bryantsmallie28

Well i have went down there a couple of times in the last couple weeks, and my brother and cousin go to c of o so they have been down there even more than me. I can definitely say that just from my observations the number of fisherman to fish caught was at least 5 to 1 probably closer to 10 to 1 at times if not more. But one positive note maybe not for this year but for the next couple of years in fishing at both norfork and bull shoals there have been a ton of little bitty whites being caught on both lakes this year. I am used to catching a few like that on norfork but thats a lot of what i have seen caught are tiny ones. I mean i even caught some on norfork in the 3-4in range. That is a positive sign unless people catch and keep those little ones like crazy. I have been seeing a lot of people putting whites so small i dont know why they even want to fillet them in their boats.

Well who all is going out on thursday to kill a limit of bony fish. I might go thursday evening before white bass fishing, and then im planning on going friday morning. Don't know where yet i guess ill decide before i leave.

jeremy id say the reason you dont catch any up there is probably because you arent fishing in a way you would catch them when you fish up there. The way i catch most of them in the creek in the summer is when i throw my lure really close to the bank. They seem to always be really shallow and slam a bait as soon as it hits the water. Its a wonder anything small enough to fit in their mouth can even live as ferocious as they are. The only other thing i could think of is the water may be cool enough that they dont like it. It seems like we also catch most of them in the big slow warmer holes. especially in the creeks with more of those holes like the gasconade. I think i have also heard them called shade perch which could be why i catch most of them in the shade on those long holes.

Thats right. What people call slicks are i think also called stonerollers and i think there are quite a few species of them but they are really hard to tell apart. I have always had a lot better luck with them than any other, but their best quality is they are so much easier to keep alive and stay alive so well on a hook. I trap a lot of slicks every year mainly out of bryant and sometimes out of a few smaller creeks around home, and i also trap quite a few shiners but usually just throw them back because you cant keep them alive. A lot of timesshiners die when you stick them with a hook or when you cast them. Slicks are kind of hard to keep alive in a tank, but i keep mine in an old washer tub livewell in the creek or a pond and they will stay alive all winter long. The key is cold water, once it starts to warm up they start to die.

You better believe they are great eating, just like a goggleeye. I love getting a good mixed stringer of them and goggleeye in the creek and scale them then fillet them and leave the skin on them. They will just about rival any type of fish you can eat. And i can definitely understand that seeing as how they will eat about anything. I have caught them on big spinnerbaits before and wondered how in the world they fit it in their mouth.

I was just wondering if anyone has been fishing on norfork lately. I have been a couple of times bank fishing with slicks for walleye and I have not done any good...as usual. The weather just hasn't seemed to work out anytime i try to go.

Yeah i fished the other night for a couple of hours at the mouth of swan. Thought maybe they would stack up there getting out of the current. I caught one trout, and that was it. I dont know, at least you can always say that the fishing can only get better if you aren't catching any. I think im gonna go somewhere else this weekend and stand by a fire and let a slick do the work trying to get a walleye to bite.

id say anything below 95 maybe a little above like from the monastary, but as i said there seems to be a lot of people on the bryant this year, i dont konw if i havent been on it this time of year or what but last time i was there as i said there was a group of 7 canoes and then at the place i started there was a truck with a trailer with a canoe rack so multiple canoes because there were two other trucks there too. and it was for sure different people. I know it is inevitable but i hate to see the crowds on bryant but as many people as there are on norfork, with both outfitters and all the trout crap, i think some are moving over to the nearest other river.

Yeah i have and there have been a bunch of people both times. last time i was wading up the creek and was a little higher up than usual hoping to stay away from the people. I had caught a few fish, nothing of any size when a string of 7 canoes came down the creek. normally i would keep fishing but each canoe had 2 guys who were floating to fish and having a competition to see who could catch the most i guess and biggest. so i turned around and went back to the truck.

My little brother and my friend fished it memorial day outside of hartville. They floated a pretty long section with few public put ins from camp branch to austins ford. They said it sucked very badly. There were cussing the river when they left for having wasted their whole day on it. They said it was nasty, full of weeds, shallow, no fish, and lots of cows. The only high point...fewer snakes than they thought they would see, which they could only explain by thinking maybe the snakes were running from the river too because they thought it was so bad. I have been fishing other rivers staying away from this one. I may float on down like you guys have there are usually more fish there but the upper parts of this river used to be good. I only hope the suckiness doesnt spread down river. Has anyone else fished any of the upper reaches of the gasconade. OH and one more thing i forgot to mention that i think has something to do with the fact that it sucks. I have heard one guy talking about slaughtering the goggleye and him and some other guys catching like 70 that they kept. why do people do this. I love eating goggleye as much as the next person and have eaten quite a few this year but i havent just fleeced a section of river. I mean thats ridiculous. And i think there are a lot of people from the area that do that go and catch just as many as they can and keep even the tiny ones and probably dont konw there is a limit or dont care.

