45acp

I've never eaten a white drum, but I am curious. Next time I catch a big one I'm going to take it home and try it.

Cousin of mine lived up on the bluff at Easley. He told me that he watched many a big cottonwood get swallowed like that, but it was more impressive to see them come back up. Imagine seeing a 80' tall tree just pop up out of the water and go flying through the air, then sploosh back in and disappear again.

You'll need a 4x4 ATV to get to the blew hole at I-70 crossing. The access road was destroyed by the flooding last year. https://www.fws.gov/nwrs/threecolumn.aspx?id=2147617700 Back in March my buddy put his yak in the hole northwest of there by the train track. Thought he might find some crappie, but he didn't.

On the MO we are generally looking for catfish, but there are a lot of different kinds of fish in there. There are three species of sturgeon - pallid, lake, and shovelnose. Shovelnose are legal to take. Pallid and lake are protected. White bass and hybrids. Good luck finding them. Walleye. Good luck finding them. Common carp/buffalo. Not really my thing, but there's a lot of them and they get big. Gar. These are a lot of fun on rod and reel, and good to eat if you don't mind the work of butchering them. Make some rope lures and hang on! Silver Carp. They jump in your boat. Cut em up for catfish bait or just kill em and toss em back for the turtles. White drum. Does anybody catch drum on purpose? I've heard they're good eating but I've never tried one. Crappie. Hard to find but when you do they're usually going to be jumbos.

I'll use this thread to report our successes and failures on the MO this season. We launched at Perche Creek ramp Friday afternoon 5/8/20. Jeff City gauge at 13.7' - ten foot lower than what we had to deal with most of last year. Historically, the wing dams are peeking out at 16' - two years of high water has blown the tops off of almost all of them between Perche Creek and I-70. There were a few of them showing out a couple or three foot like they should be. Most of them are just making really nasty riffles with a big rock showing here and there. Makes for very dangerous conditions - it's no place for inexperienced boaters right now. Friday afternoon we set 24 diddy poles, a couple limb lines, and one anchored jug line. Mostly hand sized live bluegills for bait, with a few 4" sized mixed in. Used 4" cut bluegills on the jug line. Went back Saturday morning and ran em. 14/15 diddy poles set within five miles of Perche Creek mouth were stripped clean. Caught an 8lb channel cat on the other one. Upriver from those most of them were untouched, baits still kicking. Found a couple of baits that looked like they'd been turtled. The cut bait on the jug line was untouched. Water temp was 63° Friday afternoon, 61° Saturday morning. Not a lot of guys out there this weekend. We saw maybe a dozen other diddy pole sets and one jug line on the 12 miles of river that we fished. Two 10lb-ish silver carp jumped into my boat. Took them home and chunked em up to use for cut bait later on. Met a guy coming out who had a 100lb+ blue in his boat. There's a cruiser boat hung in the trees on the south bank just downstream from Lupus.

What's your definition of "running water"? Mean flows for this time of year are ~15kcfs. Right now it's running close to 40kcfs. I wouldn't want to be anywhere above the lock in a puddle jumper boat if it was running over 10kcfs. Below the lock it gets pretty lazy, but if you go down there on a weekend day when the weather is nice the pleasure boats/jet skis will ruin your day.

All of those reasons are why I bought a 3/4 ton Cummins. Go when I want to go, stop when I want to stop. My truck tows a lot of things besides the boat, and it tows them safely.

Wanna trade?

You nailed it right there. When I was boat shopping last year it was down to two. A Legend SS 1860 sled hull with a 2001 model Johnson 90 jet, and an Alweld 2060 semi-V with a 2012 model BRP 150 jet. The Legend was slick. Had new carpet, a nice wrap job, bimini top, and new paint on the trailer. Really a pretty little boat, but it looked like crap under the covers. Bilge was filthy, gas tanks were crap, fuel lines were crap, under the hood was all greasy and nasty, wiring was a mess, etc. The Alweld had a nice river scum patina and ugly blue carpeting. But it was clean where it should have been clean. Good wiring, onboard charger, and absolutely spotless under the hood. The Alweld was $3500 more than the Legend. Wife wanted me to buy the Legend. I said Alweld and I told her all the reasons why. She still said Legend. I bought the Alweld, and she's still mad about it, but I don't care. I made the right choice.

25 years ago I would have agreed with you on that. My boat-dragging days are over.

Where are you putting in? At normal flow levels your chances of getting to Bell Chute with a prop are slim and none. There are shoals on the Gasconade that will make a jet drive suck rocks.

If I was catching them like that I'd be posting every day. lol

^^^THIS^^^ Foot-control electric on the bow is also nice.

You definitely do not want to get sick and wind up in that backwoods hillbilly hospital in Bozeman. If you fall off the mountain or break your neck skiing they can patch you up just fine, but if you go in there sick you are doomed. Buried my best friend last fall because those people didn't know how to treat a simple case of pneumonia.

Drove down from CoMO yesterday. Hit the deluge and turned around to go back home, then said WTH we're this close, might as well go look at it. Got there and the radar said the rain was gong to stop soon so we sat in the truck and waited for awhile. Once the rain eased up we put the boat in. Easy enough - jet outboard and 4x4 truck. We had lots of company. Talked to a some guys with a LiveScope. They said the crappie were running away from their jigs. We were using minnows. Caught zero crappie. After about four hours said screw this and bailed out into the Tebo arm. Quickly figured out a largemouth bass pattern and caught a couple dozen keepers that all got tossed back into the lake. Had hopes to bring home some crappie but it was better than sitting on the couch listening to the ol lady whine about being stuck at home. I invited her to go, but "it's too cold".

I'm going to try it on Saturday. I'll report back with something that may or may not be the truth.

"Use the brake pedal, Bubba!!! No!!! The other brake pedal!!! Aw, dang it....."

Yep that's the one I was talking about. Looks like a decent spot to get away from the crowds?

It's hard to imagine that nobody knows what I'm talking about. Reckon I'll just have to drive out there and see for myself.

Use em on your sushi? Make caviar? I like to toss em into hot grease with the fillets. Also good mixed with philly cream cheese and chives then stuffed into a nice fat morel.

Looking at google maps - is that a gravel ramp at the west end of TT road near Brush Creek WMA?

Our VPN is good. Weak link for me is the DSL connection to ISP isn't super fast, but it's fast enough. I was hoping maybe to hit the Osage below Bagnell this weekend, but they've been running 36kcfs, and it doesn't look like there will be much of a let-up in that any time soon. Truman tailwater is twice the drive for me but might be a better bet. Gasconade is <1hr but it's a wreck right now. The only part of LOz I've ever fished is the upper 15-20 miles. Maybe it's time to start learning about the lower part of the lake?

Yep. I'm an IT guy so I've pretty much always got one laptop with me at home so I can take care of emergent issues. But one little screen isn't enough to be efficient at all day every day stuff. Now I'm set with three laptops, one desktop, and three big monitor screens. It's a 15 minute drive from her to the data center in the event I need to lay hands on something that's bad broke. So I'm good. Except for my office chair. The seats in my boat are more comfortable than this thing.

You're not wrong. Truman VA needs all hands on deck right now. With a known exposure wife couldn't go back to work without a negative test. They need her back so it is what is, right or not. We're in uncharted waters with this thing.

Thank you. This thing is nowhere close to being over.