Bill Babler

Fog on the Rock and fog on Taney are two totally different things. I mean totally. I never run in it on TR. No landmarks and totally denser. Extremely Dangerous Guiding Taney for 25 years you can see thru it or around it 99.9 percent of the time. Probably 100% of the time if your out there most everyday. In that 25 years I never came close to hitting or being hit while moving on plane in the fog. It’s super hard to explain but no matter the fog down there it posed zero hindrance as far as navigation to me. Phil can correct me on this but I really can’t remember a boat collision caused by the fog on Taney. There was a guy that hit the bank just above Short Creek one day but that’s it as far as this old man can remember. Think of the latterly millions of boats that have operated there Another factor is a flat bottom Jon boat running at 20 mph is not like a Nitro running at 50 mph. You get off the gas on a Jon boat and it STOPS. Safety is the key for sure. I would never put my clients in danger. On Taney it’s perspective, what might seem fast to someone may be reasonable to an expert. Let me state without question this has nothing to do with the idiot that was running that bass boat that struck the guide boat on Smith Lake. Two years ago when I first started playing Pickleball I was totally afraid to stand at the kitchen line. 35 year old men hitting a ball at me at 50 mph from 14’ away was a nightmare. The ball looked like a marble coming at me. It hurts when you get hit with it😁. Now after 1000’s of games that PB looks like a beach ball coming at me from the same 14’ at the same speed. Hope you can see the correlation. Terrible accident and I’m like Snagged, Bad place my rear. No excuse. Slow down.

Guy’s are saying there are beds all over the dam area. Have not seen any up here. Surface temp today 56 degree

Spro Phat Fly.

Fished KC area last week and water was extremely clear. They liked the Floater. Had fish coming off the bottom at 30’ just shooting up to check out the 1/16 oz. Jig. Got so silly on one that I was watching the fish eat the bait on livescope and watched my float go down on the panoptics at the same time. That’s when you know you might have it dialed in. Scrambled to lift the 12’ rod and nearly laughed myself out of the boat Chinese Fire Drill

SK ramp was fullest I’ve ever seen it. H.hwy. ramp packed to the point of parking along the entrance road. Was told there were 8 tournaments on the lake yesterday. Mudline from the Kings River came almost to Hobbs Hollow, but is fading. That time of the year. I will tell you they are starting to stage. YOU DON’T NEED LIVESCOPE. use your 2D on the bluff ends and transitions near spawning pockets and if you see them, and you will. Use that small swim bait. Depending on depth you can also use a jerker. I caught them really good on a floater last week. Best bite I’ve had on it in several years. In the immortal words of Bill Beck. “Elephants eat peanuts.” Caught on a 1/16 oz. Phat Fly.

Same for us.

The hits just keep on a commin! Recent Texas trip. Have buddies down there this week and it’s slow. 6 ft. Lake rise and water so muddy you can walk on it.

Most everyday fishermen know, but at times it can be a bit hard to tell. Maybe 10 out of 100 clients would know unless they had been with a guide on spotted bass waters prior. I’ve had numerous people think they were crappie and some think they were perch. Most just say bass. To them there is. O difference. The real kicker is I’ve had countless clients think smallmouth were carp. Folks, this is not 30 years ago. A fish is a fish is a fish to a huge percentage of our population.

The fish Curtisce pictured were wonderful. Congrats. I didn’t say Northern fish, I said Sturgeon Bay. We caught a couple of S.Jaws up there that were over 3 pounds that were not keeps here. 15”. Those fish were just meatballs. Had a great time but the fishing pressure made Lake Fork seemed like a ghost lake. We went in May which is tournament time and the ramps and parking lots, were full by 7 am. Fishermen fished extremely close together to the point of being very uncomfortable. Nothing says 99% of the fish live in 10% of the water more than Stutgeon Bay. Could not have done it without Brad’s help. Would love to go back I’d be a little better on the second go around. Guys the fishing was fun but all of us simply loved Door Co. Wisconsin. Fabulous lodging restaurants, vineyards, wineries, breweries, shopping just a million things to do. It was totally beautiful up there. I’ll not go back without my wife, she would love it. Cheese, cherry butter, sausage, turnovers and without a doubt some of the nicest people you will ever meet. If you get a chance it is way worth the drive. I’ll spend two weeks next time I go.

