merc1997 Bo

really makes a lot of sense. spend how many dollars to fix up the camp ground, play grounds, and swimming areas, and then close it up. we have a real bunch of idiots running our government. just like trying to shut down the ramps during the shut down back in the early fall. i just drove around or moved their signs and went fishing. viney creek is a really nice area, and is used by many during the summer. the corp does a lot of stupid things, like the shot rock they have put in. you can not pull up to the bank around the ramp. i watched a guy knock a hole in his boat on that stuff. the water was murky, and he had not been to that ramp since they had installed the rock. they need to install warning signs of the boulders that they have put in the water. well, now i will be in a bad mood the rest of the day with steam coming out the top of my head . bo

that bass sure looks fat and healthy. bo

first thought and question is have you checked the water level??? next, have you checked the specific gravity with a hydrometer??? answer those two questions, and then i could give you a better answer about your batteries. bo

hearing you speak of the texas beef not being what you liked, did you look at the grocery store? one of the grocery stores there in zapata had a quite good meat counter. Plus, they have great sales on their steaks. we usually stock up on new york strips and rib eyes before heading back home when we go down to do some fishing. they are as good or better than what can be had here in cassville for a whole lot less money. bo

i will give my two cents. this from experience since i was in the auto parts business for eons. the battery manufacture that we had the least warranty come backs was East Penn. our warranty return with them was less than 2%. that means when you sold a battery, you never saw it come back. East Penn supplies batteries to CarQuest and O'Reilly. They are the only batteries that held up for my trolling motor batteries. I usually got 4 to 5 years out of a set of group 31 trolling batteries when i fished all the time. you do have to check the water on trolling batteries and keep them topped off. a cranking battery will be a sealed battery. hope this might help. bo

thank you for sharing that. i had the fortune to sit and talk with glen on several occasions. he was so many light years ahead of anyone else fishing. there are many that lay claim to seasonal patterns, but glen andrews is truly the first to fully know and understand them. i have stored away someplace a book that glen wrote about seasonal patterns, and basic depths for different times of the year. the book was basically about table rock and bull shoals. but, those principals, i have applied to any body of water i have ever fished. when anyone asks me who i think is the best basser ever, glen andrews is my immediate answer. bo

here is what i have observed over the years about the passage of fronts. i really do not pay too much attention to how high the pressure got, but pay attention to what i call the "squint" factor. the squint factor has to do with the amount of uv present. i have seen very severe fronts go through and the bass never quit biting. so obviously, the pressure changes had little to do with shutting down the bite. what i have observed though is that when the bite is shut down, you squint so bad you can hardly get your eyes open. bass have no eye lids, and i think high uv amounts make them bury up someplace. ever notice on some overcast days that you have the same problem with squinting, and with the overcast sky that really should not be a problem. the reason for this making one squint is because of the amount of uv present which is due to the amount of moisture left in the air. this is nothing that is written in stone, or has some scientific study behind it, but just what i have reasoned out from my own observations. so for me, those days when the light for the day makes me squint really bad, i fish the heaviest cover that i can find, fish deeper, or find colored water. ever wonder why that even on the darkest night that sometimes a clear red worm will get more bites than traditional dark colors?? i believe it is the amount of uv present. i think that there are many mysteries about fishing that will not ever be solved. about the best we can do is to observe, deduce, and try experimenting. bo

are you not old enough yet to know to stay home???? i have been known to fish i some of that stuff, but not anymore. glad you got back in safely. bo

the table rock record is 12 lb. 3 oz. caught in the eagle rock area way back in 1963. there used to be a picture at the eagle rock boat dock for many years. i can not remember the name of the man that caught it. he had another bass that he caught right after the big one that was close to 10. as far as i know that is the biggest documented bass caught on table rock. believe me, back in the day, there were plenty of bass in table rock that would exceed 12 lb. i have seen a picture of two bass that were gigged out of the back of roaring river in the mid 60's. they photoed laying on a bathroom scale. one was 19 lb. and the other was 17 lb. they got eaten. i have held several dd bass in my hand, and the bass in that picture were definitely that big. i believe that the james river arm will probably hold the biggest bass in table rock at this time. it just has the most fertile water and the most food. of course, it also gets an enormous amount of fishing pressure. we are starting to see a few more 8 to 9 pound bass show up, but without some stocking programs, i just find it hard to believe that we will ever see table rock as it was before the fish kill. bo

