hoglaw

I know what a common carp looks like in the water. They have big round scales, are light in color, and grow big. I know what a normal sucker and hognose sucker looks like. But I'm seeing a lot of rough fish on my creek that get very large and are really dark. They seem to travel around in pods and act like carp do, but they're almost black. What are they? I've had success catching carp on olive maribou trout jigs, but I haven't been able to get one of these to bite so far.

That guy is awesome, and it's a travesty that he didn't win. I'm not into American Idol or any of these live shows that are on TV right now, but my wife got me hooked on AGT and I loved that guy. I think he still winds up with a show somewhere, and I'll go see it. No clue on the prognosis for fish that eat gulp. If it's supposed to be biodegradable, maybe it treats their system a little better than normal plastics that don't go away?

There's a catch and release section below Red's, or at least there was last time I fished it which was Fall of 2013 I think. It's alright. There's a really neat area on the right as you head downstream through it that's full of big rocks and holds lots of fish. I share Ham's enthusiasm for that part of the river.

I've stayed at a bunch of places over there. Gastons caters to a little different experience than I'm after. Stetsons is a little better. I'm a fan of sportsmans. It's not the nicest in terms of amenities, but I like the property and sitting out by a fire at night. Super nice folks, and you can run to the dam from there and float back. It's probably 8 or 9 miles down from the dam I'm guessing. Farther down on the river, norfork river resort is cool. It's one of my favorites and you can run up both rivers if they're running out of norfork as well. The other bonus is the river is a little wider down there and you may find some more slack water. The downside is you're a long way from the dam, and you're below two rivers that can run muddy if you get a bunch of water. Norfork river resort had fantastic accommodations though.

Yep, y'all were both spot on. I think we could have caught a lot more fish if we'd have focused on sticking to the slack water and jigging it, but I was determined to get a big fish. Ironically the biggest fish I landed was a really pretty 17" rainbow on the first drift. We probably caught 25 or 30 between the two of us, most of which were small (all smaller than the 17"), but there were quite a few fish with full fins that had been in the river a while mixed in there. We caught most fish on jerkbaits because that's what we threw all day, but we did catch a few on jigs in the C&R area. It stormed like crazy on the way up there and rained lightly on us for the first hour or two of the trip. I thought that might help the big fish bite, but it didn't. We did manage to locate a few groups of really nice fish. We fished to them on multiple drifts. Each time they would charge the jerkbait down, maybe dart back and forth a few times, but we couldn't get them to eat. Finally I had one come out of nowhere and it just engulfed my jerkbait, but it came right towards me. I reeled as fast as I could so I could stick it, and before I got any pressure on the line, it jumped straight up out of the water and threw my bait right back at me. I swear it came six feet out of the water - I've never seen one jump so high. It looked to be a really long and lean brown. It was a big fish for sure. We had a bunch of heart stopping moments when big ones would charge our baits, but that was the only one that bit. You're right Joe, they must have all the food they want right now. They were definitely frisky and would chase the bait around, but as soon as they got a look at it they wouldn't bite. I threw at least three different jerkbaits, and my buddy threw two or three different ones. Same results all the way around. Maybe the big fish bite is better on a faster rise, or early in the rise?

I've been traveling a lot for work lately and it's finally settling down, so I'm leaving early tomorrow morning to do a quick over and back trip to the White. We'll likely put in at White Hole and fish up and down from there. Looks like they've been running the equivalent of six full generators pretty much around the clock, so I'm pumped about some some warm weather jerkbait fishing. Only problem is the weather forecast doesn't look so good. Hopefully I'll have a report Thursday that doesn't involve dodging lightning. Anyone been fishing the big water?

Yeah, and it's going to be a sketchy ride in the canoe all the way down there. I hate floating on the white in high current in anything but a 56" wide flatbottom.

You can't buy live shad as far as I know. If you can't throw a net, you can catch plenty of bream on night crawlers I'm sure.

You've caught 10,000+ trout on jigs in that river. You know you can catch them on jigs. Why not use the high water as an opportunity to jerkbait fish and maybe catch some good ones? My skin is crawling I'm so anxious to get over there and fish hoppers, streamers, and jerkbaits in big water. You're living in it and still throwing JIGS?????!!!!

Doubtful in my opinion. You can always find SOMEWHERE to wade (current break, an island, someone's back yard), but it may not be a good spot. Watch the generation and maybe the Norfork will give you a window. 6+ units of water puts multiple feet of water over areas that would normally be dry gravel. There should still be good fishing to be had, but it will be by boat.

Amber

I bought a revolutionary s recently. I love it.

Yeah, I like a Palomar but tie a clinch on my leader setup. Also, I kinda want to break off at the lure rather than the leader.

