Bill Babler

With a 1.8# bass that counts this will be silly 2 pounds is no problem for a boat load. I agree with Dock, there are some huge K’s out there right now, might see a 5 pounder Didn’t Wheeler and Tock have 100 pound days last time they were here? Wheeler was on the bouy point run out past point 9 going into Aunts Creek, across from point 10. He caught them mostly on a small swimmer. Tock was on the saddle at point 9. I think a drop shot. Mark Davis threw a hard head, in the flat coves by Eagles Roost, could have trouble with that this year. The year he won was a flood year and he caught them at the edge of the muddy water in Rock Creek on a wart. Another point is if you want to run for an hour plus you would be down so far to the scope guys it would be extremely tough. The playing field will be LC to Campbell Point and LC to Aunts Creek, I’ve told this story, but I was guiding 2 ladies at SK and they were catching one after the other on a fin. Avena pulled in on us and sat on the bow of his boat kicking his feet in the water like a punk kid. Kept yelling at us saying he was fishing for $100,000.00 and we were on his best spot ((community hole at SK) One of the ladies said if he is going to cry let’s go somewhere else. As we were leaving one lady threw him the bird. I can’t stand the guy. You’re going to have to fish a swimmer or a minnow to keep up. Score tracker will be lighting up like a cash register at Walmart.

You might be right. There were 100 plus maybe more fish in the school we lucked in on. Covered a 1/2 city block. 20’ to 28’ on the bottom and in the bottom 1/3rd. of the water column. I didn’t get back till late the next day and it was as barren as a pool table top. To tell the truth I really didn’t look for them as we were having a blast catching SM up on the bank. I might run out and look for a group or two this week. If I do I’ll post some scope shots. When the SM are biting like they are now I just can’t leave them alone. I have a sickness where those tiger striped fish are concerned. I’m running up to Camdenton for 3 days to help with cattle work. Might get out Wednesday and Thursday.

Redcrest starts Friday morning 35 players first two days with a 2 day combined weight featuring the top 10 on Sunday. Table Rock is as ripe for this event as it will forever be. For now we still have 1000’s and 1000’s of 15+ inch spotted bass that haven’t died of old age, and they are weighing heavy full of eggs and shad The K’s are just on the verge of starting with lots of large groups staging. Jaw’s and LM are doing their business or have done it and are very, very hungry. I know you can only use FF for a single period each day but if you can find these staging honey jars you can put together 20/30 fish in a period and never have to start the main engine. Son Steven and I found a group last weekend that would have put 100 pounds on the scale in a single period. Irony is I lost them the next day. 🤪🤪 These guys won’t lose em. Drew Gill is just flat going to WACK EM. Even when he shuts off the underwater peepers he is still going to wack them. Spencer. Little Jones, and Dustin along with the Goat are going to be in Heaven on the Rock next weekend Not to mention Michael Neil or J. Lue I may be Coo-Coo for Coco Puffs but I don’t think you can run down a bank or run up a river and catch the numbers of 2 plus pound K’s these scopers can put on a scale in minutes. 1. How many 100 pound bags will we see? 2. How many 50 pound periods? 3. Who ya got winning the $300,000.00? Drew Gill is hot with a Tackle warehouse and a MLF win this year. TR is going to set up perfect for him, absolutely perfect. I really believe it’s going to come from someone I mentioned above. Ok everyone take a crack at it and let us know why you think so. It’s going to be super fun.

Our best 5 SM went 3.6-3.4-3.4-2.9-2.8. We had 9 keeper jaws. Wouldn’t have won anything but it would have been fun to weigh those 5 in. The color variation of the SM in TR is amazing. From almost black to tan to dark caramel to green to tiger strips you never know what you’ll get from them except a big battle. The Rock is fishing tremendous and the K’s aren’t even up yet. Most in that 20’ plus just starting to stage. I have not seen any spawned out fish, but spoke to Eric yesterday and he said he is catching quite a few LM that are spawned out. No k’s or Jaws yet. MLF is going to wack em.

Lake started getting crowded by 7:30 and I don’t mean a little bit but really busy. Slime/Moss is really bad from KC to Baxter so everything we caught was moving baits. Fished from daylight till noon and they never stopped biting. Yesterday we fished from Shell Knob to Baxter and really didn’t see that many fishing. Two days of a jerkbait and a Keitech with lots of everything to the boat. Surface temps at the start of both days at 59 and 63 by noon each day. Air temps cooler and we were bundled up. All fish shallow. lots of Brown Fish Don had a really big LM on just prior to quitting tine today he had it on a Megabass 110 by the back treble hook. It had 2 hooks in it and it straightened them both out at the boat on a final dive. His drag was fine, I was kind of shocked sometimes they bend out a little but these were totally straight.