Just totally different body styles. We had a blast but the 6.1 That Mark is holding he caught swimming a Keitech on 4# Maxima and it took him about a minute to put it in the net. There were 5 of us on Sturgeon Bay for 4 days. We caught maybe close to 100 fish. The 6.1 was the biggest. We were all a bit disappointed in the fight. Not near what our TR Jaws do in the pulling category. Water temps mid 50’s. Actually the Walleye we caught by accident were the real beast.

Due to “ Inclement Weather “ I watched Redcrest start to finish today. I will tell you I totally went nuts watching Westley Strader reel in those Small Jaws. I’ll relate a story we fished Texas 2 weeks ago for Big Florida strain LM. We caught them. My biggest was 6.1 but some of the other guys went double digits. I caught about 15 a day. My week, 5 average per day was a shade over 20 pounds. I fished here last week, using pretty much the same gear as I had put new line on everything and just didn’t want to waste that expensive string. Long story short I caught a 14 3/4 small jaw on a heavy 7’9” Falcon and that fish would have pulled the 4-5-6 pound Floridas backwards. Today on Redcrest the guys catching the LM pretty much just reeled. them in and weighed them. Those Jaws tried to kick Westley’s butt. I’d rather catch one 17” jaw than two 5 pound LM. They just flat have attitude. We went to Sturgeon Bay for Jaws last year. It was fun but our TR Jaws would give them a butt whipping. Long and lean here with a big wide tail and heavy but shorter and chunky up there. Ours looked like the ones they were catching today.

Let’s put it this way. If you take out every 250 pound person that eats a Chinese buffet would that leave more food for a person that weighs 150 pounds? Of course not! There is more food there than all the customers can eat regardless of how many or how small or large they are. Table Rock is similar. There is more forage there than can be consumed by the current predator population regardless of how small how many or how large they are. Top_Dollar made some good points. Bass are not like deer, the herd does not need to be thinned. This is not a 1acre farm pond. The creel limit is to prevent over harvest as they by far are the top sought after species on most lakes including TR. By lowering the length they are sending a message to remove fish as the forage base cannot sustain the level of fish that are present. I’m telling you spending between 200 and 300 days a year on the water in ALL seasons during every migration, nothing is further from the truth. Top_Dollar and I believe what he said will throw back 15” fish and eat 12” fish. I’m sure he will, but the next 100 folks won’t. Worse than that the guides won’t be able to C&R. They are going to have to start cleaning 12” bass. There are between 30 and 40 full time guides in TR. 99% are catch and release with their targeted species being spotted bass. You do the math that’s 10’s of thousands of fish that are going to be removed from the population. Every 12” fish that gets a Crisco bath for sure will never get to 16/17/18 inches. Somehow eating 12” fish makes our fish bigger? I guess that would be true if you had 10 fish sitting at a table dividing 1 threadfin shad. But, we don’t. We have threadfin shad gizzard shad and for those of you that don’t think K!s eat gizzard shad you need to remember gizzard shad aren’t born full size. On that note I’ve caught 14” to 19” K!s on 7 to 9 inch glide and swim baits. Besides the shad we have sunfish, crayfish and aquatic insects. Not to mention predators eat predators so yes they eat their own. Plus walleye and for sure the walleye return the favor. The forage base in TR out numbers the predator base thousands to 1. Removing 12” K’s is not going to make us see 10 pound LM, 12 pound walleye and most certainly not 5 pound K’s. Y’all know my position. It comes from being on this lake since the 1970’s. I love it, it made my life. I’ve spent more days on it than the biologist have been on this earth. I’m constantly following the fish in every season. I follow the prey as well as the predators. Thank you for letting me express my opinion and maybe bring 50 years of history and 50 years of knowledge about this Great Lake . I won’t take any more of you time on the topic.