jerk bait fishing is just the same as other types of baits. there are many variances in where to do it, and then what type of jerk bait. this time of the year, i have much more success on a long bill rebel or long bill rogue. you need jerk baits tuned three ways. one that will slowly sink, one that sits dead still, and one that will slowly rise. here is a break down of water temps. 43 an lower, used one that sinks. 44 to 48, use one that sits still. 49 and above, use one that slowly rises. of course there are always exceptions to the rule. if you are not getting bites, try one that does different than one you have been throwing. you need to "bob and weave" until you establish where your bites are coming from. some days, you will get bit on the bank, and some days will be out over deeper water. bluff ends and points are good places to try. some short bluff banks are worth exploring. as far as colors, on cloudy days, i usually do better on painted ones, and when the sun is out, one with some metallic finish. i usually use 8 to 10 lb. test mono. the one monkey wrench to throw into the equation is when the water temps get above 56 degrees, and then i will go to a "holy rogue". bud guthrie and bill willis from oklahoma shared this technique with me back in the 70's and it is still just as deadly today as it was then. there will be a few of you know what i am talking about and know just how good this technique can be. bo

my biggest lmb on the scales wa 9 lb. 12 oz. caught in a tournament. i caught one other bass that was much bigger than than one, but i caught it 50 ft. deep and we did not have a scale, and i did not want to put it in the livewell because that would have killed it. my biggest kentucky was 5 lb. 8 oz. biggest smallie was also 5 lb. 8 oz. and it was also in a tournament. back in 1981 mike sowders and i weighed in a 12 bass limit that weighed 62 lb. norman boles and i weighed in a 10 bass limit in an april tournament that weighed 52 lb. 11 oz. the fish kill just really took a toll on table rock. i do believe that we are getting some bigger bass back in the lake again, but they are also open water feeders, and that is due to fishing pressure, and the loss of timber. bo

i am glad you mentioned glen andrews. he forgot more about fishing that most of us will ever know. it would be scary what he might catch with the new electronics we have today. he was truly a natural born basser. i learned a lot from glen. bo

thank you from eliminating the noise of the air boats. bo

nope, see through with a bunch of pictures of minnows inside. the more minnows the better right???hahaha. bud, you could hang those on your umbrealla rig, and then have a whole school of shad. bo

mud on table rock does tend to put bass up shallow. the trick in the colder mud is to figure out where and what. this extreme cold is going to put a hold on much of any bite for a while. need a week of warm up, and then things might pick up. bo

there are a few years when the majority of the bass will spawn in april, but not many. most of the time, the biggest wave of spawners will be in may. so, for daytime fishing, it will be a big variety of things that will work. sight fishing, if you like doing that will be what many people will be doing the first part of may. tubes work great for this technique, and a drop shot can be effective also. i have seen times that a jig and chunk worked well. there are just lots of ways that will catch bass the first part of may. i am really a poor one to give advice about daytime fishing. because of all the boats on the water anymore, except in the winter, i go more at night, and i usually do not need anymore than a couple of jigs and some trailers and go fishing. enjoy your trip here. bo

yes, but a rocker head twin spin, the head is not solid to the wire. the rocker head works much better, at least for me. bo

you do have more gizzard shad on loz than threadfin. however, big bass do hang out with the gizzard shad, and can be caught. swimming big grubs of blg bladed single spins are a couple of methods that come to mind that will work. i think there might be times that one of your big worms might do the trick around those gizzard shad schools. it is something that will require some time trying different techniques to catch those suspended bass. one other bait that i have success on dealing with bass suspended around gizzard shad is a rocker head twin spin. most people do not even know what that bait is, but it is a big bass bait. it is better known for winter fishing, but it is also effective in the summer. bo

that was really a nice bunch of bass. remember the hardest thing to do in catching a bass is to be able to locate them. no one can catch one if they are not putting their lure in front of one. great job in locating them. that is the hardest part. bo

