Champ188

They walk among us.

Not a hint of any vertical bars, but a subdued yet visible lateral line in the back half of the fish. Would really be interested to know if it had a tongue patch. Also looks like some faint horizontal lines down by the belly. Nomolites would be a good one to weigh in on this, being a fisheries guy.

Shoot no ... if fake pre-Rap Wiggle Warts can bring $100 each, I'm shooting for $250 for these babies. LOL

Third pic almost certainly looks like a meanmouth to me. Great day and thanks for the good report.

I cleaned em out. But I'm not opposed to negotiating a resale arrangement on a couple of them. 😆😂

Yeah, Dave (or Chris), I struggled this week (translation: never boated a keeper all week) but my Mercury-powered HydroBlaster filled with Shell gasoline moved me around the lake flawlessly, and my Lowrance/Garmin/Humminbird electronics distinctly revealed the infertility of all the spots I located in practice thanks to the incredible mapping abilities and forward-facing sonar of the aforementioned electronics. I might also add that my HydroTrail trailer carried my rig superbly from the Holiday Inn Express this morning to the lake, naturally assisted by the perfect roundness of my Cooper tires. I was able to cast and wind (fruitlessly) all day in comfort due to the outstanding performance of my Zebco technique-specific fishing system and I didn't experience a single failure with my awesome Hawg Wrangler Supreme 175-pound-test braided line. I'd also like to thank Strike King, Spro, Cordell, Creme, Zoom, Rapala, Bomber, Megabass, Gamagotcha, and Small Bite tackle companies for performing all day without a single failure (despite never getting a bite). Oh yes, and even though it never rained a drop all week, my Angler Condom rainwear performed extraordinarily.

I have to agree on Chris Jones ... he is awful, and he's insanely irritating. I also agree that this derby probably will have little impact on Murray ... it's just a total fish factory. BUT (yeah, here comes the big BUT) ... it sets the precedent that yanking bass off their beds is OK, and very few lakes can withstand that pressure year after year. I don't think there's any doubt that tournament fishing pressure has hurt Table Rock, Beaver and perhaps even Grand Lake in our immediate area. Ray Scott led the parade for catch and release years ago. Sure, they bed fished. But they had legitimate concern for conservation. Today's BASS ownership should follow suit, but that would require getting the $$$$ out of their eyes long enough to see the big picture.

Yep, awesome fishery. Can someone tell me how you can call yourself "Elite Series" when you are yanking these giant fish off their spawning beds and putting them in the livewell? That is setting the wrong example in a day and age when it's just not necessary to drag them around like that. Millions upon millions of genetically superior eggs/fry being wiped out so Mercer can annoy the world with his g-g-g-g-GIANT BASS crap. Sad that the folks who are supposed to be leading the way in our sport are setting this example.

Beaver is getting crazier by the day with recreational boats ... and the boats and wakes get bigger every year. Happy I'm in a 20-foot Ranger. Anything less is gonna give you a beating.

Brilliant!!!! (Love thos Guiness TV ads) 😂

Congrats on retiring!!!

I wasn't fishing ... just taking a side trip to drive by the ramp while out running errands. I'm done giving them $165 a year in boat registration fees to fish glorified ponds where you either brush them yourself or join the crowd looking for other people's brush. I'll just cherry-pick my weekdays to fish on Beaver or TR.

I'll admit that I'm old and cranky but for gosh sakes, why should someone have to get out and politely TALK to someone to let them know they are blocking the ramp. Can they not SEE they are blocking it? Just my opinion, but it's just like everywhere else in life these days, they don't give a flying fornication about you or the others behind you.

Jeff, I saw one loading up (or trying to) at the Granton ramp the other day in a 30-year-old Ranger 361V and the dude had on a sublimated jersey with at least a dozen logos on it and his name emblazoned across the back. My wife backs a trailer 10x better than this guy and when he finally did get the trailer in the water, he got it in too deep and nearly ran the nose of the boat thru the back window of his SUV. I just drove off shaking my head. I doubt any offer of assistance/education would've been appreciated.

