zander

I'm no guide or anything but it looks like they were "suspended" smallmouth.

Good job Kyle. That is really great.

News-Leader staff • May 7, 2009 Conservation Department will stock ponds The Missouri Department of Conservation is taking applications until July 15 from landowners who want to stock their ponds with fish. The department stocks nearly 1 million fingerling fish in private ponds. To qualify for Conservation Department stocking, landowners need to complete written applications. Conservation Department personnel visit each pond to be sure it meets the following requirements: — The pond or lake must be at least 8 feet deep. — If the pond is smaller than 5 acres, livestock must be excluded from the pond area. — Ponds must not have existing fish populations, except for fathead minnows. — The dam must be built for permanence and water-tightness. Pond owners who qualify can receive bluegill, largemouth bass and channel catfish. Anglers can harvest bass in most ponds by the third summer after stocking. Natural reproduction replaces bluegill and bass removed by fishing. Catfish must be restocked periodically. Pond stocking applications can be submitted online at www.mdc.mo.gov/67. Information on stocking options is available at www.mdc.mo.gov/10194. Pond owners who accept fish retain full rights to control access to their ponds. Accepting the free fish doesn't obligate them to allow fishing or other uses on their land by the public. However, ponds stocked by the Conservation Department are subject to provisions of the Wildlife Code of Missouri. The fish can't be bought or sold, and statewide fishing regulations must be observed. Those restrictions do not apply to pond owners who buy fish from commercial sources.

Stayed up pretty late last night after work. My father and I had cancelled plans to go fishing Wednesday morning due to the threats of rain reported by the weathermen. Woke up this morning around 7:00 AM looked outside and then online to check the weather, and the next thing I knew I was getting my tackle together on the way with my father down to River Run. We got on the water around 9:30 and fished Swan Creek first. Only caught one decent crappie on a slider underneath Shadowrock. Headed on down to Beaver where we saw some fellows using jigging spoons and catching some fish. We tried every color soft body there was trying to catch something there (besides drum) and no luck. It was 12:15 by now and we had to leave at 1:00. I suggested we troll on back for a ways and I tied on a deep diving rapala in rainbow trout colors. That is when the fun started. I ended up with 5 whites (3 females 2 males) before 1:00 PM sows around 1 1/2 - 2 lbs. Missed one other. My poor father had a crankbait that almost looked just like mine but he only managed to catch a little dink white bass. Bellies were full of shad. No longer full of eggs really, but good sized.

welcome to the site!

I guess it would be a decal for whatever it got put on, boats, motors, trucks. I wasn't planning on a ribbon thing, I might have to reread that part of this thread. Also I have no idea if these would get made, that is Phil's choice, I am just providing options.

Absolutely I would attend.

The one day my father and I went up there, it seemed as if the people that were catching them were also the people using live bait. The people there said it was a slow day that day. The only things I caught that day was a huge shad and a bad mood when a walleye flipped out of my net and snapped my four pound line. I always try to ask people what they are using when I see them catch a lot. It maybe I have the same thing in my tacklebox, but never thought to use it.

So here's the bass one. This is green but I can also make it more brown to look more like a smallmouth. The gray line around it would be the edge of the decal (so it wouldn't be a rectangle). Post your thoughts. The trout one will be very similar, probably a brown trout. Don't know when I will do that.

Just got back from Taylor Shoals. I caught a couple of Kentuckies and a couple of male whites on silver sliders. There were a lot of white bass still swimming around, but they just weren't hitting on the slow side of the bend. There were a few fellows along the mud bank opposite of the point and they were doing pretty good with white and purple swimming minnows. On the way back to my truck I talked to others everybody had 3-5 bass with those around Blunk Hole being good sized in general. Only saw one sow caught, still full of eggs. It was a real pretty place. I probably could have done better if I would have brought my waders and boots down the muddy path to Taylor Shoals instead of leaving them in my truck.

I'm thinking of a trout based one and a bass based one. I'll try to have something to post up here by Sunday.