We’re talking Table Rock here. As Alex stated limits of 15 plus inch spotted bass 2-3 pounders are easily obtainable. You for sure don’t want to see them in tournament bags as more often than not it takes low to mid 20 pound bags to win and high teens to get a check. In the Winter from point 9 to point 21 as usual it’s never a problem to catch 15” spotted bass in huge numbers. These locations harbor threadfin shad that will black out your sonar from 20’ to 90’ deep in 1/2 mile section. As far as stocking LM I don’t care one way or the other. I just would hate to see the K’s decimated as lowering the size limit would without a doubt cast a very negative stain on them.

No there are differently not more walleye. However a totally different skill set and different equipment and locations are required. Probably the major thing however is mind set. Yes, non-targeted catches of walleye by bass fishermen do take place, and lots of them. I love to fish for them but I take the majority of my bass gear out and replace it with walleye gear that is made to target them. If I catch two or three walleye in an 8 hr. day I’m tickled. I usually keep one. I either troll deep or use bottom bouncers with live bait fishing. I will also spoon for them. Bass fishermen for the most parts want more bites regardless of size. Also the amount of fishermen targeting walleye on a continuous basis is less than 1 percent of those casting for bass Really not apples to apples

That’s fine and dandy but MDC has kind of proven the point with they’re data. Reduce the harvest size to 12” and you will then see another decline in numbers of fish that are 12” and more. You absolutely don’t want this to turn into L of O, where a keeper spot is a rare critter. Table Rock has the ability to grow 3-4 pound spots. Not many and I’m going to say none this far North even is in the same category. The forage base here is not the question as it is more than adequate to handle way heavier amounts of predators than it is producing. If I were allowed to pick 11 men plus myself and we could each have 3 other fishermen in each boat for a total of 48 fishermen. I don’t care if they were 5 years old or 90 years old. With a legal length on K’s being 12” and a creel limit being 6 fish. We would fish from May 1st. till July 1st. With no bed fishing, just open water live bait fishing only 60 days, keeping all legal K’s, without a doubt we would damage this fishery. Put that in conjunction with all the guides now having no choice but to keep fish as they have been deemed unwanted and all the locals and tourists hammering on them 365 and really I don’t think it would be three years and it would be disastrous. MDC has a great thing going right now with the past stocking of the walleye that have really taken hold and a surging crappie population. Let’s not mess with the bass. I know there are some concerns about the goggle eye population and some concerns about the white bass. I don’t believe reducing the number of spotted bass will increase the WB population however they are after the forage a large percentage of the time. The gog’s I have no idea and I don’t believe the biologist do either. When is this hearing?

Spotted bass are extremely social, at times the majority of a lake section population will frequent small area’s. On Table Rock from May 20 th. to the 1st.of July there are about 50 locations that will load. This is over 43,000 acres, from the road bed up Long Creek to Wooley up the James to Big M on the White. I have everyone of them marked as do hundreds of fishermen. During the dates I mentioned if on those locations and they do migrate between locations they are as easy to catch as bluegill on a cricket. No secret, people and guides know these. Not uncommon to catch 50 plus a day in these areas during that period. These are post spawn fish recovering from the spawn. They will disperse and chase in open water, but as I’ve stated in the past they are extremely vulnerable during this period. Now here is another caveat. Live Scope. The bass at times could fool the Jimmies and Joe’s by not sitting on the tops or sides of these locations but suspending at the same depth in the proximity of the humps but over open water. How do you think that’s going to work with Active Target or Panoptics? I’ll tell you how, Blood Bath. Bill Anderson our previous lake biologist told me years ago just the guides harvesting keeper limits for their clients could lower the population of 15” fish. Very few guides will kill them. With residents, visitors and guides harvesting 12” fish on live bait and slaughtering them as would be expected as the 12” limit alludes to we need to get RID of them. I’m saying by the 3 rd. season of this, catching a keeper or even a 13” fish will be an issue. I heard KVD on a podcast a couple of weeks ago say until these young Scoper’s came along we really had no idea where fish lived He said we now know and have made them vulnerable 365 days a year. With even the current format and length limits they are more at risk now than ever. I know they are showing lots of spotted bass in the sampling, but if harvesting starts at 12” that is going to change in a hurry. Worse yet, it is going to have ZERO to nothing to do with the LM Or SM population.