Ya, I was out there. Even the ramp at Joe Bald was packed. Guys running everywhere. Nice fish.

We fished all over. Sorry for seeing this late

I think I just found them on Amazon

3-5-26 Guys, here in part is what I’m doing till June. Yes I’m going to fish top some, throw a jig some and throw Big Gizzard Shad Baits, but day in and day out this is the way to catch numbers on the Rock. I’m swimming a 2.8” Keitech on a 1/4 Oz. tungsten head for the most part. I really prefer the Nako head in size 1 or 1/0. That hook just doesn’t rust in the bait no matter how long it’s in there. The Keitech hook will rust and if you see even a speck of rust on the hook or bait don’t use it or you will regret it. Steve used a 7’ Falcon lite spinning with a Shimano Stella 2500 series with 6# Maxi I used a 7’ Falcon ML Cranker with a 1000 series Diawa Steez. 10# Invisx. Both worked perfect. My shoulder kills me with the spinning rod. I can throw that little swimmer 1/4 oz. a mile with that bait caster Into the wind is another deal🤪🤪 I pick up the spinner I’m not sure color on the swimmer matters. I’m using pro blue- gizzard shad- thread fin shad-rainbow shad-ghost rainbow bow and it totally makes no difference. I keep a ton of baits pre glued and in a Plano Edge water and rust proof box. We’re going thru a minimum of 10-20 swimmers a day. There are 60 to 90 days out there right now of super fishing. Hope Y’all get to enjoy some of it. If you have questions let me know and I’ll tell you how I do it, may not be right for everyone but that’s the beautiful thing about fishing. Lots of ways to skin a cat.

Steven and I back at it again on Easter Sunday and before I get a Big No No, I went to sunrise service. It was so cold I’m glad I had a big coat 36 degrees and a bit of a North wind. There were ladies there is sun dresses and high heels they just had to be freezing. Burrrr. Becky went to regular church so I was there vicariously thru her🤣🤣 Lake was just steaming and I told Steve, this is going to be a bust with the high pressure. Well I was wrong again as usual. One of you guys tell me why, just why did the small jaws simply eat us up. Didn’t matter if it was a windy bank or calm pocket they were munching. Fished between Baxter and point 9 on flat gravel and they thought the Keitech was food. I caught the first 2 back to back and asked Steve if he wanted to move up and run the troller. He said “No” and then proceeded to totally kick my donkey from the back of the boat. We only caught 3 K’s but had 2 dozen smallmouth with the biggest at 3.1 and of course he caught it. He had 5 keepers and I had 2. We fished from 8:30 to noon. Just a great 3 days with son Steve. Becky had a pork roast on the table when we walked thru the door. Happy Easter everyone.

Steve and I started at 11 am and the Lake was totally full of boats. Tried our smallmouth pattern from yesterday but just not happening as well. Continued to see the spotted bass in that 18’ to 22’ range and we moved out. I can’t lift my arm. Had close to 40 over 15” with most at 16/17, swimming the 1/4 oz. Keitech. My gosh if they didn’t die of old age prior to being 15” we might have had a great day.

Neighbor and I went out Wednesday morning and prior to the wind we clobbered the SM on the little swimbait. Fished around point 9. When the wind started we picked up the big stuff and had nice results.

We had some durn near that color snagged. We also had a couple of Caramel color with black stripes. You can expand the picture of Steven and really see that beautiful color. That was one of the few sows we caught. Mostly 14/16 inch slim males. I’m going to point out here we could have caught all the K’s we wanted out deeper. 15/22’ of water on gravel. I caught 3 keeping the boat in 20’ not throwing as much in front of Steve and throwing at the K’s on LiveScope. Could have wrecked them as I caught all 3 I threw at. The Jaws were 10’ and under in the surf and they were as mean as a linebacker. A couple of times we both thought we had a 4 pounder and it was a 16” male. Great fun.

Seems like I can remember some big ole fish both Alex and his dad graced us with on either a wart or a RK Crawler. More than once. I would bet he knows what end of the bait to tie his line to. Steven made it down and we hit the water and fished from 3:30 till 6 pm. Wind was perfect and we simply hammered the SJaws In that short period of time we had 4 doubles and over 20 fish. Only had 3 K’s, no LM all the rest mostly male smallmouth. The color of the fish was amazing, just beautiful. Dark with black/green stripes and eyes as red as fire. All but one on the little Keitech and Steve caught it on a jig. I missed a really good fish at the boat on a 5.5” Magdraft.

You would think to associate it with warm water but that’s not the case at all. It’s a cold water early Spring deal and really has been for the last 10 plus years. It will all be gone by May 1st. If we get a big warm rain or the lake comes up it could be gone in a week. I need to get my jig on the bottom so I’m hoping sooner rather than later.