hoglaw

Tomorrow, oral arguments will be heard in a case involving whether a game and fish officer needs reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to inspect hunting/fishing equipment. I don't know much about the case and wouldn't have heard of it except that one of my partners has been appointed special justice to hear and decide the case (along with the other justices), a very neat honor for him. Oral arguments can be watched (or at least listened to) online I think. Not too long ago there was a case involving a guy driving a party barge on lake hamilton. The parties stipulated that he was drunk, but that he was driving in a normal and non-suspicious manner. He was stopped by a game and fish officer for a life jacket check when the officer noticed that he was intoxicated and ultimately arrested him. He was convicted and appealed. The issue was whether the game and fish officer could just stop anyone to check on life jackets, or whether he needed reasonable suspicion to believe something was up. The Supreme Court ruled that boaters were entitled to the same consittutional protections as motorists, and law enforcement had to have reasonable suspicion to make the stop, and ultimately reversed his conviction. I believe that this case involves an officer observing someone who had finished their hunt and inspecting their gear, ultimately finding some sort of violation. I don't know if it was too many ducks, no plug in the gun, lead shot, or what. But they got cited and have appealed, arguing that simply being in possession of hunting equipment and appearing as if they had hunted does not allow an officer to detain them and inspect their gear. It's an interesting issue because it has the potential to make game violations far more difficult to detect and ultimately prosecute. Like I said, I'm not anywhere close to 100% on the facts of this case, but as I understand it the officer went beyond simply checking their license. Any law enforcement officer can detain someone for any reason long enough to verify their identification (and possibly their fishing/hunting license?). But the question is, what exactly does the officer have to observe before he can check livewells, guns, barbless hooks, etc. My hope is that the court will decide something to the effect that purchasing a license is consent to be searched for the purpose of determining compliance with applicable game regulations. I think there's something about that in the book. But we shall see.

Someone told me it was no wake once. It was a few years ago when it was backed up from table rock and I took my jet boat to the top of the C&R area from Houseman...or maybe below Houseman. I was running wide open through the bottom of the catch and release (no one was around) headed towards Parker. I came off plane well upstream of a guy who had waded out into Parker and I was going true idle. He waived me over and told me it was no wake. He was polite and I wasn't running through his water, but he told me the whole thing was no wake. I've never seen anything to confirm as far as I know. I think I posted about it in this forum.

Norm, you broke the rules. You started this haiku thread. Haikus not for you?

I see what you did there

Color does matter. Side by side, some work some dont. See? I catch more fish!

To be fair, I think it's a pretty widely understood fact that crime has decreased significantly in the last few decades, isn't it? Serious crime - rape, murder, robbery, and assault - has fallen like a rock since the 80's. It's been attributed to lots of things from policing technology to legalized abortion. While the theories for the drop are controversial, I think it's generally agreed by everyone that crime has decreased significantly. In any event, I hear you on your rant. There are certainly bunches of bad apple cops, and plenty of good ones as well. But we as a society have a healthy respect for public servants, and fundraisers in their name/honor garner a lot of support and attention. You could certainly go about fundraising for those you felt more deserving. That would be a very saintly approach.

LEO death benefits would be the same as most any other state employee I would think. Social security widow's benefits, something from the state, and any accidental death/life insurance policy that the officer purchased. I don't think cops get the shaft any more than any other state employee, the community is just better about putting fundraisers together.

Hope you're fishing from a boat with all of that water. Wading will be tough. If you can catch 5 units, the big articulated streamer bite might be awfully good. I'm ready to go over there and do some hopper fishing. I've never done it before (at least not the way I want to) and have a perfect boat for it with giant decks front and rear. Maybe someone will show me the ropes over there this year?

Solid points by Al as always. The hula grub has pretty much replaced any kind of jig for me. The hit it on the fall, on the swim, on the drag, and on the bounce. I'm getting a lot more confidence in the lure that shall not be named, particularly for wading these days. But the hula grub is tough to beat for that drive-by pitch into the rootwad hole in the heavier current. Not counting this year since I've been playing with other stuff, if I did a pie chart of the lures I used at any given time on smallmouth trips, I bet the hula grub would account for at least 50% of the time, with a soft plastic frog in not too distant second. I used to lug so much tackle in the canoe with me. Different baits for every possible situation. Multiple colors. Creature baits and stuff I never even used. I'm in the "bring at least four rods" camp for sure, but now the tackle box has gotten a lot smaller. For just about any warm weather trip in the canoe, I'd have two baitcast rods, one with a soft frog and one with a hula grub. And then one spinning rod with a ned rig, and possibly another with a flick shake worm. If water conditions dictated, I might fish a wiggle wart. I love sammies, but I hate having to pull the hooks out of my flesh which has become more of an issue now that I fish from a kayak. I need to build a lighter pistol grip 4.5' or 5' rod for sammie fishing. It's a lot tougher in the kayak than it was from a canoe.

oooh, the wacky worm is another one of my standards. But I don't fish mine weightless. I've caught a lot of fish in a lot of odd times on a flick-shake worm.

