Trav

Right on PHW. If you dont plan on keeping your trout, stay out of a trout tourney. You cant livewell or stringer trout more than 15 minutes yet alone 5 hours and expect them to live. Even if they swim away, chances are the stress will kill them eventually. Especially if your using bait. I get nervous for the brownies I release if the fight lasts longer than 15 minutes or if the hooks are really snarled and takes me longer than it should to dislodge. I know that the Biggest reason I have success is because I Catch and Release. Those big ones will bite over and over again during thier life span.

Very True Has to start somewhere. Too bad we have the money to make the laws but we have no money to hire more guys to enforce them.

There is no such thing as a "freindly" tourney when guys pay more than 10 bucks to get in. When money is involved people take it serious. Just reread my troubles in Panama( above ). I am not just talking personally, I am talking from the hundreds of tourneys I have been a part of. Without some kind of check and balance, rules will be abused. The risk of a polygraph is not a deterant. Thats just from my experiance. For what its worth.

I dont fish weekends. And I dont fish trout tourneys. It is too hard to keep the fish alive for weigh-in since I prefer to fish so far from most the sites. I would rather loose a tourney than let one of my brownies die. I am convince that more than 25% of the brownies I catch, over 20 inches, I have caught before. One I know of for sure I have caught 4 times over the past 2 years. He has a distictive scar that looks like a perfect row of pimples on one side of his torso. I would guess he was nabbed, then released by some kind of bird of prey when he was a little guy. Anyway, he is a solid fish. 9-4 pounds at 32 inches at last measurement. Thanks for the invite anyway.

Mile 9, close to bull creek

I totally agree with you John! Hard to keep trout and release them alive. And I have never kept a Brownie for the dinner table. Those little bows are "farm fresh" good though. Haha Hey Phil, how you gonna make sure that the dough-sopper worm drowners dont infiltrate your tourney? Gonna have Judges like John suggests? I got a suggestion. Break up the teams and pair them off with people they dont know. Then have the teams weigh in together once they meet at wiegh in. That way , in effect, they will be policing each other since they will be fishing with competitors. No need for judges then. Even better. Make everyone fish for themselves and have no teams but still pair them off in random to keep it honost. Thats my kind of tourney. While I was guiding in Panama, I was hired by the Army CPO at Espinar Aquativity Center to set up weekend tourneys for our troops stationed down there. Names were submitted and in random guys were paired. Actually there were 3 to a boat, but that is the most non-conflictive way to handle a tourney that has money involved. Funny story on how I got that little side job. Since my ex wife was active Army there, I was eligable to fish those tourneys. Since I guided the waters, I of course had a severe advantage. After winning Big Fish and Big Stringer 18 weeks in a row, people sort of dwindled in participation. Got tired of losing to me. So they made a new rule. You can win Big Fish or Big Stringer but not both. Well, The Big Fish pay out was half of the Big Stringer. So I was throwing back 8 pounders to make sure I got the most money. After about 9 weeks of that, talk got out on what I was doing. I wasnt hiding it either, it was a random select, three man per boat tourney and of course the guys paired with me got 2nd and 3rd everytime. And soldiers have bigger mouths than women in a sewing circle. Probably because of the huge amount of alcohol that was being consumed. Anyway, they pulled me aside one night after it got around I put back the biggest peacock of my life for the bigger pot. Tried to say I couldnt play anymore. So I went to the Judge Advocate office in Ft Clayton and forced thier hand. All military personel and thier dependants were eligable. So they had to let me fish, cancel the tourneys, or hire me on as Admin for the tourneys wich would disqualify me from participation. They were gonna cancel the tourneys since they couldnt match my rate of pay as a guide and definatley couldnt equal what I could win from the tourneys. In the end, I took a pitiful 50 bucks a tourney so that my buddies down there could keep thier tourney going. It was one day a week and I figured I can fish anytime where as those soldiers barely had time to fish. I probably wouldnt have made such a stink but they approached me with such a nasty attitude I wasnt about to let them win so easily. After that I Admined those tourneys for 18 months. I had a blast, got tons of free beer and was literally a walking legend to the soldiers fishing them because they all knew how I got the job. Or to the least they all were very glad to have me around as long as I didnt fish those tourneys anymore. Haha

Noodlers are just plum crazy. My luck I would lose half my hand to a snapping turtle. Haha

Them conservation guys are fighting a losing battle. Even with calls from us(the public), most the should-have-been-busted law breakers get home with thier bounty before the agents can get there.

