zander

I think the water will be fine and I'll be swimming in it as will my family this summer. And Cajunangler..... I hope you aren't serious. In the ten years I spent living in Louisiana, I only got sick from the water once, and that was after I spent 8 hours wading through a beaver swamp marking timber for the forestry company I worked for. I swam in countless bayous, creeks, lakes, and the Red River. (EDIT- Cajunangler I reread your post and saw that you WERE kidding after all, thank the Lord, I was getting worried ) This water up here is infinitely cleaner in my opinion. But maybe it is a good thing people are talking about the water being "dirty", maybe that way it won't be as crowded for me as it was last year.

from the page : http://www.basszone.com/2007eliteseries/cl.../day3/story.htm "Paul Elias has made his bones with a crankbait. Coming to clear lake where tennis shoe-sized swimbaits rule the water, Elias doesn’t sway – he’s still fishing a crankbait." So I am guessing it is one of those huge swim baits you see on tv all the time.

Also we don't have to have transitional fossils for every transition to demonstrate a relationship. Look to comparative embryology. It is the activation and surpression of gene expression over time that causes animals (and plants) to distinguish themselves physically as we (they) mature. Different proteins get made, varying levels of mRNA floating around in the cytosol, etc ad nauseum. It is not easy to understand. BioChem 5763 convinced me I wasn't PhD material. I have never understood the resistance to evolution. Why? It doesn't make you something you are not. It isn't personal. You can't help it, and no one will blame you for descending from your ancestors. It wasn't your choice. Study it, try to understand it, and if you can't, ask questions until you can. Case in point. Big controversy when I was in college about the evolution of birds. Did they evolve from dinosaurs or from a line of aboreal reptiles? My professor thought it ridiculous to think that they could evolve from highly specialized terrestrial dinosaurs. Several lectures worth of reasoning on how this is so unlikely etc. As the years passed, more and more evidence came down on the side of the dino lineage for birds. Half of the ornithologists in the world had to eat crow (bad pun I know). That is the beauty of science, it is accepting of sound evidence. It is a court of reason with limitless appeals. We have been looking for fossils for maybe 170 years. It is not surprising we haven't found all of the transitionals. We discover new species of animals and plants still each year as well. Read about the founder effect and it will make more sense to everyone without getting bogged down in the molecular aspect of it.

I was worried about the weather this morning, but it looked like the storm line had passed so my father and I hit the Rock about 8:00 AM. Having studied Mr. Babler's posts like a textbook, I had my maps prepared with the focus of hitting points facing south where the wind would be hitting. It was one thing to do it all on paper, quite another to do it on the water. The wind was blowing pretty good with white caps. We were fishing the Kimberling Area. The wind shifted from the south to the west and the trolling motor couldn't overpower the wind. We adapted our strategy (Bill's strategy) to have the wind drift us over these flats off the wnd of the points. Just as Bill said there were the fish, suspended in 8-25 ft of water. After trying the grubs, I started to feel desperate and put a nightcrawler on the end of a 1/4 oz fb jig head. First cast with that drifting over a point I caught my first Table Rock bass in 25 years a nice fiesty smallie. My father had a salt-n-pepper worm on a jig head and then he got a fish on but evidently the fish didn't have a hold of the business end of the bait. After that my father switched to crawlers on jig head and the next drift he caught a 2 - 2 1/2 lb Kentucky. At this time, we felt like we had it all figured out, and it felt pretty good. Evidently the fish were starting to figure us out too though. We missed several more K's before we tried to find a simliar point elsewhere. Unfortunately we never did locate another producing point. By this time we were both drenched and pounded from the waves so we called it a day around 1:30 PM. So my hats off to you Mr. Babler, your advice really paid off breaking a loooooong dry spell on TRL for us. Water temp 60 around Kimberling 61 by Point 7 stained visiblity 2 - 2 1/2 feet.

We were planning on going down fishing Friday and Saturday, I hope the walleye won't be fished out by then.