Just a couple of reasons not to kill them. I’ve got literally hundreds more of the same. No

My question for them is why? Being on the water 200 plus days a year and really looking at a forage base, that seems to be extremely plentiful, with both gizzard and threadfin shad not to mention perch and crayfish what are they hoping to accomplish. Instead of removing game fish why don’t we stock some LM. If your a sport fisherman what difference does it make to you whether a spotted bass is 13” or 17”? He’s out there slamming your top water just as hard. I don’t believe there is competition for forage and the result of removing bass to grow bigger bass is pretty asinine. Maybe in a 1 acre pond that gets fished once a year but in a 45,000 acre reservoir that has huge bass fishing pressure 365 days a year that I believe could support 5 times the bass population we have now with no problem. With the rise of the walleye population and really a resurgence of crappie, why start killing spotted bass. Just wondering why the walleye populations have gotten so good. We all know the reason. Not to even mention that this is a great bluegill fishery and really a totally under harvested catfish fishery. Table Rock has not been known as a kill and cook lake for the last 60 years. It’s nationally known to harbor 3 species of Black Bass in its pristine waters. It’s known to be tough, it’s known to make you think, and most of all it’s known to make you happy with what the Lord has blessed you with for your day on the water. Pro’s and Joe’s alike. It can humble anyone or it can produce amazing fish. Let’s not cheapen it and make it something that it’s not or was never intended to be.

Thought about fishing that spot yesterday Quill but didn’t want to make the run from Eagle Rock. Glad they were on it for you. Randy might have abandoned us, but the Old River Rat left us a durn good legacy on locations to fish. Randy put the time in plus 1 and the gentleman never failed on the how, when, why and where. I learned a ton from him. You just had to listen to what he wrote. Pretty much the same with Dock-It.

The White was mean to me yesterday so I continued my walleye quest on the Kings. Dumped the tub in at the SK bridge at 7:30 to a surface temp of 42 degree. Blasted up the river and checked every bend and runout flat, NADA. Surface temps remained in the low to mid 40’s range till I got to Hickory Hollow. Saw very few boats till I got there. Then from HH up to the 86 bridge there was quite a bit of participation. Dozen to 15 boats. I think I visited with all of them. Two guys were trolling, both said that they had 10 small male whites. One guy said when I said small I meant small, about 1/2 pound each. Also spoke to 2 dudes in a jet. They said they had gone up to just below the Romp Hole. and had not seen any walleye. Said some of the deeper locations were not clear enough to see the bottom but last year at this time they were hammering them and you could see them. Surface temps at H. Hollow was 50 degree and at the 86 bridge 52 degree. Crazy cause it had a skim of ice on it last week. Most everyone I spoke with couldn’t believe it. but everyone’s electronic were saying 50 plus No one had a walleye but there were a couple of guys throwing A-rigs and said the bass were eating it really good. Nothing big but lots of bites. With my failed walleye experiment over I picked up the jerker and caught 11 bass. I had 12 yesterday with 2 squeaker keeps. Today I had 5 keeps Just broke out the new Spro’s deep diver McStick. 1/2 the price of a megabass and I really like it. Bass seamed to also. Good Luck.

WELL! Went from Hero to Zero Quick as a Wink. The 3 spots I fished yesterday were mid lake humps that I stole from Randy. “RPS”. They were loaded with fish yesterday. These locations are football size and had fish all over the bottom. 24’. In as little as 16 hours there were but a smattering on baby k’s on them today. Most of them scared to death of a small crappie minnow. Ran into Tom and his lovely wife up the White today and we cried about it together. He did have one durn goon one over 4 pounds so there was that. Surface temp 44/45. Don’t know how many units we’re generating at Beaver but there was a pretty good current a mile above Eagle Rock ramp With the warming water and that current I’m guessing that contributed to them packing their bags.