maybe I could design something for Phil to use

So the thread about the missing loaf of bread got me interested in whether or not other people had spooky experiences. I'll share a couple stories (only one for now) and others feel free to post your own. In high school I lived down in Louisiana. Me and a friend of mine went squirrel hunting after school Friday afternoon. We brought a tent and we were going to camp out that night and another friend was supposed to meet us. Now we were in the middle of nowhere basically. We were hunting on land the belonged to the Clifton Choctaw community down there. It was a big bottom with big beech and red oak trees with a winding lazy slough that snaked all around. The friend who was supposed to meet us there had only been there once before in the day light but he was going to somehow find us in the dark. Around midnight Jim still hadn't shown up, we were a little worried. By 12:30 we guessed he had cancelled out on us (no cell phones in those days unless you were a doctor). Around 1:30 AM we heard some shouting from across the bottom. "Phillllllip! Brandooooon! Where y'all at?" We answered back trying to get him to follow our sound through the bottom to our camp. Eventually we could hear the snapping of the branches and the crush of the leaves as he stumbled with no flashlight towards us. It was pitch black and Jim was real close probably only 10 yards but he still could not see our camp. "Shine a light so I can see where you are!" he said frustrated. Being boys we gave him a few smart and obscene comments for him and proceeded to laugh ourselves silly. After our laugh we expected to hear Jim ask again for a light to see us. Nothing....silence. Minutes passed still nothing. Jim had made so much noise coming down to us through the bottom. Now it was like he wasn't even there. Maybe he never was we thought. We hollered for him. Shined our lights around for him. nothing. We started to wonder if maybe Jim had been killed in a car crash and his ghost came to pay us a visit, and when we were mean to him, he vanished into thin air. How else could he find his way to us through that bottom in total darkness and his way OUT of the bottom with not so much as a footfall. We stayed up all night pretty much freaked out. Turns out after Jim heard our little remarks, his blood got to boiling so bad he didn't care to spend the time with us and just headed back the way he came. He wasn't trying to be quiet and never heard us hollering for him to come back.

This story is actually my uncle's, but he had just bought a loaded out brandnew bass boat. This thing was sweet. He hooked it up to his truck and left his home in Wichita, KS along with his wife and headed on down the road to Grand Lake in Oklahoma. Got to the ramp, put it in the water, it slid off the trailer like butter far away from the ramp. It was at that moment that he began to wonder where the keys to the boat were. Turns out he had left them on his kitchen table back in Wichita, KS. He was mad as could be, but it is funny to him now.

Welcome back!

Sorry to hear about your grandfather Cricket. You can feel better knowing that you had the chance to fish with him at east some of the time, even if not the last time. My dad's father passed away long before I was even a possiblity. I have often wished that I could have gone fishing with him, one day perhaps I will yet. Until then I have just the stories my father tells me of the time he caught a 37 lb flat head on a crappie pole, the marathon fishing/camping trips he would drag the whole family on, eating watercress sandwiches to save money and stuff like that. Once again sorry to hear about your grandfather.

As far as trolling for the trout on the lower end of Taneycomo, that you can do year round with success. The same types of lures that worked last time will work this time too. That is one of the nice things about fishing down there, even if your original fishing plan ends up not working, trolling down there pretty much always will and can be a day saver. As far as the info on the other lakes, I'd just be watching those parts of the forum as it gets closer to the time you'll be down here. There will be folks posting what types of patterns have been working for them at that time.

welcome aboard!

The printer I used is DigiGraphics out of Minneapolis. They can print on different kinds of paper and canvas, but I don't know about leather, I imagine it would be hard to get leather to feed through any printer.

I just got a 14' Fisher Marine jon boat. It had a 20 hp motor on it but for reasons I'll never come to grips with I decided not to buy it with the boat. It sold by the time I tried to go back to buy it. Soooooo, I am in the market for an outboard for this boat. I don't know what the maximum hp is for it since that part of the safety ticket wore off, but I imagine it would be 20-25 hp. The boat will mainly be used on Taney and Upper BS but could always take off the motor and use the trolling motor around Springfield Lake. What do you guys think would be the best size engine to get for it for the places I'll be fishing? And if you happen to have one for sale please let me know. Thanks. Phillip Taylor

This news is making me think of getting very brave and/or stupid and going down there tmw during the rain/snow and trying my luck.

Sounds like a nice afternoon, we didn't fish around the willows on Friday. We almost did but decided against it. I hope we get our boat running before the white bass stop running this year.

My father, my son and I headed down to start the morning at the powersite tailwater on the generator side. Stayed long enough to lose a couple sliders a piece. No action seen by anyone out there, the only sign of fish was a 7 inch walleye and a 14 inch rainbow that I saw following my lure. After that we headed down to Swan Creek and fished below Shadow Rock. There were lots of shad in the water, some healthy, some dead as a doornail and others doing the swimming dance towards death. There were also lots of 2-3 inch dead crappie all over the place. We figured we might get lucky but wouldn't you know it, nothing! Didn't see anyone else catch anything either. By this time it was around two in the afternoon and so we headed to the Kissee Mills Bridge and fished there for the remainder of the day. People there said that "Slough Hollow" was jammed packed so people were probably doing well there but we still got nothing. I have to say though that it was gorgeous there at Kissee Mills, I have never been there before. They said last weekend people were tearing up the white bass there but they must have moved along. All I saw were lots of yearling bass and crappie with the occassional bluegill nipping at the end of our sliders. Wish I had "catches" to report but maybe this will make you all feel better if you wanted to go to these places today and weren't able to, other than the scenery you didn't miss a whole lot.

I don't think my "mother" would let me go tonight, but it should be great tonight.

http://ozarkanglers.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14452 I think this is it.