hoglaw

Hope you are all doing well. It's been half a decade since I've been on the forum. Life has been busy. I've got a 5 year old and a 1.5 year old now. The boys are getting older and it's getting closer to time to move from just fishing on the creek to hitting the lakes. I'm in the market for a deep V and am looking at one that has a 2020 200h Evinrude HO. To some extent it seems like motor brands are like Ford vs. Chevy, and each era and size has their plusses and minuses. I'm aware that Evinrude motors are no longer being made, but assume that parts and warranty service will remain available. This particular motor has a 7-year warranty in place. I've always had Yamahas and have never had any issues. The only reason I'm considering this boat is because it's ultimately a "good deal," but the motor on it is what it is. Obviously 2020 is pretty new so not a lot of track record out there, but does anyone have any strong (and educated) feelings one way or the other on the new Evinrudes?

Smallmouth were on beds when I floated a creek on Friday.

I've fished up the river and up war eagle 3 or 4 times this year. I've caught zero females and have not had a good white trip. They're either still prespawn or just aren't going to run. So to hear that they still have eggs is good. Maybe the walleye was a post spawn fish? They hang around upstream and in shallow water for a while I think. They're still being caught up the rivers.

Another year and my time for white bass/walleyes up the river is limited. I had a trial that finished up the week before last and was able to get out on a Wednesday in the kayak. River was extremely low then and I only managed one good walleye (that got released), a few shorts, a few small crappie and one lonely white. I was hoping to get out again tomorrow and kayak down to 45 from Waterford but the graph is coming up and getting muddier, so unless it stabilizes quickly then today's rain probably did me in. I imagine it will get right next week at some point once this cold and wet stuff blows through. I saw folks at Lowes buying tomatoes and peppers like crazy on Saturday. At least one night this week has a low of 34! I always get in a hurry to plant the garden but getting a head start doesn't help anything. I'm sure glad I didn't do it this year. I did plant a bunch of boxes on my deck though. May have to cover some stuff later this week.

I connect nanofil to floro or mono with a double uni. At first I was breaking off too much and didn't have much confidence in it, but now my break offs seem about 50/50 at the lure (almost always tied with a regular clinch knot or occasionally a palomar) or at the leader, which I think means I'm doing it right. I need to learn the alberto.

Man I'd love to but I just can't bring myself to be away fro. Home for a night these days. Our little guy is turning 1 next weekend. I've yet to spend a night away from him. My wife was out of the country on business for a couple nights a few weeks ago, and the first weekend in November she is going to see her grandparents. I'm going to go see a friend whose family bought the Thomas Reservoir down in Hazen. It's a big duck club and I'm overdue for a trip. Should be a good crappie/bass weekend. But it's my first nights away from my son since he was born. Having mixed emotions. LR, next time you're in NWA the invitation to float still stands. Put in or take out right in the back yard. It gets good here when it gets cold.

They just aren't that fun to shoot (to me anyway) but I agree with the comments above that for a wilderness gun a large caliber magnum revolver is probably about as good as it gets. I have a browning semi-auto .22 as well Jason. I can't remember the model (I think it might be the buckmark) but it's an absolute tack driver. My wife has a Walther PK380 that's like lightning, it never strikes the same spot twice. EVER. My favorite shooting larger caliber pistol is my Beretta M9. I can shoot it about as consistently as the .22 and it has a fifteen round magazine. Just a phenomenal gun. I don't think it would be convenient for carrying around every day, but then again I'm not sure why anyone would want to carry a gun around every day. Of course I never understood the whole phone on the outside of your pants or the Bluetooth earpiece thing either. To each their own.

I've done the dock shooting deal a little. It doesn't take long to get good at getting a jig a long way back under them. That part is pretty intuitive. The problem is docks with lots of cables or cover that's past other cover. Getting good at actually working the bait once it's back there is the rub.

Al has a great post somewhere on this board (probably in multiple places) about favoring the discharge over gauge height when it comes to figuring out whether a river is "floatable" or not. It should probably be bookmarked. Right now, the Berryville gauge is showing 64 cfs. While a decent rule of thumb is that anything over the 25th percentile and under the 75th percentile is probably floatable and fishable, the 25th percentile can be a lot of dragging and the 75th can be pretty swift on lots of rivers. BUT, on the Berryville gauge you'll note that the current 64cfs more than double the median flow rate of 28cfs for this time of year (there is also a "median" number but it is irrelevant as it can be skewed by large floods) and soundly between the 25th and 75th percentile goalposts. So even if I knew nothing about the Kings river, looking at the graph would show me its falling very slowly and right now it's absolutely perfect for floating and fishing. Coincidentally, the gauge is exactly 3 feet, so if you know the gauge elevations like Dan does, then you'd know his assessment is spot on. But the great thing about understanding how to read the discharge statistics is that you don't have to know the gauge elevations on any particular stream.

Lance, what is the dock bite like right now? A co-worker has a six stall enclosed dock with lots of hanging structure that's basically impossible to fish (at least effectively) from outside of it. One side of the dock is in about 30 feet of water and the other is more like 10. We were hammering post-spawn fish suspended in the trees underneath it in the late spring fishing either jigs or minnows vertically. I assume they will use spots like that all year long. Are there better/worse times of the year for that kind of deal?

Very stable and comfortable. Yes, they're heavy. Not a great boat for small stream stuff, but better than a canoe for mid-sized water. Reasonable multi-purpose boat. My family has a few (on the Little Red near Heber oddly enough) and they are perfect for that river.

I've quit smallmouth fishing during a couple of CC floats to fish trout jigs to carp. One of the first rods I ever built was for throwing 1/16 jigs to oversized fish. Nicely done ham.

I slow rolled the bridge by my house and saw a plus sized smallmouth surface to chomp something. I'm sure that's what it was. They seem to be whacking them here.

The mulberry has a good population of big fish, but it fishes very differently (in my opinion) than the normal Ozark stream. Those slower pools hold some oversized and overeducated fish. Very similar to the Big Piney (in Arkansas) in that regard. Still haven't floated the Illinois Bayou but it's on the list. I've floated from Wolfpen to Turner Bend (about sixteen miles I think) in two hours and five minutes. Did that with my wife when it was about four feet. I've done it higher but when it gets above that level the rapids just kind of get washed out. This was huge standing waves and nasty turns. We managed to stay upright except where the two channels come together below Sacriliac (sp?). We went down the drop on the left side and were so thrilled that we made it we didn't pay attention to the current coming back in from the right and it just undercut us in an instant. We were the only canoe that I saw but the kayak folks were having some kind of school out there. The kayakers were calling it quits and humping their boats up the riprap to the highway in droves. It was hilarious. It was probably the most nervous I've been in a canoe and we were definitely in over our heads but it wound up being one of our favorite trips. Not sure I'd want to do it again. I have always wanted to fish the river down below turner bend. There are some long stretches that probably require camping in the summer months. I think there are probably some good fish down there. I've run up it from the Arkansas River almost all the way to the I40 bridge. I've caught a lot of crappie at Vine Prairie where the mulberry hits the big river.

Now that's funny. Let me marinate on that for a while and get back to you.