One other thing I'll add is that you can rent kayaks down there for like $150 for a week. They aren't the most comfortable things in the world and bringing my Coosa made the trip for me this year, but you at least have that option. You can paddle around in the surf and catch lady fish and other stuff pretty easily, but the backwater stuff is where it's at. There are a number of spots that you can go catch trout and redfish at. It's a learning curve for sure. It's not like Louisiana where anyone can whack fish on just about any lure, but you can figure it out.

Amery: You need to come fish the creek at my house. Shoot me a PM some time and let's get together. I grew up in Jacksonville Arkansas, and there was a member of our church who had a son about my age who was autistic. He never spoke a word, but could understand folks as I recall. When he got a little older, he came downstairs and said "it's cold outside today." They were the first words he ever spoke. It was a pretty neat deal. On the other end of the spectrum (not the autism spectrum), I have a step sister who is a little older than me (I'm 34). She was born with a disorder called Rett Syndrome. It only affects girls, and I'm not sure if a girl can have it "worse" or "better" than another person afflicted. But my step sister is 100% disabled. She does not speak, just moans, cries, and grinds her teeth. She doesn't understand commands and can't perform any activities of daily living on her own. She can drink from a straw and can sort of hold a cup with assistance. Before she was 18, she lived in a facility that took care of mentally handicapped kids but spent a lot of time at our house as my step mother was a single mother at the time and taught math at a junior high school in little rock. After she turned 18, my step mother retired and cared for her full time, so she has lived at our house for the past twenty years. In the last five years or so, her medicaid benefits helped with "respite care" and would pay another care giver to take her X number of days per week. But we had a problem with the caregiver and he's going to the pen over it. After that, my step mother resumed full time care, but recently found a facility in Jonesboro that would provide respite care. So she goes there for a week or so at a time, and then comes home for a week or so. It has been very difficult for my step mother to let anyone else take care of her, partly because of the deal with the bad caregiver, and partly because of the guilt of not taking care of her own daughter. But the Jonesboro facility has been a real blessing. None of us can imagine what it's like to take care of a child with special needs unless we've lived through it I think. It's a tireless job that often feels thankless. My wife and I are expecting our first in November and we couldn't be more excited. It's funny to think how we used to hope we'd get a boy first, or hope that he'd be into fishing/sports, or hope that he'd be really smart or successful. Now we just hope for a healthy baby, but will happily accept whatever life gives us.

We really like David Rice. Have fished with him twice now. He does inshore stuff though - redfish and trout mainly. If the tide is right (and you can look at this before you book), you can fish the Dixie Bar. To do that, you need a strong outgoing tide. On an outgoing tide, all kinds of bull reds, jacks, sharks, and pretty much everything that swims stalk the tip of fort morgan and gorge on the bait that's being washed out of mobile bay into the gulf. You drift it like you do drift fishing for trout, only with big croakers or hard tails for bait. On one drift with a different guide two years ago, we hooked up with three identical 20lb bull reds at the same time and it was chaos. But David can for sure put you on that. If you want to do any do-it-yourself stuff with a kayak, I'll be happy to share more detailed information with you. I've got a lot of spots marked on the map for kayak fishing and I'm not sure how to post those google earth images here, so I'd rather email them to you. I'm happy to share it with the world - no secrets - I just don't know how to post it here correctly. You can for sure get into some do it yourself trout and redfish in the Gulf Shores/Fort Morgan area. The kayak fishing down there is a lot of fun. Also, check out the pensacola fishing forum before you go. It's a wealth of information and they're pretty good about sharing stuff with tourists like us.

I saw one on the white too, but it had already landed and was parked on a gravel bar. I saw it at the end of my float down the lower buffalo. Wonder if it was the same plane? It was pretty small. Cool way to hop to a riffle though.

Great picture Joe. I spend so much of my day having to talk to people and argue with folks that by the end of it I just don't want to talk to anyone, and cut just about every phone call off short. I swear I never had a phone call with that guy that lasted less than 10 minutes, even if I was just calling to let him know I'd be out on Saturday morning. He would always make the shuttle work and hardly charged anything for it. He'd keep my truck overnight at his place just to make sure no one broke into it at the take-out when I did overnighters. He even picked up beer for us at one point when we'd have had to run to Payat to get it. I didn't see him since last year, and never saw or spoke to him while his health was failing. All I knew about it was what you posted. But man, what a neat guy. There's a pretty good size group of us that will always associate him with that part of the world.

I like micro guides, but I'm not a fan of the Duckett rods. The problem with micro guides is unless you spiral wrap them, you either have to use too many (defeating their purpose in the first place) or you have line all over the blank because of the low clearance. The only solution for a baitcast rod is to put the guides on the bottom as we've discussed on here before. For a spinning rod, buying an off-the-rack rod practically guarantees the guides won't be placed correctly, as the size of the reel you're going to use dictates guide placement. Micro guides are cool on custom builds, but not cool on off-the-rack rods in my humble opinion.

