merc1997 Bo

the bridge piers would work, but you would tear up everything you have with all the big boat traffic going through there. the big wakes off the big boats makes fishing under lights very hard to do on the lower end of table rock. you would at the least be taking on water a good portion of the night, and a good chance of breaking your anchor rope, and that is not good to have happen after you are set up and have bait and fish under you. bull shoals is another great place to fish under the lights. bo

that is some really nice eyes!! good job. bo

often times there is nothing like the real thing, and that is minnows. we often fish under the lights on beaver during the summer to catch whites and stripers. we normally put out two halogens, and green tube light. for bait, we use about three sizes of shad netting to catch the shad that gather up under our lights. we usually take some creek minnows to get started with, but they are not as good as the shad that the fish are feeding on. you deed to try different depths until you find the active zone. fishing under lights at night is relaxing and great fun! bo

i went yesterday afternoon up the kings to do some filming. we ended up catching 8 bass with three keepers. we ended up catching the on a 9" lake fork trophy lures ring worm rigged on a 3/16 NuJig head. they were all pretty much on the bank. i felt like the front had them shut down quite a bit. there is a bit of water tint up the kings. i was noticing some very strange stuff going on in the water column on the graph though. some areas the bottom 15ft. you could not see anything. just like the thermocline had settled to the bottom, meaning the screen was completely full of clutter at that depth. further down stream i saw the same thing my the layer was suspended and covered up 20 to 35 ft. this could have a lot to do with the bass in that area being so screwy in location. bo

fishing tonight was not too bad. we started at dark and quit about 12:45 and ended up with 10 keepers. none would have made three pounds, but several 15 1/2 to 16 inch. the senko accounted for three keepers, and a jig the other 7. all of the better bass came on the jig. caught most everything 20 to 25 feet. bass are still not on flatter structure that i can find. everything we caught was on very steep stuff. bass do seem to be moving out deeper. do not know just how the cold snap will affect the bite. bo

wow!! really nice trip. with the cooler weather coming, that bite might keep getting better. bo

hair jigs do have a time and place. of course, people in this area know of how effective hair jigs can be in cold water situations. however, we are at a time right now that the hair jig can be utilized, and that is because bass are turning their focus to shad. a hair jig coupled with a slender trailer is just as or more effective than a plastic worm. the hair jig creates a slender profile and coupled with a slender trailer more resembles a shad. hair jigs are one of those staples that you should keep in your tackle arsenal. bo

jay, as long as the fish do not have the bends, they will take off good as new, and seek cooler water if desired. bass are cold blooded, so the issue is O2 levels and bends. with bends, that is the beauty of having your livewell temps 10 to 12 degrees cooler than the water they came out of. gas is expanded by either pressure or temperature. we are expanding the air bladder on deep fish by pressure change. i know many fizz the bass, but temperature control is much less invasive and just as effective. i use this same system on winter fish, and never have any with expanded air bladders that prevent them from swimming off. bo

bill, i have not fished the mill creek tournament on a regular basis for a number of years, but back when kelly williamson and i did, they started lowering the limit brought in mainly because most coould not catch an 8 fish limit. the reasoning was to cut down on dead fish. but, those that were bringing in the dead bass all the time were not the ones that brought in 8 bass limits. the key to not killing bass this time of the year is to care enough to take care of them in the livewell. your livewell temps need to be 58 to 60 degrees. leave your recirculator pump running continuously, add a bubbler system to your livewell. after adding a bubbler system to my livewell, i do not even have to run the recirculator. i like the 4 bass limit because it really makes you fish for 4 quality bites. it really changes how you fish. bo

