skeeter

Grandson asked me to "fix" his reel that his Dad had messed-up. Quickly discovered Dad had looped line around the rear of the spool and had just kept crankin'. Easy fix and an opportunity to show "Patch" how to disassemble an open-face and how they work. Included a little lesson on how to correctly set the drag and how to fight the fish with the rod and not just by crankin' the reel. Showed him how to take care rigging-up the Ned Rig and how it was important to get that worm on the hook shank straight and he watched Mr. Fumble Fingers (me) struggle with it and tied it on. Later that evening he takes the same rod/reel/Ned and lands, gets a picture of and releases this beauty....

Yeah, you just nailed it " lots of people in MO have corn to sell, Arkansas, not so much". The well-funded Corn-Ethanol Lobbyists hard at work passing out "perks" in Jefferson City.... vacations and money to the Missouri Legislators again who are easily bought and sold and owned. Always follow the money !

The fact that a person can buy Ethanol-free 87 Octane in AR but not in MO is raising suspicions of some kind of the usual Political "deal-making" that fattens some MO State Politician's wallet.

Submitted "Ha-Bob's" in Lampe that they didn't list. Intersection of Hwy 13 and "H" where you turn off 13 to go down to Baxter.

Learned through experience that if you're searching for Ethanol-free gas from a gas-pump in a 100 mile radius of St. Louis....you're out of luck. There was some little-known agreement with the EPA that only gas containing Ethanol would be sold within a 100 mile distance of St. Louis. No, I don't know the name of the agreement or why it was imposed but the nearest station that sells Ethanol-free to the West of the Metro area is reportedly in Rolla. Our Grandson got a new job in STL and moved there from Springfield, went searching for Ethanol-free for his lawn-care equipment and ran into this situation.

Same thing has happened lately with the Weather App on DIRECTV you can get if your receiver is connected to the Net. The former Weather App was far better than the worthless Piece of Junk they now expect viewers/subscribers to be happy with. Neither one of them would put the Radar images in motion so you could kind of determine where the heavy weather was headed but at least you could get your local Radar on the previous thing but not on the new clunker.

Years ago, MDC recognized the need for regulating the bed-jerkers on Missouri Streams and Rivers and wisely instituted a catch & release policy on those waters during the Bass Spawn season. Very obviously, that same need is now present on the State's Reservoirs due to incredibly increasing fishing pressure and MDC can easily "fix" this by correctly extending the same catch & immediate release regulations that they have wisely placed on moving waters to the State's Lakes. MDC would not be the first State in the U.S. to have done this and there must be some kind of monetary pressure on them since they are failing to recognize this very important need. Like all the knee-jerk, reactionary goofs in all levels of Government, it appears things will have to reach a crisis level first before they take action.

Cannot recall the last time I've seen TR this clear at this time of year. Seeing signs of it beginning to turn over.

Jerks and unsafe, inconsiderate idiots are not limited to the pleasure-boat, wake-boat crowd. One of the worst morons I've ever encountered was Sunday evening coming out of Big Indian and heading towards Baxter Boat Dock. We all had the youngest Grandson out on the 'toon during his Easter Break and he had just nailed a dandy 18" Smallie and had successfully landed it on 6 lb despite the usual frantic "crash-dive" at boatside. We're putt-putting along in a straight line about 40 yds. away from the shore on the left side when I hear this boat coming up from astern. Here comes some brain-dead idiot (that I hope is reading this) with Arab-style headgear on driving a red Bass Tracker with a portly gent in the passenger's seat. This idiot passes us not even 25' ( yes, that's FEET) away on our port side, between us and the shore, and then cuts DIRECTLY across our bow. All five us are immediately pissed and we followed the jerk to the Baxter launch ramp where my Wife prevailed upon me not to start anything...which four out of the five of us were ready to do. We got good pictures of the moron walking up the courtesy dock to get his tow-rig and trailer with his Arab-style rag still on his head and the Red Tracker and its registration numbers in the foreground. 😖

ROTFLMAO !

