Champ188

Very well written, Phil. Enjoyed the read. Bill is one of the most well liked and well respected men I know, and deservingly so.

May have to start calling him Big Bird, with that new Phoenix. Big boat. Big motor. Big graphs. You get the picture. Big league all the way. Last I heard, I believe he had scored a pair of CANARY YELLOW SHOES AND SUNGLASSES to go with those Skeet rods. For gosh sakes, please tell me this new boat isn't gonna be YELLOW!!!!!!!!

Let me and Donna know when and we'll try our best to join you. Don't know about Denny. Have we lifted his ban on fishing above Kimberling City? Oh, and congrats on the new vessel, Bill. Look forward to seeing it.

Yessir, trimming just a pinch off the head to make it flat and glueing it on will save you lots of baits and aggravation. You can also buy those screw-lock shaky heads in 1/4-oz. and rig the bait Texas style just like you would with a shaky head worm.

I can see that goldfish being good too, especially in semi-stained water.

Here they are are on Dick's Sporting Goods website for $7.99 with a color chart ... http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?productId=22483966

Know what you mean. Boat traffic gets crazier every summer. Donna and I fun-fished Saturday morning up around Big M and it was starting to get dicey by 10:30. By the time we left at 12:30, it was full-blown nuts. By the way, in six hours' fishing we only caught 10 total with two keepers. Just a tough day all around.

This is what I refer to as a helmet head. http://www.basspro.com/Buckeye-Lures-JWill-Swimbait-Head/product/1111190501002/

Always good to spend time on the water with a old friend, Dewayne. In the grand scheme of things, you scored a win there regardless of how ya'll finished in the derby.

I put it on a 1/4-ounce head ... if I'm fishing it around timber, I use one of the screw-lock style heads so I can rig it weedless with the hook point buried in the body. In open-water situations, I use one of the newer open hook-style helmet heads specifically made for swimbaits.

Skeeter, you have my apologies. It was my understanding that you were indeed advocating vigilante justice, which would only compound the crimes already committed. I obviously misunderstood your meaning.

Good to know, huntest. I've always had high regard for their products (except for the leakage issues). Anyone who spends the loot these toys cost deserves top-notch customer service if they have problems with it.

I shopped and thought long and hard before choosing Humminbird over Lowrance. Both have their advantages but it was the customer-service issue that swung me. When Lowrance first introduced the HDS series, they had big problems with the units leaking. One local guide who I won't identify told me he went thru SEVEN units in less than a year. And instead of things improving with their customer service, the horror stories only grew with all of these bad units coming back for replacement. That was several years ago and I believe they have the leakage issues fixed now. Not so much with the customer service, or so I hear.

mjk86, I believe there's more value in the GPS/2d sonar package. I have 998 Humminbirds on either end of my boat and the downscan is a nice toy that I'm still learning how to use. But all of your really good dropshot/spoon guides on TR will tell you they use 2D sonar as their primary view. I just believe the GPS would be far more useful to you than downscan.

Table Rock has "pretty" fish. Their markings and color is always just perfect and they hardly have a blemish on them. Nice job, Quillback. Might have to ease up there early Saturday morning and capture a few before the lake lice start buzzing around and the big wake boats start tearing up the water and playing their rap tunes at ear-busting levels. Bring on fall.

Hmmm, pulling water that hard would almost have to mean a pretty good ledge bite up in the James on deep crank baits, fb jigs and C-rigged lizards. Might even be able to slow-roll a swimbait like a Keitech Swing Impact on a weighted head off some of those ledge drops and channel-swing bluff ends. Haven't been up there to test it ... mostly just thinking out loud but it's food for thought. In addition to LOZ, which Bill mentioned earlier, the James fishes somewhat similar to Truman. When they're pulling water for power generation in the summer, it positions the fish pretty predictably on the points, bluff ends and channel drops. When they shut the water off, heaven knows where they go. Actually, I believe they bury up in the brushpiles or just rest until the water starts moving again. Table Rock's dam is not as big as Truman's, so it doesn't create quite as much flow. But it does create enough to activate the bait and the bass.

Glad it was of use to you, flyman. Not only are Bill and Pete very generous with their info, you can take what both of them say to the bank. Also, I believe Pete stores some older reports on his website as well. Not sure how far they go back but might be worth looking into.

Guide Pete Wenners posts a very detailed video fishing report on his website at hookedonbass.com. He fishes a lot in the James River area, so this weekly report always has some good information from up there.

Comments like this just put fuel in the tanks of the liberal gun-control wackos.

True words one and all. If you don't pay attention to the dock part, take the last part to heart. You CANNOT beat on these Table Rock fish in the least bit. They will clam up and not bite again until you go home. Been there, done that.

Don't do that, Denny. Then I'd have to hit the MOB (man overboard) button and make that stupid little man-falling red icon on the screen forever. Not sure I ever got rid of that one where I hit that button by accident when we were at Eufaula.

I wanted to go this morning but the threat of unemployment followed by poverty and hunger kept me home.

Troller, thieves have existed since that fateful day in the Garden of Eden when the first sin was committed. It isn't a ,matter of society being tolerant, it's a matter of accepting the fact that people are going to steal things. Hopefully all of this "testosterone talk" about vigilante justice is just talk. Otherwise, Bill is dead-on right that you are putting your personal freedom at great risk by attempting to kill another human being ... thief or not. There is a price for the convenience of parking your boat and gear in a dock in full sight of the human vermin that are thieves, and that price is that it might not be there when you get back. That's a simple fact of life. Bill and the others of us who trailer our boats are not the criminals here. We simply acknowledge the above facts and take steps to protect our belongings.

We are definitely having to change the way we fish, particularly in the hot-weather months, or suffer the consequences of not catching many. The glory days of beating the banks are long gone. I can still throw my power-fishing baits but I've had to significantly adapt my techniques. Used to be a guy could catch good fish up shallow 8-9 months out of the year. Now that's more like 2-3 months.

If you want to save yourself some time and get back on the water ASAP, take it to Fred at Ulrich Marine in West Branson. He will take good care of you.