Yeah I would like to know exactly what information you would need and exactly what number to call. I looked on the website and wasnt sure, and as witnessed by my lack of being on here recently i have been really busy working and turkey hunting and I have a brother who is a senior playing high school baseball at mansfield, so i have been really busy and havent had much time to do anything. and no they were not replacing a bridge, and i couldnt get anything of the dozer because i was going somewhere and saw it and just thought "what the crap is that" and was never by there again until the dozer was gone. I really hope it wasnt but this is the second time i think i have seen landowners doing there own idea of stream management. I saw the area the other day since the high water and it looks horrible. what used to be a stretch of stream that had some deep holes with some fish in it, and lots of slicks (this was one of my minnow trapping spots) is a straight stretch of 2-3in deep water...pitiful. anyway sorry to rile you guys up on something and not do anything about it but i thought id explain that i wasnt sure exactly how to report it and even if i had enough info on it to do anything about it.

Bryant is sure rolling. I looked at it tonight and it was over the bridges and rolling high and muddy. a lot of the little creeks that havent had much water in the for a while were also running hard today.

So yeah the gasconade is running high and running fast, and is chocolate milk right now. I went and look at it last friday and it was like that and we have had a lot of rain since. I talked to a guy who lives in hartville today and he said that this is the highest he has seen it in 2 or 3 years.

Well i was just wondering. This isnt a gravel mining issue i dont think. I havent really went down and looked at it. It may have been something authorized but to me it just looked like someone who tried to save a pond by hiring a dozer to go in and move all the gravel to the other side without thinking if there was anything else to do.

OK so im driving down 5 highway in between ava and mansfield and cross bryant creek and look up the creek and to my surprise there is a dozer in the middle of the creek in the water with the gravel piled up in the center of the creek. And i have heard different stuff on gravel mining in intermittent streams and stuff but this runs year round. it is totally spring fed and I have never seen it dry. This creek has always had the channel on the west side of the creek. Well when i went by yesterday they had just moved all the gravel to the west side and dug a straight gravel walled channel on the east side. I don't know if this is legal or not but i dont see how this can be right at all, and i really dont see how any good can come of this. There was a lot of erosion on the west side that was moving toward some big ponds that used to be a fish hatchery, but i can see a lot better ways to stop erosion than getting a dozer in the middle of the creek and moving everythig around and disturbing the whole creek bottom. To me it seems like this is oging to do nothing but let all this gravel wash down the stream when the creek gets up and fill in a bunch of holes down below and make a disappearing creek disappear even faster. I was just seeing what everyone's opinion was on this and wondering if there was any good in this, and if i should try to call someone and report this or something. wow that was long, but I was really riled up over this and then talked to a friend and he was riled up about it too, and i thought id see what some other peopel thought about it.

Welll. I didnt do any good either. I just thought it was funny that you said jeremy had told you he was doing pretty good over there, and then I had been over there with jeremy sunday night and knew for a fact he didn't catch anything.

Hey Phil, you may want to ask jeremy just how good it was sunday night though. I was fishing beside him and if i remember right i dont think i saw him catch anything that night. haha.

Don't forget the locals. Im not gonna mention the town but we have a joke about the town we say memorial day weekend the whole town goes on the creek and keeps everything they catch, and everytime we go we yell keep what you catch.

I hope the outfitters don't start working the Bryant a lot. I float that creek a lot just to get away from the people. They can stay on the north fork all they want but i hope the people dont start migrating over to the bryant because i dont feel like dodging people all day.

yeah that is Florence C. Cook access.

This river has gotten up, the weeds are just so out of control there is no getting rid of them. I live in the area of the upper reaches of the Gasconade and the weeds have just gotten worse and worse every year. I think it has something to do with the high nutrient levels in the creek.

For the time that you are planning on going what most of the people i know that fish around that area do is night fish. Pontiac is usually a high traffic area especially around that time during the day. that area is pretty big so it gets quite a bit of skiing, tubing, and jetski action during the day in the summer. Most of the people I know fish under the lights for crappie during the summer. and around the fourth of july theodosia marina which is just west of isabella has a big fireworks display over the lake that many people pull out on the lake to watch. I thought id give you the heads up for the family.

With you saying you are staying on HH, the ramp at spring creek is a pretty good ramp with a courtesy dock and is kind of a low traffic ramp compared to say a pontiac ramp. It is also straight north and a short distance from point 13. There is a good bait shop on HH called Shockeys. Depending on what you are using, they usually have good crappie minnows and sell them by the pound and just kind of guess it and dont count an exact dozen like a lot of places. If you have any other questions just say something.

hey i sent you an email the other day and i'll send you another one instead of talking on here and filling up space with us talking. But would anyone know if I bought an arkansas fishing liscence now would it work for a year or would it be like missouri's and only run till a certain time.

HAHAHAHA the fake smallie idea is hilarious. I would love to see the people swarm that thing in the day. Put that thing in a creek where people can see and people would swarm it in boats like crazy. I would just love to see it. I'm sure they could probably come up with something like that.