rps

This may sound cynical so I apologize in advance. Does anyone really think zebra mussels will not eventually wind up in all the Missouri or Arkansas lakes and streams? It only takes one thoughtless person to infect a lake or river, and, as the posts on this board report, there are way more than one of those. That does not mean you shouldn't take preventative steps. It only means we should not kid ourselves.

Mr. Agnew has clearly stated the run and gun method that has helped a number of good fishermen win big deal tournaments. Other fishermen use the thorough, slow entice method. Both work, and both are right. Al: do you make your own twin spins? I do and would be glad to share/trade with you. Anyone else still fish twin spins?

Amen.

The wife and I traveled to Hog Heaven this morning. We wanted to get a little paddle in before the students fill our classrooms on Wednesday. Met Russ for the first time in person. Nice guy everyone. If you want to float/fish the Elk or either of the Sugars, use him. We did the 6 miles down from his place to the trestle bridge. Many people on the river, although most were quite well behaved. There isn't enough water in the river right now to lash six boats together and party down. That may help. Two observations: First, there are many preople out there that have opted for tatoos measured in acres. Now, don't get me wrong, the daughters have tats and I don't object. It's just that the norm has definitely changed from when I was young. Second, how does Russ, or any operator on the rivers, keep from killing those who throw cans and bottles in the river? Next time I go I will wear swim wear and bring a recycle bag. No extra floatation device sightings.

Handsome fish. Chunky fish. Call it 6 and no one will argue. I love the summer when the fish colors become so dark.

I fished early Saturday with mixed results. The topwater bite was minimal - four short bass, two perch, and two small white bass. I caught one nice keeper on a jig/lizard from 20 feet. I had another pickup but missed that fish. How do you miss a fish that is carrying your jig rigged plastic around? After the sun came out I had no more bites on the jig. I did some scouting and found schools of fish hanging in 28 to 40 feet of water just off the breakpoints where flats fell into the channel. These schools did not want my spoon so I started to troll flat edges. I caught three more short bass and two very large white bass. No walleye. The white bass were both up on the flats in 26 feet of water or so. Martins post suggests I should have spent more time up on the flat instead of working the edge. Boat traffic became intense by noon. I kept the two whites but returned all else. If you take the red meat off white bass or stripers, the remaining fillet is very good in fishburgers.

Sorry guys. Dry rub rules. See the BBQ threads in the recipe section and add sauce, in small amounts, after the cooking.

As you know, overruns are the result of the spool spinning faster than the line is pulled through the guides by the bait. Baits with air resistance - spinnerbaits, jigs with fat trailers, etc. - are especially bad for this. Casting into the wind can have the same effect. The extra oomphh casts, of course, are the ones that are most likely to make this happen as the oomphh means the difference between starting spool speed and the lure fly speed is greater. People who first learned on old fashioned direct drive reels, like me, have an advantage as we learned the very hard way to feather the reel speed with our thumbs. Centrifigal and magnetic brakes help, but you still need to learn how and when to feather the spool. One trick I use is to turn my wrist over so the handle points at the sky before and during the cast. (In the old days people and books taught this to minimize spool friction and to aid in accuracy.) For some reason, probably very old muscle memory, this helps me actively feather the spool. You might try it and see if it works for you. BTW, anyone who says they never overrun can't be trusted with your money.

techo: I had forgotten you did the same thing. See there, you have thrashed me (so far) this year at walleye fishing.

Martin: Do not feel alone. I haven't had a great day this year for walleye. One here, one there, and none over 22 - 23 inches. Good heavens, the best walleye I've seen this year was an accident fish a bass fisherman caught on a spinnerbait in early April. I intend to give another try this weekend. I'll report one way or another.

First - utmost respect to every one here. Second - this board is not representative of the public nor of the average of those who fish any body of water. Therefore, any consensus from here bears no relationship to what the public or the average fisherman would want. C and R, even if sound conservation, is elitist and exclusionary. Especially if it is a single, barbless hook C and R. Any proposal which extends the single, barbless hook C and R section restricts the access of the very large majority of the public. Naturally, they will not like this, and those who live off their trade will oppose such a measure. I am sorry, but on this topic I disagree with many on the board. I practice C and R, but I oppose expansion of mandatory single barbless hook C and R beyond what presently exists.

Check out Mid South Walleye and the Lake Stockton forums. Several OAF members are hardcore walleye fishermen, but most also write on the other forum. I fish walleye on upper Table Rock, not LOZ, so I can't help you with lake specific questions. I post what I learn each trip in the Table Rock forum. Good Luck.

Don't know what the drawdown has done to Beaver, but as far as I am concerned, you can have your water back. Here at Holiday Island, the cold water and rise changed all the patterns. Does anyone besides me think it a bit unbelieveable that the perfect time to draw down Beaver just happened to be when electricity would sell for the most?

I left Holiday Island at 5:40 this morning, headed for normal water. The Beaver generation has water temps here in chaos. I was thinking to myself how much I enjoy putting the first wake on the lake. Wrong. I passed two boats on the way to Eagle Rock, there was a boat launching at the state park there, and the walleye style Ranger was on the flat at Roaring River when I arrived. I fished three locations in Roaring River where I have caught numerous topwater fish. Zip. Nada. Not even a miss. I jig fished back out of the river. Still zero. I continued to fish soft plastics on good locations. I didn't break the skunk until nearly 9:30, when I took a spot on a creature I dragged off a point into a 60 foot channel near Panther Creek. If you know the area, you know where I mean. The fish was at least 30 feet deep when he took the bait. Once I had the skunk broken, I started trolling for walleye. Lost several baits but found no walleye. Only caught a couple of spots trolling, both small. i concentrated on the 26 to 33 foot depths and marked numerous fish. I just wasn't offering what they wanted, I guess. Every one with a big wake boat was out today. The wind didn't even begin to keep them away. Plenty of PWC also, but I'm getting to where I hardly notice them unless they are close enough to splash me. However, those wake boats leave you no chance to ignore them. If you don't pay attention, they'll rock you right out of your boat. I begin teacher in service tomorrow and my first day with students is Wednesday next week. All the other local schools will start within a week of when we do. The boat traffic should decrease after that. In other words, my chance for weekday mornings is over, but yours should improve soon.