So many good points, but I have been too slammed at work to respond to. Through college and grad school, I came to understand what science really is. My genetics professor explained it to me the best. Science is the search for the best possible explanation of what we can observe over time. It is not infalliable, in fact, it is great because we can advance with it. That being said, there is a great amount of misunderstanding with the use of scientific terms such as theory, law, hypothesis, etc. Physics and chemistry get to have lots of "laws". Not so much in biology. The closest we can come to that is the Theory of Evolution. This simply states that over time there can be differences in the frequency of genes. If the gene frequency changes in a population over time, badda bing it has evolved by the biological definition. Micro-evolution and macro-evolution (monkey to man kinda thing) are just differences in the breadth of the period of time examined. What about "missing links?" Well if I try to research my family history it appears as if my family spontaneously appeared in NW Ark in the 1840's. They had to come from somewhere and there might be records available to prove that, but as of yet, I have not found them. Records get lost and are hard to find. Fossils are hard to make and hard to find. Conditions have to be just right. Then the fossil has to survive, and not be eroded or destroyed before discovery, and oh yes, discovery, someone has to find it. The study of molecular relationships is really neat stuff. Molecular phylogeny I believe it is termed, this is where the most exciting work is being done right now. Remember that science is the search for the best possible explanation for things that are observed. If it changes that is great, it just means we have advanced our understanding. And I would love to tell you that scientists get along very well and that is why they present such a unified front when it comes to evolution. But anyone who has spent time in academia would call me out as a liar. They disagree bitterly. These guys have egos. The fact that they can generally all agree on something does make it noteworthy. There have been some really good points made. Just remember not every evolutionist is an athesist. And Miocene trout had big snagglely teeth that would make you want to want to give up your waders.

When I lived in Louisiana I caught lots of them and the Cajuns were always happy to take them off my hands, they called them "gaspargou" I caught them by the edges of fast water and slower water, deep eddies and places like that. They fight pretty good, wish they tasted the way they fought.

I am fishing Lake Springfield more than Taney unfortunately. It just isn't the same for some strange reason

I was going to stay out of this one but I decided to chime in anyway. I feel I am qualified to speak on it since I grew up as a preacher's kid and did work for the USDA and Oklahoma State University as a molecular biologist. It is much easier to pick one side or the other. It is easy to say "Evolution didn't happen" or "It is all random." Some of the best biochemists and molecular biologists, even ecologists, were devout Christians (actually there were quite a few Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists I worked with as well). For me, even though I wasn't the best science mind in the dept., I could still understand how truly amazing evolution is. I also never doubted for a second how amazing God is. To me, two truths can not contradict each other. God is creative, has lots of time, evolution seems to fit. Some have said what is the use of creating (I use that term loosely) species only to have them go extinct? We can not understand everything, it may be that those extinct species had some effect on the evolution of others that are still a part of our world today. Faith and reason don't have to be dissimiliar, it is just the easiest way to make them such.

wade fishing is pretty much impossible, even if you had stilts in your waders. the trout are big though.

yes I understand the gates are open, but I will be spin fishing from the bank, I may not catch anything, but it has been the goal of having that time down there that has gotten me through the work week from Hades.

ok thanks, any idea on how long the TU meeting will last, Phil?

I am going to the TU meeting tmw night that starts at 7:00PM. My wife and son are going to be in Europe all next month visiting her family and I do want to spend time with them before they go, but I also want to fish. She was wanting to be at the outlet malls in Branson while I fished before and during the TU meeting. I don't know how long the meeting will last and I don't know how long the malls stay open. I feel a little selfish, but I would rather them not go in case the fishing is good I can fish after the TU meeting as well. Any info that could help me?

I know he is not that close to you, but I would recommend Leonard of Taneycomo Nights. Before I met him, I was always hooking myself in the right ear on my back casts, but after his guidance, I can now hook myself in either ear at will. Seriously, if you ever get a chance to come up to Branson, you'll want to have Leonard take you out. Not only will he put you with a lot of fish, you'll learn a lot too.

