roy_eros

I have been making all of my own A-Rigs ever since I lost ones I greatly overpaid for at the store. You can make these things cheap guys, and they work just as good. Powerdrive to answer your question I have foul hooked one fish and got him to the boat, I have only had a few hits that I did not land, and very few have been hooked in the side by the other hooks. Today I caught 9 keepers and a handful of shorts and only recall pulling 1 hook out of a fishes side (fish was also hooked in the mouth). All of my fishing has been done in Ark. so I have been using the standard 5 hook rig. Managed to land a 20lb or so Striper today on one of my homemade rigs and it held up fine wires werent even bent out of shape which I found very surprising. Made me feel pretty confident my craftsmanship will hold up to any bass fight.

Caught this guy on Norfork today. Was going to put it here to see if anyone could tell me if it was a striper or hybrid? I wasnt sure because the lines were broken a little but not much... fish was 33 inches long, didn't get a weight..

I have fished the a-rig several times on our area lakes in the past couple months. Some days I have done well, some so-so, and some I was skunked. To me this bait is certainly going to be a valuable fish catching tool at times. Is it the great "equalizer" that will change tournament fishing as we know it? NO certainly not. Are there some days it will dominate on particular bodies of water? Sure, aren't many tournaments dominated by other specific techniques? Examples,throwing a mega bass or wiggle wart around here at different times of the year. Although these are my believes at this time, I think we all need to sit back and see where this thing goes. When else can you remember fishing forums being blown up like this in January? When else have entire displays of fishing tackle been bare in bass pro and other local stores in January? I think this buzz in the fishing world has been a positive boost to the industry during a slow part of the year.

Most of the tournament results I have seen from Arkansas and Missouri have been comparable weights to the past few winters, and most of the same names finishing consistently at the top. I just don't personally see much justification for banning this rig from recreational fisherman or tournaments.

Can't wait to sling that a-rig around come may, I may cash several checks on one cast!

I couldn't afford to keep slinging $20 baits into brush piles, so I just got the stuff to make my own.

Very nice! If you don't mind sharing some specifics, what have you found to be the best leader length for this setup?

22,000 stripers every other year into a lake the size of bull shoals, of a fish that can't reproduce, is a very small number. Our lake loses much more fish to poorly run and organized tournaments,( that do not handle the fish properly) as well as some of our local guides who send limits of fish to the grease on a regular basis. The AGFC needs to look at properly maintaining the most reproductively beneficial fish (14-17inch).

It would make much more since to set a slot of 14-17 or 15-18 inch fish must be released immedietly..just my 2 cents

Find something you are confident in, go somewhere your confident, fish hard!

When you decide to chunk the tackle box, will you post the GPS coordinates?

I'll be there! One of the funnest and best put on tournaments I have been to!

I caught a really nice KY a few weeks back with a worm hook stuck down his throat. It was pretty rusty, and the eye and probably half the shank were still visible out of his throat. Im guessing it had been there a few days if not more. Fish was very healthy probably pushing 3lbs so that goes to show you if you deep hook one they can still survive if you cut the line and dont try to rip it out.

Be really interesting to see what kind of rains we get this year and what the water level will be like..

We got lucky saturday morning way way back in a creek in the dam area. We tried deep stuff from 6-9 a.m. with only a couple shorts coming from about 20ft on jigs. It got a little cloudy and breezy so we decided to go shallow and have a look around. I dont know if this is a reproducable pattern or just a right spot in the right time type situation, but we found huge balls of shad with lots of hungry fish chasing them around in less than 10 foot of water in this particular creek. We managed to catch about 20-25 largemouths with only 2 being keepers, 2 keepers spots and one really nice white bass. We easily lost as many fish as we landed as they were slapping at the bait as others have reported. All our fish came on topwaters in about one hour. Once the sun came out they vanished and our tough day continued.

I'm interested in watching it, but I also dont get WFN

I'll second falcon rods..but my weapon of choice is the 7'3' amistad cara...unbelievable well balanced rod

About the auxillary gates I agree they would be devastating and I'm not suggesting the use of them if thats the way anybody took it. I didnt realize the gates on the big dam could open up that much more. I was thinking we were getting pretty close to full bore for the big dam but obviously i was mistaken. Even so another day or two of significant rain even now and I dont see how the water level wouldnt aproach their use. I imagine the corps has a number 937? 940? At which they would have no choice..just speculating not trying to say im an expert, just hypothetical/could of easily happened this week

Looking back at the 2008 Lake levels on the corps site I can tell you the Lake crested on April 11, 2008 (933), Two weeks later we were at 931. End of may 929. End of June 927. Keep in mind we had several more significant rainfalls during that period, but we are likely to have a couple more this year in the coming month or two. As for two weeks i would be optimistic if the lake was at 931, probably 932-933 is more realistic.

I'm gonna have to agree with MoPanfisher on this one. They couldn't start releasing out of beaver or table rock when it was still coming down because the river levels below each dam were already at flood stage. Yes, it is a bad situation but they avoided flooding people out until they had no choice. What kind of attitude would you have if the weather man (who we all trust so much) would have been wrong and it stopped raining. Then what does the Corps say " Ohh sorry we took a preventative measure and flooded these people out of their homes based on the forecast"...don't think that would go over to well. Even with beaver at record lows, and table rock and bull significantly below average we saw what mother nature could do in a few short days. There is really no way to prepare for that. A draw down of a few feet is really insignificant when your talking a rise of 20ft+ in a few days. I'm also gonna throw out there that I dont think that multi-million dollar extra spillway is an "end of the world" type scenario as some have stated. I would be willing to guess we were very very close maybe just an inch or two more of rain from seeing that puppy opened up. For those living down stream on the white they can just be thankful for BS Dam and the property and possibly lives it has saved this week.

FLW has officially called off their tournament next week. The economic impact of loosing these two tournaments is un-calcualable.

Time to put on some braid and go flipping haha

Congrats on another amazing day Bill.

I always rig my warts on either 10 or 12lb monofilament or flurocarbon and always use the clip that comes with them. I keep a few extra clips incase i lose one or bend one. I also like to change out the stock hooks with #6 trebles. I have had success with a variety of styles but i think the gamakatsu EWG are my favorites.

Thanks for the complement Hog Caller, I'd rather wet a line in the waterfall at BPS as long as its not the one with the Gator!!