Ewwww Another muddy day. Fished longer than two hours though today. Was pretty much the same story as yesterday but with one key difference. The fish have had time to move out of the stained water. What little bit they could. Anyway, picked up 4 Bass before I got tired of dragging chompers and switched to a black x-rap. Found some whites and chased them around for the rest of my afternoon. Caught 16 of those before they managed to shag me. Headed back to my dock and jigged road runners off it before I called it a day. Only caught one stocker bow from the current racing under the dock. No surprise, my dock caught more(litter) that I did. Bigger too. Somebody is missing half the foam from under thier dock. Big hunks of it ended up caught in my cables.

Welcome

Living on Lower Taney, below fall creek, cooper creek, turkey creek, coon creek, roark creek, bee creek, and bull creek, I see the lake muddy like this evertime we get more than an inch or two of rain. Especially if it is all in less than an hour. It is pretty normal. Wasnt so bad 15-20 years ago, but with all the land development that has been going on, the siltation has gotten pretty bad. Unfortuneley the only thing that benifits from it is all the hydrilla choking up bull creek and Rockaways shoreline. Not to worry though. The mud is usually settled in a day or so. And I will be kicking trash backed up on my dock till it does. This is when I get to see all the litter in the lake washed down from the Upper. You would be surprised how much it really is.

Since your sign is messed up, you can replace it with a model of the Star Ship Enterprise. Then add "Beam Me Up" before "Scottys" I can picture it, "Beam Me Up Scottys" "Out of this World Trout Dock" Haha Tourists would love it Haha

Talk about something great going to sad. I think the lake was so thick with mud that I saw a fish trying to crawl out. Haha Well, I only caught 2 bass and I think they were just trying to breathe and my chomper just fell in thier mouths. Only one game in town when the water gets this way. That is to find water as far away from the current as possible. And avoid fishing any of the creeks. Dont leave much else for ya on Lower Taney. I ended up fishing inlets that didnt have any run-off pouring into them. They werent really there either. Mostly because those inlets are about 2 feet deep ,4 feet wide, and 12 feet long. And its winter time. What ya gonna do? Stay home? Anyway, the ones I caught were holed up under docks on the none-channel side of bull creek. And I had to work too hard for those. Needless to say, I fished less than 2 hours all day.

Did we forget that he held rushing titles and a Hiesman? Guess he couldnt "handle" keeping those. Haha Goes to show that even the best have thier bad days. Haha

I found water that was clear today. Coming out of my tap! I think my chomper stained from green to orange.

When I catch fish I dont think about having to "prove" my success to anyone. If you dont believe me that just disproves Phils theory that my reports will "draw attention" to the Lower end of the lake. Wich really breaks my heart. NOT

Sorry DC, I just added you to the list. Haha Tippet Haha You say fine and upstanding, I will add "a real go getter!" LOL

Considering that the cover I am referring to is 20 feet deep or deeper, without graphs you wont be able to. When I was guiding fly-ins in Canada we used portable graphs. I used the same thing in Panama but there it wasnt such a neccessity. Bass Pro sells a few brands that manufacture them. A decent investment if you do alot of boat rentals where electronics arent part of the equipment.