from what little i ever fish beaver, you have to get up toward prairie creek to begin seeing any significant large size shad schools. this probable has to do with stripers. i have found areas of shad schools in the dam area of beaver, but it was not often. i just really believe bass fishing really suffers on beaver because of stripers. a long time ago, they also put stripers in bull shoals. it, just as beaver, got to where you could not catch a bass. they finally quit stocking them, and when they died off and got caught out, the rest of the fishery came right back. in the next two or three years, i believe bull shoals will become one of the best fisheries in the country again. why?? because of the tremendous spawns that have occurred during all the years of high water. plus, it just does not receive the fishing and boating pressure that table rock does. bo

yep, last year, many of the shad never got more than 10 ft. deep. that usually does not happen, but that was the case last year. bo

champ just from my experience winter bassing, i have observed the shad staying quite deep until the water temps hit around 45 and they they seem to break up and come up. shell knob and up maybe not so much, but cambell point down it has been deep water fishing. after turn over, the shad and bass can be pretty much any where in the water column. this year, we have had quite a bit of very cold percipatation, that will push down the warmer water as it settles. any way, a bass is just as comfortable at 60 ft. as it is in 6 inches. i am always just glad to get a bite regardless of depth. hope you catch them. bo

bill you are experiencing the very thing i have been doing for a lot of years now. bass do like to keep their prey trapped, and they will most definitely stay underneath and above the shad, or sometimes all above the shad. i think this definitely goes along with my observation of bass becoming more open water feeders, as we get more fishing pressure and less cover. what i have discovered about the bigger bass is that they love to either wait on the bottom, or suspend in a tree if available, and wait for the smaller fish to push shad by them. i have marked bass in a tree on many occasions, and not be able to get them to bite, but when the shad come by, they get very catchable. one other thing that i have found is that white bass are better shad herders and black bass. most of the time, not all, but usually, when you get into a good school of whites, there are good blacks in the area. why?? because they are lazy and let the whites do all the work. that was some really good graph pictures for everyone to learn from, that probably have seen the same thing, but never really realized just what they were looking at. everyone is going to have to become more proficient with open water feeders. i just struggle when they are too shallow in the water column to see them on the electronics. guess this might be where side imaging would help. thanks for sharing the graph pics. folks, what bill just shared, and with not anyone getting the exact answer to what was going on, is a good example that all of us can get more out of our electronics than what we do. it was not so much seeing the bass slashing through the shad, but understanding just exactly what they were doing and why. very good educational thread bill. bo

i went fishing yesterday for a few hours and found just as you stated, shad but not really any fish around them. we did catch some bass though. here is something to try next time you see the same scenario. go adjacent to where the shad are, and begin to fish the bottom. i have found over the years that many times when you are not seeing bass with the shad, they will many times be laying flat to the bottom adjacent to the shad flat on the bottom. sometimes you have to try a variety of baits to figure out what it take to trigger a strike, but you can catch some doing this. a spoon banging up and down on their head works a lot of the times. i will also resort to dragging a gizit or a heavy jig. sometimes you are going to find a big area of shad without any bass in the area, but not often. so, as with my trip yesterday, i knew there were bass in the area because i had caught them before. so, when there were none to be had with the shad schools, i just started bottom banging at the same level the shad were. what we caught were 65ft. deep. the channel in the area was 80ft., and the shad were hanging right over the channel. just some food for thought next time you are out. bo

bill since you have brought up the fact for those that did not really know that crawdads went deep, lets talk a bit further about the food chain. bill and i have both talked many times about following shad schools. shad remains that go to the bottom is a great food source for crawdads. find areas where the bass have been feeding heavily on shad, and fish the bottom with jig. this is especially so on a flat adjacent to the channel where bass have pushed the shad up onto during a feeding spree. this is also a great summer pattern to remember. many time these crawdad feeders will be better quality bass also. i just posted a video a couple weeks ago on you tube fishing with a jig. bass can be seen in the area chasing shad clear up to the surface. but, i am fishing a jig on the bottom underneath where all the activity is going on. these bass were caught from 45 to 25 feet deep. think about food source and how the food chain operates, and it will help in the process of finding bass. bo