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...KING01/80422028

Redneckians 4:13 With duct tape all things are possible

Do you think that all of these walleye came over the dam or could they be what was left of the original White River walleye before Table Rock Dam? It wouldn't surprise me if these were walleye from Lower Taney that moved up in response to the massive current. I am looking forward to Friday to get some fishing in before and after the TU meeting.

The flurry of postings about open ramps led me to wonder if the Corp had elevations of their ramps listed anywhere on their website. Unfortunately for us, TRL doesn't have this, although several other lakes that the Corps administers do have this feature. On their websites it shows the elevation at the top and bottom of the ramps and this kind of info would be extremely useful for us now. If any Corps folks are reading this, bring it up to your boss and earn yourself some brownie points.

MDC were sinking a bunch of trees, I figured the rivers brought plenty of trees on down as well.

They put up a lot of money just last year I believe to help with habitat improvement, I think the flood might have helped more but they are doing some things.

no not in the yellow area, it is right above the K, you'll see a little darker blue line extend out in the lake, that is the fishing "pier" where everyone fishes. Once you go there it'll be pretty obvious. Just look for the people.

Well they have that for Ozark streams but not impoundments. I too think it would be good for the fish. It might not be good for the sponsors since with the better fishing you wouldn't "have to have" the latest line, newest lures, biggest boat, etc. That is my my half-baked conspiracy theory.

I headed down to the lake about 1:00 PM. It seemed like it was going to be a normal day of fishing, but fate had other ideas. At the intersection of Republic and S. Campbell the day revealed itself to me. A young fella of around twenty displeased with the hesitation of the driver in front of him gave a little honk of his horn to help that car move out of the merge lane and down towards Nixa. Evidently this act struck a nerve, since the hesitant driver got out of the car and walked back towards the young man's car. As traffic backed up this LADY started in with wild finger pointing, flailing of her arms, and a rooster strut back and forth in front of the young guy's door. A landscaping truck with loaded down trailer gave a honk after a minute of waiting patiently and drew the look of the devil and a mean finger shake from the lady who had I not known better, could have taken for a Sunday School teacher. As with all storms named after women, she blew herself out eventually and got back in her Subaru wagon and left. To me this was great. Not having many cows to refer to in that part of town, I surmised that that lady is roughly equivalent to a cow, and if she was a cow, my bet would be that she'd have a mouthful of grass. With this positive prediction, I made it to first the upper part of the lake. The water was very clear with visiblity four to five feet easy. I threw mainly spinnerbaits along the fallen trees but with no takers and no followers except for sunfish. I finally decided to search for more colored water so I headed below the dam. With waders on I strolled down pitching the spinner in the most wonderful locations. I kept this up for a while but still nothing. What I though were bass jumping along the far bank were finally exposed with the glimpse of peach colored circle lips and a pewter face. Carp. Something caught my eye to the left. I looked and saw a rod and reel twirling end over end six feet above the head of a fisherman with a very aggravated look on his face. I now realized that I had interpretted the signs all wrong. If the lady was a cow, she would not have been eating grass, she would have been too busy charging something. Things seemed to be in an onery mood. I had a good time not catching anything. In fact I only saw one person who had done well. An old old fella in a 10 ft jon boat had been parked in one spot the whole afternoon. As I waded back up past him I saw he had a rope stringer tied to the side of his boat and it was full of flopping fish. He was fishing with a good-sized bobber but I do not know if they were crappie or sunfish, probably sunfish. But I got my fishing time in nonetheless so I can face another week of work.

http://www.parkboard.org/information/city_..._facilities.jpg It is right above the "K" in this map.

A couple of other questions.... The Sept 2007 pics looked like it was pretty cold, especially for those of us with no natural insulation. How cold is it likely to be that time of the year? and How many hours of sunlight would there be each day?