Sean Penn, Charles Barkley, Terrell Owens, Mike Iaconelli, Muhammad Ali, Dennis Leary, Dennis Miller, Chad Johnson, Michael Strahan, Rush Limbaugh, Stephen Colbert, Tom Cruise, Howard Cosell, Bono, Alfred Hitchcock, Orsen Welles, Salvador Dali, Madonna, Jon Rocker, Allen Iverson, Adolph Hitler, David Duke, Goerge Steinbrenner, Donald Trump, Phil Mickelson, Bonzi Wells, Kobe Bryant, Curt Schilling, Kurt Busch, Barry Bonds, Saddam Hussein, Jerry Jones, John Madden, Bobby Knight, Jim Rome, Don King, OJ Simpson, Bill Clinton,and his wife Fidel Castro, All the Kennedys, Burt Reynolds Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Charles Manson, Paris Hilton, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Joe Namath, Deoin Sanders, Joe Frazier, Timothy Leary, John Lennon, Spike Lee, Daddy Carp and his Flying Pigs, To name a few of the people who join me as "full of themselves." And I am sure I could name a few more if needed. DC Haha, You know I cant leave anything alone if I see a way to stir up the flames. Where would the fun in that be? I promise I will keep the Garden Hose handy in case it gets out of control. But just in case, you better keep the fire department on speed dial. Wink.

I see it every summer SGF. Thats why I dont fish the weekends. I plan all my yardwork around the idiots on the lake. Also, when I do see MDC on the lake (wich is rare), those "shot-takers" seem to be all they care about.I see the potential of trouble but chasing those idiots is a police matter not a fish and wildlife priority. They really need to stop playing cop and get back to being game wardans. There is more illegal fishing activity on the lake than there are partiers. Last I heard it isnt illegal to fish without a pole. As long as they have a line and a hook, it is still fishing.

Haha Your secret is safe with me. I was just curious if the guy was having any luck. Back in the 80s I used to set a few limb lines up there but the turtles and varmits always ate the bait. Only cats I have personally caught out of lower taney were bullheads off my dock around the same time period. Since the massive influx of browns I havent seen any in years. Same with walleye. They disappeared late 80s or so. Alot about the lake has changed since the push of brownies. Of course, I dont really target cats or walleye either. So go figure.

What a great day I had today. The heavy overcast made it an ideal day for the bass to stage on the flats. I didnt even fish an area the the size of a couple football fields and caught 11 Bass. Digital said that 4 of them went just over 2 pounds. I also jigged a few cover spots in the channel for some brownies and got 2 of them off the same rump. One hit the digital at 5.5 pounds and was 23 inches long. Incidently I picked up 3 bows with one of them hitting the digital at 2.4 pounds.

Thanks JR Lower Taney is a tough area to be successful. It is only the amount of time I spend on it that has sharpened my advantage. But it is also the best part of the entire lake to find big fish. Especially Bass and Brownies. Most guys are like you and only try it a few times a year. Thats only because the fish react to thier envirenment so uniquely here, compared to other lakes. Unless you have experianced years of seasonal changes, it is hard to have any confidence. I have been told by some guys that it can even be intimidating due to the surprising diversity of it. Note for the future. The bows dont really follow the wind much. They usuallly sink when the wind is blowing and rise as the wind dies. They hold virtually zero migration patterns that are predictable. You really never can be sure where in the channel they will be but they usually dont stray from the current far. Now the Bass on the other hand, they migrate constantly. Everytime there is a change in water generation they move. Brownies are a mix of the two. they will rise and fall with the wind and will migrate as the water fluctuates. When water is running they set up in ambush to feed on frenzied bows. If there is no water running, they ,for the most part, will just find some cover and wait for the dinner bell at high water.

Haha Enforcement of laws on Taney? That is funny.

I will add condescending to the long list of my traits to my persona. Although I have never claimed to be better than anyone, but if you care to label me that, sarcastically or not, I guess that is your right to do so. I just call things as I see em. I really dont care what anyone thinks. And if you dont appreciate what I have to say/post, then you can always put me on ignore and pretend I dont exist. No one is putting a gun to your head and making you read them.