Shell Knob ramp was totally full. Only 3 rigs plus me at ER. For Champ I did catch 3 K’s on a Jerker.

Just wanted to touch base with the forum today. Can’t tell you how much I miss and respect you all. Fished the upper White River with a technique that a few buddies told me they have success on in Wisky, Michigan and Minnesota. I will however add a caveat, every fish I caught was on LiveScope. I had 47 bass and 7 walleye. On a jig and minnow bouncing it slowly. 22’ to 30’ was the number. Kept one walleye all were keepers. Basically no traffic in Missouri, but above Beavertown in Ark. wall to wall boats. Went within site of the bridge. Saw a guy catch 3 small male whites. Visited a bit and he said the walleye are just getting there. I caught mine further downstream on 3 different humps. Have heard zero on the Kings it was frozen at the 86 bridge last week. Surface temp at the Eagle Rock ramp this am was 43 at 6:30. Pulled out at 4pm same location 49 degree. Those Eye’s are going to move FAST. Good Luck.

Just wanted to take a moment and let the majority of you know how much you have meant to me. I hope in someway my information and banter has both provided you a giggle or two and helped you catch a fish or three. The reason I’ve stopped posting is really my information has no use and earlier this year came under excessive criticism. It went as far as calling me names on this forum. Go back and look at my post of a good friend catching an 8 plus pound fish using electronics. That was probably the icing on the cake ie the final straw. A bit of history and you all know it. I have never been. I mean never been a go down the bank casting guy. Grew up in the early 70’s on Lake O. With all our guides using Hummingbird flashers to find spoonbill, brush, or white bass using those little boxes. Progressed to the paper, 2D, HDS, then FFS. It’s all I have ever known about fishing as far as finding fish. Everyone knows when I get near the bank I get twitchy. I’m an open deep water fisherman. It’s all I’ve ever done and all I want to do. If I can’t see em I really just don’t fish for them. Never have never will. FFS is just a progression to me. I know a vast amount of you dislike it. I totally respect that. To me it’s just the life long progression I’ve been following since I watched that old HB flasher when I was a kid. Anything I post is solely related to electronics and it’s been made clear that’s not what the forum wants. My post have always been about electronics and deep fish I’m still fishing at an amazing rate and sent Champ lots of fish pics. There is a brand spanking new Phoenix sitting in the boat barn. It does have lots of underwater peek-a-poo glass on it. Sill amazed at how many fish think my offerings have spent the nite in kitty litter. Really puts you in your place to see all the refusals. Just got back a couple of weeks ago from Sturgeon Bay. 5 of us went. Everyone caught a jaw over 5 pounds. I had a 5.7 and a 5.9. Big fish for the group was 5.13. Didn’t catch a ton but I think most all were 3 plus pounds. Becky and I just love Pickleball. We have a fantastic new indoor facility here in SK. We both are in great shape I’m about 170 pounds and Becky is 135. That’s about as good as we old folks can be. We play 3-4 days a week for 2-3 hours at a time. Afternoons and Saturdays so it doesn’t interfere with fishing. I still peruse the forum to see how you are doing but just don’t feel the need to whip a dead horse with my posts as they will be 100% deep water fishing. Good luck to all of you no matter how you choose to try and catch them. You all have been family and it’s been one of the joys of my life communicating on this great medium. Continuing success on all your endeavors. Sincerely, Bill

Guys that are in their 70’s aren’t going to dictate the future of the Sport. I think some circuit may have a derby without it, but if the guys aren’t putting fish in the boat at the rate they are now it will lose interest fast. My post was just to show a buddy that’s loves to fish and works hard at it with a Super Nice fish for any lake. A total Monster for TR. We have another thread on FFS.