Bird Watcher

I think it's a place that you have frequented before if I remember right. A place a guy can catch the love child of a Striped bass and a White bass. . I bet that lake is sad.. Heck, I bet all of them are up there in corn country. I'll try to get ahold of my friend and see if he can give me some more particulars about the logistics of it. I know he was catching the fire out of them about a month ago and it was all dependent on the generation schedule. If I can get all the info lined up, I'm thinking about taking a road trip up there to check it out. If I'm reading the generation schedule right, it looks like it would be afternoon before it would be time to go anyway. I'll send you a text in the morning and let you know if I'm going or not. That way if you are out fishing, you can call me after you finish up on the gills.

Nice Marty. Hey, I was thinking about maybe heading up North of the Dam Tomorrow in the afternoon. Would you have any interest in going? I kind of have some month old intel from a good friend about something up there.

I go about twice a week from April through September. About 2-3 times a month during March and October and maybe 3 or 4 times over the winter. I'd say 70-80 times a year. Maybe more if I'm on a hot bite and friends want to get in on it. I'll go another day or so during the week if a family member or a friend wants to get in something I've been catching and they can only go on certain days. Most of my trips are short though. I'm very rarely gone more than 5 hrs and a lot of my trips are 2-3 hrs. I'm blessed because I've got a great woman when it comes to the time I spend outdoors. The key for me is I try to fish when our daughter and her are asleep or have other plans and if I go for part of the day, I make sure the other part of the day is about being with them. It's a balance that works for us. I like to either go before they wake up or go in the evening when they are winding down for sleep. I kind of prefer it that way. I enjoy a lot of short trips a lot more than fewer long trips. I'm also lucky because I've got a lot of great fishing in less than a 30 minute drive. It probably wouldn't work if I had to drive an hour or more.

every year I count less and less everything. In the past I kept track of numbers of mushrooms, numbers of turkeys, numbers of deer, numbers of waterfowl, numbers of fish, numbers of...everything. Nowadays, I can barely remember what I caught at the end of the trip. I still remember the big ones or the unique situations, but I could care less about numbers anymore. I don't like getting skunked, but after I count 1, that's really as much as I need to count. The only one I really care about counting is the next one anyway. I don't really care about my tally because that's the past...that's what I caught. What really excites me is what I am about to catch.

Very interesting. Especially the stabilizer floats. looks good.

I think it depends on what type of catfish you are targeting. I think Blues suspend most of the time following shad around, I think Channels relate to the bottom more somewhere above the thermocline and can be really shallow, and I think flatheads tend to bury up cover during the day-either logjams or rocks. I can't speak about the catfishing specifically on Mark Twain, but that's what I think about where catfish would be in summer during the day.

I've always thought the same thing, but I think that would lead to a widespread revolt. That's the time of year that most people can catch a big walleye because they are aggressive and more accessible. I know of a creek here in SW MO that has some real big walleye in it, I've seen pics up to 13#,(it was killed by the way) but I'm not going to post it up on this thread because of that very reason. I know there's a few guys on here that already know about it, but those native river run fish that get so big don't need any more pressure than they already get on their meager populations.

Dad loves them. They are one of his favorite things out of the garden. I think he usually eats them raw or sliced on a salad or he steams/boils them in a saucepan with olive oil, salt and pepper. great looking garden Marty.

I'd say yours are about ready Marty. Dad grows those every year and if you let them go too long after it starts getting hot they start getting really fibrous. I don't know if you can go by size. The ones at the farmers market are as big as softballs already.

That's the longest write up I've ever seen in someone's profile. You really are an author.

you could try, "I'll be home about the time you see my headlights swing around the front yard" I say that one tongue in cheek to the OL.... then she beats me.

Looks like a good trip. What's the contraption you have rigged for your TM?

haha, yeah, it made it back when Marty and I finally got together. Just in the nick of time though. I think it was the last week of the season. I could stand to touch up the flocking and give them a good washing, I have three or four blinds that are have door pockets ripped in one manner or another-i probably ought to try and sew them up with some sail thread, the 4 wheeler needs a voltage regulator, I need to unzip all the foot bags on the blinds and see what the guest hunters gave me this year. That's usually good for a coffee cup or two, a pair of gloves, maybe a dozen shotgun shells, a hat, sometimes a thermos. sweep out the trailer, just too hot to think about all of that. I usually end up doing that the two days before resident goose season. Besides, the hybrids are up in the creeks and they are hungry:)

uggh...99 degrees for the next three days. Hard to even daydream about that stuff right now. It will be here before you know it though. I really need to pull everything out and fix what I broke last year.

I'd say YES.

Welcome Rick. What do you have in that big baitwell?

The flats on the West side of the lake across from Mutton Creek are a good place to start. It's a well known walleye fishing spot. Just look for all the boats drift fishing. Most primary and secondary points can hold walleye from time to time, YMMV.

I know this probably isn't what you are looking for, but I always just google what I want, show the shopping results, sort by low to high and then compare shipping. Transit times will vary, but I feel like I always get the best price possible.

Man, I'm glad to hear you're ok. hang in there. We all want to read along with your adventures for a long time.

These guys are pulling your leg. Picture Bourbon street during Mardi Gras only instead of a road it's a river. That's what Elk River is like this time of year on a weekend. Not so bad during the week, but the weekend is best left to the Greeks unless you have interest in giving/gaining plastic beads. It's not bad at night or at dawn or if you want to try to go below Noel somewhere.

So then the head sheep and his sheep sherriff decided to get a bunch of teeth and claws and sell them on the black market to the most violent of all the wolves. Their hope was that once the rest of the sheep discovered that these teeth and claws actually came from the sheep's stash, the sheep would comply with the head sheep's intent to make all teeth and claws illegal. Unfortunately, what happened is that before anyone realized what was going on, the wolves used the extra teeth and claws to murder the dog. Now the head sheep and his sheep sherriff are trying to convince the rest of the sheep that they were completely unaware of the entire chain of events before they get thrown in jail on murder charges....

Thanks for the report. Love that lake. Anyone catching crappie at night with lights?

I'm a big believer in live bait if you can get it. I think they get so keyed in on the baitfish they are chasing that it's really hard to get them to look at any type of artificial when they are schooling like that. Don't get me wrong, art's will catch them, but nothing like bait. As far as the larger fish below, I think that's true sometimes, but other times I've seen 10#+ hybrids completely breach chasing shad out of the water. I think it all depends on the day. A lot of guys have told me to try a rig consisting of a popping cork with a streamer 12-20"s below when they are like that. I think it's called a "gollywhomper" rig or "sandbass rig" or something like that. I haven't tried it yet because I haven't seen that type of surfacing where I fish in about a month or so, but some guys that really know how to catch them told me to try that.

Take her to your catfish hole and throw her rod out the other side of the boat with a worm and bobbber. After your 3rd or 4th fish she might want to change her rig a little bit. Who knows, after her 3rd or 4th fish you might want to change yours.

On the bright side, I'd always rather have a good motor and a bad boat than a good boat and a bad motor. Glad it turned out ok.