siusaluki i have used a lighter jig with the addition of a slip sinker on the line for eons. i only peg it if i am flipping. here is a list of why this is a deadly technique. 1. i rarely ever use a t-rig anymore. why?? because a NuJig is more weedless, hooks more accutately than a bare hook, and allows you to fish soft plastics with an exposed hooks. 2. the reason for using a slip sinker on the line with a lighter jig is profile related. smaller heads blend in with worms or smaller plastic offerings. therefore looking more natural. so, when added weight is needed for deeper water or a faster fall rate, you just add the slip sinker size to get the needed weight. 3. often times bass are keying on smaller profile food. so, when we are fishing a skirted jig, but are fishing 30 feet deep, most everyone reaches for a jig with a heavier head. but, this provides a profile that is bigger than what the bass are willing to eat. so, to solve the problem, you only use a 1/4 to 3/8 jig, and add the needed weight slip sinker to the line to get the required fall rate. depth and speed are most certainly the most important things to get a bass to strike. but, lure profile can also be a big factor. there are times in the later part of the summer that big bass, especially, key on bigger meals. this is when big worms or crawdads are very effective. but, there are many times that a smaller profile bait will fill the livewell. hope this explanation will help. bo

i just looked at the mill creek results, and they are now fishing a 4 fish limit, and 12.52 won, and right at 9 lbs. was in the money. fish are still scattered and bites are sparse. you can see that from the tournament results, and a lot of the participants are very good fisherman. i really believe that the bite back this way is pretty much the best on the lake right now. i am basing that on what i have been catching to what others have been doing fishing from shell knob to the dam. over the last two weeks the bites have been getting progressively deeper. of course, that might change with the weather too. someone was telling me that we had some really cool weather coming soon. nothing like hunting them up every trip. bo

fished from big m to the mouth of the kings last night. bites were a ways apart for us, but we did end up with six that were keepers, but nothing better than 3 lbs. we did catch most of the bass deeper last night between 20 to 25 feet. two of the keepers were kentuckies. everything we caught last night came on senko type baits rigged on a 3/16 NuJig with a 3/16 slip sinker on the line. tried skirted jigs with trailer, worms of various types and sizes, beaver style baits, and brush hogs, but not bite. should have thrown nothing but the senkos. bo

i watched one of the bow hunters come right up on another fisherman last night around the mouth of the kings. he may have got a talking to because he did not head on any further our way. if he had, i may have been the one to have hooked the biggest carp sucker for the night, lol. bo

great trip!!! you all caught some really nice ones! bo

nice pic quill. fin and feathers, sounds like you had a nice trip! will those same fish hit any sort of drop shot?? or, they just ignore it?? the size of the ned is similar in size but fatter. and, when i am talking drop shot, i am talking about casting and dragging the bait, not vertical fishing. that piece of senko might work on a drop shot rig dragging was what was going through my mind. keep whacking them. bo

we did see several boat moving around while fishing last night and figured they were from the tourney. when i fished in the kings monday night, we caught the bulk of what we caught in a jig and a senko. bite depth was about the same as yours. i did try spinners for a bit, but did not have a bite. just seems like the fish are not roaming and chasing. we did not start fishing until just before dark, and the bulk of the bite seemed to be over by 11:30, but we fished until a bit after 1. that shell knob tourney is a bear with only 4 hours to gather something up. you can not hick up or you are in trouble, lol. pretty night last night. bo

fished the big m area tonight. fish bit decent until about 11:30. ended up with 8 keepers, but they were all just 15 to 15 1/2 inch fish. did catch about a 10 lb. gar. the bass are starting to get deeper. most bites were 15 to 20 ft. tonight. all of the bass we caught were bluff or steeper bank related. did not have on bite out on anything relatively flat. jigs and senkos got most of them. you just about have to put the troller down and fish until you get a bite, and then slow down and fish that area over pretty well. seems like you will get 3 to 5 more, and then it is back to covering water. bo