I struggle mightily at times with this "live and let live" concept ... some of those chuckleheads just need their butt kicked. Might not do any good in the long run but at least then you'd have the satisfaction of knowing you did your part to educate them. 😆😄

Gotta say that while I haven't encountered many kayakers in my fishing travels, the ones I have run across on the whole have been pretty darn entitled. Cutting between me and the bank I'd been on for 30 minutes to fish ahead of me and giving me the old line, "You can go anywhere you want, I'm just a little kayaker with limited mobility." I get that and do my best to give them all the room I can, but this particular dude was nowhere around when I first started fishing that stretch. Recently at Horseshoe Bend on Beaver, half a dozen cartoppers each took up the extremely limited truck/trailer parking spots at the ramp. They could've easily shared those spots, but no, they had to be entitled jerks and center themselves (longways) in each spot.

And I get your point about Connell ... kid seems to be a good fisherman so I hope the rumors are false and he continues to shine. My bad for perpetuating them, regardless of the reliability of my source. I still say, forbid contestants in the high-paying tournaments to practice with or to solicit/receive info from licensed guides and let the rest work itself out.

I don't always agree with what he has to say, but Randy Blaukat hits the nail on the head in this episode of his Intuitive Angling channel on YouTube:

My post was attributed to a source whom I consider reliable. There's always controversy around no-info rules on every circuit because it's an unenforceable rule. The anglers are naturally left to self-regulate because obviously you can't assign a "monitor" to go with them every step of their lives. Star-struck fans run up to pros all the time at the gas pump and spew info to a contestant before he can say "Sir, I can't accept any information because of our rules." Lakefront property owners do the same, as do fans out on the water during practice, at restaurants, sponsor booths, hotels, etc. Info is gonna be passed to the anglers regardless of what rules you put in place. Only way to make it fair is to say you can't hire guides or ask anyone for info, but whatever you may overhear or receive unsolicited is OK. Or just put a period after "can't hire guides" and let the rest sort itself out. BASS ran a successful circuit for many years under Ray Scott and then Helen Sevier without any such silly rule.

Yep, a lot of "2-pound crappie" are caught and never weighed. Fact is, most aren't much more than half of that weight. A true 2-pound crappie is a giant. My grandfather caught them regularly at certain times of the year on Lake Ouachita in Arkansas.

BFL had 235 boaters + amateurs last year for a tournament that had to be rescheduled. They'll scare the heck out of 250 again if they don't hit it. Hopefully, since there are very few bass actively spawning, all of the boat traffic will have the few that are very skittish and hard to catch. It's not ideal, but I can live with some prespawn/postspawn fish being hauled around the lake. But it irks me to no end --- and always will --- to see the people who claim to be all in for taking care of our fisheries schedule tournaments on top of the spawn and defend that practice as harmless. It is NOT harmless to take hundreds of bass off their beds and no amount of pro-tournament rhetoric (spin) is going to change that one bit. This is not an attack on the Big Bass Tour --- it's my conviction about all spawn-season tournaments regardless of name or number of participants. If we really love our fish like we say, let's stop the springtime tournament insanity. Hey Johnny, step up and REALLY GIVE SOMETHING BACK to the sport that made you a billionaire ... at least start the discussion around what can be done to independently study, discuss and potentially take action to protect the fishery where your signature lodge stands.

The purest love ever ... and for all of mankind.

Rooting for Watson, too. Enjoyed being river rat buds with him in the old Central Pro-Am tournaments. As for Connell, I've heard from a reliable source that he's another pre-tournament info outlaw who just hasn't yet been caught.

Buying up all we can find for as little as we can, then gonna start sellin' em for $100 each. You know, kinda like the old pre-Rap Warts. Right now we are in marketing mode, using the whiners to chum the waters for what will soon become a buying frenzy. 😂