Not sure what is going on here but thought it was worthwhile to report to the local MDC Agent. Our Daughter and Grandson decided to do a little Sunday evening fishing off the bank down around the Baxter launch ramp and courtesy dock. They came back after dark with pictures on their phones of very large heads and carcasses of several Spoonbill that had been butchered at the ramp. No one was still around so no idea who was there. Normal Spoonbill snagging area is far away from Baxter by water, way up the James arm.

I do know the Corn-produced Ethanol farce uses 6 gallons of fresh water to produce one gallon of dratted Ethanol. In some areas where Ethanol producing plants were established and had to rely on well-water for that fresh water supply, surrounding residents water wells went dry and they had no choice but to have them drilled deeper....until the next time. What I am waiting to hear is how the States plan on recouping the lost fuel tax revenue that these electric car owners avoid paying for their use of Public Roads and Bridges. We're already "giving" them about $7k in tax credits to buy their vehicles.

That's a step in the right direction but since the Poachers are stealing from ALL of us in the public, it still isn't enough of a fine. Couple the fines with being a "MINIMUM, REQUIRED sentence" to get around namby-pamby, weak Judges and throw in what Minnesota used to do or maybe still does and immediately confiscate, Boat, Motors, Trailer and any vehicle they used in the Poaching incident.

We've had Centurylink in the immediate Baxter area since 2004. Started off with gosh-awful Dial-up and then they thankfully upgraded to DSL. We get a reliable 8Mbps and if our home's wires on the poles was just 200' closer to their "Office" at the entrance to Briar Cliff we would get 10Mbps but distance over these antiquated phone wires chokes us down in speeds. A few things I've discovered over the years: If your place is on the Little Indian Lake-arm side of the ridge that Highway "H" comes down, there is a chance you can get Total High Speed's radio signal from their antenna at Black Oak. If you are on the other side of "H".....NOT. Suggest you investigate by calling them and they can pull up your address and tell you if you are a candidate but the last time I checked with them I was not impressed with their speed nor their prices and cannot receive it here anyway. Suddenlink, nor any other Cable is not available South of the Bridge. A few years ago, Centurylink brought new, underground copper wire down to their "Office" building at Briar Cliff's entrance that enabled the 10Mbps via DSL. If they ever should bring Fiber down to that Briar Cliff office like they recently did (per Matt Bell at Bell Computer) in their upgrade to the Cape Fair area that will potentially increase our speeds to 40Mbps but, again, the antiquated phone lines in the area, going back to the late 1950's, will choke that down. As far as "reliability", one thing that greatly increased ours was to call Centurylink's Internet Repair and complain 1-855-331-1346 about how unreliable your internet service is. They should offer to send out a Field Service Tech. Have him check and determine if you have the old fashioned 2-wire phone line in your place (most around here do have that) and when he verifies that you do, ask him to install, at no cost to you, what the Service Techs call a "Home Run" with modern CAT5-wire direct from the phone access box on the outside (where your phone line enters the place) and route it directly to your Modem. After many, many complaints and service calls 8-10 years ago, they finally sent a more tech-savvy young guy out and he identified the old 2-wire phone line as being the problem and did a really nice job installing the "Home Run" here and at our neighbor's and it has made a huge difference. If you currently have Centurylink in the Baxter area, I'd strongly suggest you consider retaining your account because I've been seeing multiple complaints from new property owners in the area on Social Media (Table Rock Lake Group) that when they call Centurylink to get hooked-up they are being declined and told Centurylink is "full-up" in the area and is not accepting new customers !! We also tried doing the Cell Phone modem thing ( 25 Mbps if memory serves unless there is a lot of traffic on the AT&T cell-tower over in Viola ) and bought AT&T's necessary hardware but they lie about what size of Monthly Data Plan you will need and we quickly and very expensively exceeded ours and told them where they could shove their service, after getting "dinged" with a 30% re-stocking fee for the returned hardware at their Branson Corporate store. Good Luck ! Let us know how you did please.....