Tell me, do I look ok in this deep green color?

Very high quality Phil. Hope it brings you year round "no vacancy." It made me think. I've never actually fished Taney. Stayed on its banks, yes. Watched my little girls wade in it, yes. Driven over it, many times. But never fished it. One of these days I will have to actually give it a try. Guess that means the web site is doing what you had in mind, right?

You are right , it is funny. However, I actually meant the phrase. You see, my ride is an Xpress HD18CC (aluminum 18 foot center console) with a 97 inch beam, a 68 inch bottom and minimal dead-rise at the transom. Very dry, very stable, so wide that when I fall down I almost always land in the boat, but not fast. I can barely break the night time speed limit with my 2 stroke Yammy 90. On the plus side, I can fish 2 or 3 days on one fill up of 17 gallons.

Like other professions, guiding is one where the time, advice, and knowledge are the commodity for sale. Tagging without paying a fee is theft, plain and simple. My problem is that even if I pay the tag fee, I can't keep up. 90 hp on a fat bottom boat. Great boat for my purposes but not a guide or tournament boat. If I tried to duplicate Bill's route yesterday I would still be on the lake.

First, an update on water temp at this end. Believe it or not the temp is back up. Not as warm as down lake (83/84) but much warmer than earlier in the week. Just outside Holiday Island Marina this morning it was 71 and when I came back in it was 76. I do not know why unless Beaver ran out of cold water to send us. If that is the case then the trout upstream from here will be crying - as will the trout fishermen. Early I fished a Spook Jr. with no success. I changed to a knucklehead (jointed chugger) and got one keeper spot just outside Stubblefield Branch. I ceased fishing on top around 8:00 and began throwing a twin tail grub on a football head jig. I had several hits that I missed and caught one keeper largemouth in 20 plus feet of water on a point not far from Eagle Rock. I would have fished deeper, but this far up, 50 feet is the middle of the main river channel at Eagle Rock. I then marked 200 yards of the channel edge near Eagle Rock with buoys and fished the edge with a white jigging spoon. I might have had one hit, but no connection. I then trolled that marked section and caught a third keeper, a spot. I also had a very large fish - looked like a walleye - on for several minutes. Based on experience the fish was over five and probably closer to seven pounds. I saw only one flash. The hooks pulled out before I could see more or officially count the fish. The trolling fish hit a white reef runner deep diver (actually a Cabela's knock off) on 145 feet of Power Pro 10 pound braid. Dive charts say the bait was running 29/30 feet deep. The fish were in little stick ups on the channel edge. Boat traffic was heavy for a weekday. Even putting out the buoys to show where I was fishing didn't slow the boaters down. I guess I'm lucky they didn't ask me to set out more for a slalom course?

A large portion of Rim Shoals is protected water - catch and release and you must use a single barbless hook lure. See this link: http://www.rimshoals.com/rim_shoals_at_a_glance.htm It is a great area and the area above and below the protected water is very good also. Try 4 pound Maxima or Yozuri green. Try jigs in green, brown and white. (be sure to mash the barb down really well for the C and R area) Outside the C and R also try suspending Rogues and Crawdad colored shad raps. Have fun.

On Tuesday morning I went out early. The water surface temp in front of Holiday Island Marina was 59 - 62 degrees, depending on whether you were in the flow. I scooted downstream past Eagle Rock. By then the temp was up to 81. I fished between Owl and Rock Creek. On the third cast this one hit my spook. I got excited and took the picture. Two hours later I had zero more fish and only a couple of taps on my beaver style grub. I essentially trolled home. Caught two midget walleye and close to a dozen spots. Two of those were near the same size as the picture. The fish I caught were 26 to 30 feet deep on inside bend flat edges. I maybe need to go deeper for the keeper walleye. In the afternoon, the water in front of Holiday Island was still only 63.

When we used to catch stripers on Keystone and Texoma in Oklahoma, the large ones tended to die after the fight. It was like they over-stressed. As a result, we rarely fished for more than one. After all, a 32 pound striper is a lot of meat. I assume you do not see the same thing here. Anyone have any idea why?

When I read techo's post, for some reason, I thought he was talking about how long it would be before our lake was back to "normal." Not that there is a normal. Before the water discharge the fish were NOT behaving like last year or the year before. My post was a whistling in the dark type thing. I figured if I said I would figure the changes out, maybe it would happen. Assuming, of course, I am not drowned by the PWC and wake boat traffic. I have said it before and will continue to say it. It is time to give up this namby pamby stuff about DDT and spray where they breed. I am going out in the morning. Bound to be safer than Sunday. If I find anything other than traffic, I will post.

IMO soft plastic colors that work on white river lakes: watermelon/red, watermelon candy, junebug, smoke and what was originally called motoroil - a semi translucent brown purple The guys at hook, line, and sinker enjoy a good reputation for knowing Beaver. I bet they will share information easily. The c rig suggestion is a good one. Good Luck.

The fish take a day or two to adjust. We need longer to figure out what they have done. That means we are smarter than they are, right? When I get stricken with smarter than the fish, I will share.