He will paint them. He does a green and a brown. I'm very pleased with the ones I got from him. One other nice thing about them is they have a double sided baitkeeper - a barb on each side of the hook. It really holds them on well. I'm just super picky about jigheads and PJ's switching their weedguards kinda irritated me. They're perfect heads other than the weedguard. I probably owe it to Jim to send him my comments before just saying I won't use them anymore. I still like lots of their stuff though, just not the hula grub heads. And I hear you on the "my wife" comment. But don't be offended. I turned her on to the hula grubs when we first started fishing together. Now she insists on using my 6' GL3 cranking rod with a 201 curado and a 5" hula grub every single time we fish. And she can catch them on it big time. I've lived on a smallmouth creek for almost a year now and she still has the big fish title for the creek with a fat 18" fish that slammed her hula grub. Even in the winter when we float the wintering pool we live on and I'm catching the fire out of Kentukies on jerkbaits, she insists on fishing the hula grub and will scrape out a few.

Interesting. I throw spots and rattle traps in a local private grassy lake during the winter but have never tried them on the creeks.

Clay, I'm a big hula grub devotee. That is ALL my wife will fish. I typically use the 5" in green pumpkin with black flake. And I use a 1/4 jig head most of the time. I used to love the pjs heads. But their weedguard has changed. It's just a limp noodle now. The guy at custom lure used to sell good ones, but now his weedguard is too stiff. Drts5kprs makes some excellent jig heads for hula grubs with a perfect weedguard in my opinion, though he's pretty backed up right now so he may not appreciate the shout out.

What's a rattlebait?

I wonder if body temperature compared to metabolism is a completely linear function? For instance, we all know fish metabolism gets higher as the water warms, but does it keep getting higher as the water gets HOT? River smallmouth, for the most part, can't regulate body temperature the way their lake breathern do. Lake fish can hang out in deep water over summer to stay cooler, though it probably has more to do with where the shad are. When it gets hot, the river bass can't do much other than seek out a shady spot or swift water, which explains why they congregate at the riffles during the hottest part of the year (that and probably oxygen). But like Al, my very best days have been during the dog days of summer. If there's some occasional cloud cover or an approaching storm, so much the better. But even on the most bluebird 100 degree day in August, you just know you're going to hammer them. I've also done really well fishing on moonlit nights. Not that the moon has much to do with the bite, but it lets me see and navigate. Maybe the all night gorge combined with the temperature drop is what seems to slow them down in the morning? Obviously the best time to go is when you can go, and the more you fish the more you'll catch. But I would be willing to bet that MOST of the time, if I fished the exact same stretch of water in August from 6 a.m. to 10, and then from 2 p.m. to 6, I'd catch more in the afternoon. That's an impossible hypothesis to prove other than through lots and lots of trips to get a good sample, but that has always been my personal experience.

I think another guy is running an operation on the property Ernie used to lease at trigger gap. I heard Ernie lost the lease somehow, but that he's still making a go of it across the river. Kings River Adventure is the name of his deal, and google says the number is (479) 253-2346. I think there's another place or two in Berryville if you want to float farther down on the river, and another one by Grandview.

I'm sorry to hear that about him and thanks for letting us know. Can you PM me the person you use for shuttles so I can put it in my phone (or post it here if he/she wouldn't mind)? Don't have a trip planned at any point in the near future but I always used Jimmy to shuttle me when I went.

I've been on loads of overnight floats where we got an early start and didn't catch them until the sun got a little higher. I'm sure there are great morning bites at times, but I feel like I do a lot better later in the day.

Yeah, not smart and not really a fun float. But I'm sure they made it to the take out. Not exactly a challenging float.

I haven't been over in a while now. I'd like to fly fish a little more, but it's tough for me to want to wade and whip water all day when I know I can hammer them on a jig from the boat. Maybe we will get a bunch of higher flow this summer. That would set up the jerkbait bite but the hopper fishing could be great as well. When does the hopper bite normally start materializing? My good buddy just had twins so he'll be ready to do an over and back trip this summer. We are also expecting our first. A boy due November 1. So I need to get out while I can this year.

Jimmy walker with crooked creek canoe is the only guy I know. Pm me if you can't find his number. He can give you an eyes on report too. The creek can be a challenging float in high water, but I've hammered big fish on falling water that was still clearing before. It was a summer trip and I caught them on wiggle warts and spinner baits.

Maybe by next weekend. I went back in time to see how fast it falls out. The creek hasn't been fishable in almost a month! As wet as the ground is its really slowing the fall. I'd say it's remotely possible that it will be float fishable by next weekend, but not very likely. That being said, I had a banner trip on high water out there once. Just don't remember how high it was.

I can give you a better idea on cfs when I get back to work and check my float log. But as a general rule of thumb creeks are high-fishable at the 75th percentile on the usgs gauges.

I've heard nothing but rain for the past week. Hopefully bull shoals is filling up. Could be a dandy hopper summer drifting the big water.

I have to think they're in there. There are a couple of docks below Ramsey so I know someone fishes it, but the folks from Searcy can't get up there unless the water is running hard, and if they do they risk getting stuck above the wier wall. There aren't any places to take out unless you have private access, so it would be a long float. But I'm determined to do it at some point. My step dad's Ghenoe's are perfect for that kind of stuff with a little 3.5 outboard. You'd still be motoring for quite a while if it got late. I certainly wouldn't want to paddle it. But some day I'm going to do that float.