Got pooches ? All this Duck discussion reminded me that I found a large bag of "Duck Jerky" at Sam's club (where everything is large 😄) for Dog treats. Compared to their other Dog treats it was inexpensive and contains none of the artificial by-products or corn gluten meal the others had in their list of ingredients. Our four-legged beggars are just nuts for these pieces of jerky and try to lead me to where I keep the bag stored. Only thing is you have to break the strips of jerky into shorter pieces so they don't try the usual gulp and swallow eating cause it's real Jerky and needs some chewing.

Bassmaster Pro talks about fish mortality on certain fisheries and claims Tournaments have no impact. Nah ! He doesn't have an axe to grind here....not at all ! 🤣

Really tough to beat the most disorganized Officials I've ever seen and the other team too. 14 free Points to OSU compliments of the Officiating crew they hired from Grade School games. + really dumb plays dialed up by the highly touted new Offensive coordinator like the game ender. Had to laugh when the "AutoZone" Bowl TV broadcast on ESPN that included the most terrible camera work ever and numb-nuts play by play "announcers" had a RockAuto commercial get slipped in there.

Yep, those Cedars took a big hit in the 12:30 A.M. derecho-wind or whatever it was on Dec. 1st. We have several areas where mature, 18" to 2 ft. diameter, Cedars were snapped off at chest height, and the tops carried off and disappeared and no one has found them yet. They may have gone into the water...not sure. Plenty of them were uprooted both on private and Corps land. Most of the residents around us reported hearing the passing "freight train" sound when that wind hit and there is evidence with cedar branches being forcefully wrapped around the trees to indicate one or more small twisters.

5.5 Inches ? You're not that far away and here at Baxter I recorded less than 0.67" over the last two days and an additional 0.17" this morning before the clouds broke.

OK, here goes, let the slings and arrows commence, I can handle it and to each their own. TWO big changes in regulations are badly needed to increase the numbers of Bass in not just TR but other Missouri Lakes Extend the Springtime Bass fishing regulations for Streams to Reservoirs across the State. Catch and release at boat-side only during the Spawn. End the Fish Transportation to weigh-ins. Measure, photograph and release where caught. MLF has just changed to doing it and kudos to the Shell Knob area Bass club that has been doing it.

Divers "see" Bass because of their predatory nature and their instinct to come and investigate a disturbance before turning away after discovering it's not a food source. Plus there is a certain amount of territorial behavior at certain times of the year. There are other fish in the area but they may be hard-wired to flee an unknown presence.

If those two buses were carrying passengers you were looking at video of another potential Mass Casualty Incident like the unfortunate Branson Duck-boat incident. Goes to prove "you can't fix stupid" ! If the depth of the water there didn't drown people, the drop down to it certainly would have.

I believe the increase is a total of $0.10/per gallon phased-in in 2 & 1/2 cent gradual increases over about a 4 year period. I have no problem with a needed funding increase for MoDot. What I do strongly object to are all the lies, including expensive TV advertising, lying about the tax money all going towards the roads and bridges when it obviously is not.

The morning news says the Beaver Bridge is now closed. Probably closely inspecting it for overweight damages.

If you have a boat/tow-vehicle that runs on gas or diesel and you fuel it and Vote in MO you might want to read this. Prop "D" is on the November ballot to increase the Missouri gas tax claiming it is for better/safer Roads and Bridges that we all use.....unfortunately, we are being LIED to again. Only 30% of the revenue collected will go to MoDOT for roads and bridges while 70% is earmarked solely for increasing/funding the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Your decision, of course, how you vote, but I'm darn sick of the lies and half-truths. If you doubt me, here is the actual wording of the Bill: SS #2 HB 1460 9 Section D. Pursuant to chapter 116, and other applicable constitutional provisions and 2 laws of this state allowing the general assembly to adopt ballot language for the submission of referendum measures to the voters of this state, the official fiscal note summary of the act proposed in section A of this act shall be as follows: "If passed, this measure will generate at least $288 million annually to the State Road Fund to provide for the funding of Missouri state law enforcement and $123 million annually to local governments for road construction and maintenance."