bill these have been mostly on the lower end from baxter to the dam. guess i need to take time out from the lure business to get out during the middle of the day to do some graphing. graphing at night is much harder to really get a good picture because it is harder to see detail from the thermocline up at night. perhaps the newer units do a better job. i have noticed you speaking of the lake having lots of gizzard shad, especially up this way. i have not really noticed them yet, but from past experience when we did have lots of them, big bass love them. we used to purposely hunt areas with them when searching for big bass, as big bass love them. an friend that lives on loz targets the big main channel gizzard shad schools there for bigger bass. he uses 8 and 9 inch grubs and swims them in those areas where he has graphed the gizzard shad and bass with them. he states that these particular bass will feed below the thermocline, but it will be brief periods of feeding. since you are seeing so many gizzards makes me wonder if this is where a good majority of what bigger bass we have are hanging out. it is something that i am going to think about since you are seeing so many gizzard shad. one the ways that we used to find areas that had lots of gizzards at night, years ago, was to idle around with a spot light and shake it on the surface of the water. if there are any in the area near the surface, they will go to jumping. when you hit the right area, it was time to fish!! the ones suspended in open water and not associated with trees were much harder to catch. as electronics go, i am not familiar with how the newer units signature different species. on the old paper graphs, bass and carp signatured the same, but whites, crappie, shad and perch all made very different marks, and i could tell the difference in them. even on most run of the mill, lower cost graphs, whites usually make more of a blotch instead of a typical hook. i do know that the better units now give amazing pictures and you can find in minutes what took the old timers lots of time finding. thanks for the info you share. i hope fisherman are digesting your info and utilizing it to help them find fish. finding them is the always the hard part. much harder than catching them. i had a hard time catching anything monday night in the kings and tracy was fishing around old 86 and had the same experience. i was then looking at the lake level, and noticed that during the time period that we were fishing the lake level was going up and down 1 to 2 tenths like a yo-yo. that never makes for a good bite. i think how much the corp is starting and stopping water from here, and how much is being run in from beaver can have a negative affect on the bass doing anything normal also. bo

i was out last night in the kings river area. bites were very scattered still. ended up with 4 keepers, and the average depth of the bites was about 15 ft. those that have been out before dark are telling me that there is tons of fish suspended out on the lake 20 to 25 ft. i believe these fish are following the shad. true, we do have some bass eating crawdads on the bottom, and those are what we are catching. a friend of mine caught a 6.75 saturday night, and it was skinny as a rail. still beat up from spawning. i still feel that we are running about 1 month behind normal. this is july and the fish i am catching are at june levels. big bass anymore are very hard to come by, and with the dwindling amount of good timber, it is very hard to pattern them at all. fishing on the upper end for now seems to be the better and most consistent bite, at least for me. that will change as we begin to have summer weather, and the late spawners begin to eat again. bo

do not know one thing about you, and hopefully you are courteous to others on the water by not boating too close and throw your wake over into another boat. but, there are many things going on on the water that need a stop put to. since head are turned the other way for things line jet skies, then perhaps it is open season for breaking the law. jet skies are not the only problem. i have read several responses about how the docks are getting torn up. of those docks, how many boats in the slips, and how many are wake makers. table rock is too narrow for big wakes to dissipate enough before running into something, and especially when the boat making the big wake drives by within casting distance. so, no, we are not "douches". some people still have some common sense. bo

you know what?? i guess i never saw them just like they did not see me sitting there fishing, right?? bo

i always wonder about every time that i go fishing if anyone is working anymore. the lake is always busy. bo

bill, sorry about how your day went, but now you know what i have been yelling about for quite a few years now. we definitely need to have a boat, on the water, operators driving test. and it really needs to be conducted on a busy lake. not only should the test to be following rules of the road, but also to see if the operator is running the vessel in safe water at all times. it is actually a miracle that there are not more accidents than what we have. bo

bill, do not give up hope. i still believe a lot of bass spawned very late or not at all. i know of some very skinny bass being caught a week or so ago in long creek. they were very beat up. also, with the lake rise we had, it further scattered the bass. some moved back in coves and pockets, and there are lots of some kind of fish suspended out in open water. of course, those shad chasers do not have to get in a tree or near the bottom. i am starting to see a trend of bass moving out a bit deeper now, or at least we are getting bit in the 15 to 20 ft. range at night, where the norm had been bank out to 15. as more and more bass become open water feeders, they will become harder to catch. bo

you did good!!!! bo