Caney Creek Cache River Lower White Lower Arkansas Little Red