Ham and muddy, let me know when yall want to come to nwa. Got beds for you and we can float at the house. Caught over 50 yesterday with 16" being the biggest. But I caught an 18" on thursday.

I haven't tried them and figured the exact same thing, but I thought it was funny that they wouldn't sell just the stripper guide. If you wanted to buy them for a custom rod build, you had to buy the whole set for like $35 - one funny guide and the rest normal.

I can answer for Arkansas, not sure about Missouri. It's a misdemeanor. Maybe a Class A, so punishable by a fine of up to $1000 and a year in jail, though it's almost always just a fine and confiscation. Having a CC permit is an affirmative defense to the charge. The actual charge is "carrying a weapon." When I prosecuted gun cases, I typically required some kind of evidence of intent to employ a gun as a weapon before I would go forward on them. To me, that meant that it needed to be loaded, in the glove box, etc. I wouldn't prosecute where the gun was cased, the guy was on the way to the deer woods with a shotgun, etc. The law was pretty vague actually. But if someone was just transporting a gun from A to B, or taking a gun to go hunting or target shooting or something like that, I didn't view it as a criminal act. If they were just riding around town with a loaded gun under the seat and had no CC permit, then I would prosecute and let them explain to the judge why they weren't "carrying a weapon." I don't think I ever sent anyone to jail over it. Just fines and forefiture of the gun.

The problem with any intelligent discussion on gun rights and balancing those rights against the rights of others to be free from getting shot is that it winds up being an idealogical argument rather than something folks can talk rationally about. That's been proven on this thread, and in every other discussion that has ever taken place on the subject. Obviously the right to own firearms has a basis in our constitution. That makes it a "fundamental right." But that doesn't mean that the right can't legally be curtailled or restricted. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater or threaten to kill another person even though the first amendment guarantees that laws won't impinge on freedom of speech. You can't vote when you're a convicted felon and you lose rights to be free from certain searches and seizures when you're on probation - even though the constitution protects those rights. It's disappointing that if you even come close to trying to discuss the issue, you're labled as a "liberal" and insulted. The folks who trumpet the second amendment and claim that anyone who wants to discuss intelligent laws regarding firearms is a "liberal" who wants to "restrict personal freedoms" are often the same folks who want to restrict the personal freedoms of others in the worst possible ways. This cuts both ways, but toe-the-line "conservatives" have no problem with the government telling a woman what she can and can't do with her own body or the government telling folks who they can and can't marry. So the whole "liberty and freedom" thing is just a flag to wrap around silly arguments when it suits you. Someone on this thread even suggested forcing people to carry guns, or forcing them to take classes about them. Talk about anti-personal freedom! When we get past the flawed ideological arguments, we get into the straw man arguments. "Just as many people are killed by drunk drivers, should we ban alcohol too?" Well no, but we have laws that ban drinking and driving. We arrest people who do it. And you have to pass a test to even get a license to drive. But there are almost no requirements to purchase a gun, and almost no meaningful safeguards to make sure that the folks walking around with them actually know what they're doing. I think everyone agrees that far too many people are shot in this country every year. If all guns were outright banned and confiscated, there can be no debate that far fewer people would be shot. I'm not advocating for that at all, as I own guns and enjoy shooting them even outside of the hunting context. But it is a reasonable position for folks to take that having a huge portion of the civillian population walk around with guns on their hips while they're getting groceries is dangerous. I refuse to turkey or dove hunt with some people because of how nonchalant they are with their shotguns. And when I see an average joe walking around in public with a not-so-concealed or open carry weapon, it does not make me feel safer. Yes, carrying a gun in your every day life is a personal decision. Some folks probably make it from a rational standpoint (a landlord who collects rent in a bad neighborhood for instance), and some from unjustified fears. And no doubt, some do it because it feels cool or sexy (the batman argument!). But when that personal decision places other lives in danger, it's ok to talk about it and to debate what can be done to make it safer.

To follow up on this, I get it. I own multiple handguns and long guns, and have shot my whole life. It is my PERSONAL OPINION that civillians legally carrying pistols on a day to day basis creates far more harm than it prevents. For every one story that the NRA touts as a triumph of concealed carry in crime prevention, it is my PERSONAL OPINION that there are twenty stories of firearm casualties due to mishandling, irresponsibility, freak accidents, etc. But hey, if carrying a gun around makes you feel good, then that's your right until the law says otherwise. The government is not taking guns away. It isn't even trying. The comment about Sandy Hook was a great one. If that didn't result in legislation, then not much ever will. This isn't Nazi Germany and the government isn't coming to get us.

? Surely you aren't arguing that we don't have waaaaaaay more gun deaths than we should?