Bill Babler

Same deal for me. I launched up the James to flat 59 degree water. Caught 3 pretty quick and then went dock hopping trying to catch a few crappie for the cast Iron. Caught 2 and lost 2 more toads, so I released the two I had. A couple of my favorite docks had been replaced with bright new shiny docks and I could not get bit on them. Found the crappie just under the floats on one old ratty wood dock where the end reached out to 30'. Kind of fun shooting that jig, takes some practice and super boat control, but it got me a 1/2 dozen bites, without ever leaving the boat. Bought 10 AM the wind really kicked up and the surface temps were climbing hitting 61 by the time I quit. To much wind for the crappie deal, so I tried to get the bass going again, and had two more on a jerkbait, in the wind. Caught the early bass on a jig. All the bass were SM with only 1 solid keep. If thinking 15'

Thanks for the report. Hope Jim's hand is not to sore. Those hooks bite hard. Got a really good report from up the White river yesterday, and it is one of my favorite patterns for this time of the year. Slow dragging either a big tube or a football jig. Kind of strolling it or wind drifting it. One of the locals up there yesterday had a big limit of LM and a 4 pound K doing this. Main lake gravel right where it rolls into the channel in 28 to 40 feet. Said his best 5 were close to 18 pounds with 2 other LM over 4 pounds along with the big K. Had 10 solid keeps and only a 1/2 dozen shorts. Caught all his fish from Viney upstream. If your fishing the tube be careful here as they will flat put it away in a hurry. Said the only negative part of the day was he had to cut two tubes off that were completely gone, not in the back of the throat but swallowed and gone. Did not have that trouble with the jig, but he thought it cost him a bite or two cause they really wanted that 4" tube. Good Luck

Did I miss read this or did you find water that was 52 degree? James river and main lake Baxter area is still running 65. 52 changes the game as far as positing the fishes.

Those are simply wonderful deer, congrats. We hunted up there several years ago. One of my best friends stuck a huge non-typical 11 point. Scored mid 160". He hit it a ways back in the last 1/3 or the ribcage with an arrow, just before dark. We looked for it till 10 PM and were still finding drops of blood. We thought we spooked it up once so we pulled back and were on it the first thing the next morning. We found it about 300 yrds. from where we stopped. It was completely eaten up. I mean GONE. The coyotes ate it clear up right next to the head and then pulled the hide off the head. There were some stomach contents and the head and hoofs, hip joint and some femur knuckles and that was it. Totally cleaned up. That was in a matter of 8 hrs. They had even chewed on the antlers and bitten off the tip of one of the brow tines. Taught us a valuable lesson, that backing out crap don't work well if coyotes are thicker than fleas.

No we did not do well. We have lots of fair to decent bucks. Some in the 130 catagory but we like to shoot either a monster or a young yearling for the freezer. No one saw any young deer. Everything mature from huge big old does to the Bucks . We have a real bobcat problem up there and I may spend a week this winter trying to solve that problem. Everyone saw multiple cats. I saw two big toms that could have eaten full grown deer so I know it's a problem

It is busy as all get-out right now. Becky and I had to run over to Shell Knob and the leaf colors are just spectacular. Lots of reds and oranges, mixed with still quite a few green oaks and lots of maples just turning. We have 3 really pretty maples in our landscaping and they are very vibrant. Its close to 1 PM and there is still boats running. Lots of them headed up Long Creek and lots of them coming and going from Big Cedar Hollow. When we passed Dog Wood Canyon on the way over to the knob, I don't think you could have gotten another car or truck anywhere in their parking lot. It is extremely busy down here. Going to get really high winds in the next several days, so I'm sure the leaf deal will come to an abrupt end. Glad we got to enjoy it today.

Got home last night before dark from deer camp and the lake was full of bass boats. This morning they started before good light. Currently I can see 9 boats in the Clevenger to 86 bridge area from the lodge. They have been running all over this morning, sometimes 5 or 6 running past at a time. Is there a major derby this weekend? If not and this is normal traffic for the middle of the week on November 16th. I have not seen the like.

Last year. I believe the 2nd. week of November, Greg Wood and Bill Beck just hammered them on the Plooper. Don't know what color they used. I know they had at least 2 over 30 and several over 20 lbs. They went two days, a guide friend of Greg's told him where they were chasing and it was totally unreal. I went with them about a week later and none came up. I did catch a dandy walleye on a jigging spoon.

Wonderful report with a tremendous picture of the Woody.

Probably 1 per week on Bull and 10 per day on the Rock. On some locations especially in the dam area, an entire day will go by never NOT having a boat on it.

What a wonderful post. Many thanks

There biting in a cycle up the White River right now. Around the Clock

If your fishing Table Rock during daylight hours, and you shut your motor off before you get to Baxter going up the White or point 11 going up the James it had better be cause it quit on you. Fish are on a feed in these areas and above that we have not seen in a few years. All of our Black Bass species are just hammering anything that even resembles a shad. The biggest trick is matching the size of your spoon to the size of the shad. Seemed like every stop we made today the shad were different in size. One bait that was constant was the 2.8 inch Kietech. Color did not matter. Launched on H hwy. out of Shell Knob to an amazing sunrise, and fished to Emerald Beach up the White. Stopped to fish on 14 locations fish were on all of them. stopped to visit on 4 more. All the guides were up the White today. I don't think Buster ever put the Pooper down. He was not throwing it shallow, when I saw him his boat was in 70'. I frankly had a topwater bite going at 60 ft. and it just kept on and kept on, trouble was they were breaking on top but did not want any type of topwater I threw, so I just swimbaited them. Throw it out and it would just go slack. I left with fish schooling into the side of my boat. The old adage of never leave fish to find fish did not apply today. When you don't care if you catch one it always seems that way. Lots and lots of fish suspended over deep swings and ridges chasing small schools of shad. I have never seen so many folks run over acres of fish chasing to go "Who knows where." Maybe they were like me and had caught so many they did not care. NOT. Should have taken some pictures of Busters crew and Rick Lisek and his group as I think both boats totaled over 50 catch and release. Kind of a funny deal, I saw a boat idling over a deep ridge and I knew not many folks know about it. Had not passed him a mile and got a call from Bill Anderson our retired biologist saying I had just passed him. He later told me he slammed them for over an hour on a 1/2 oz. WarEagle Spoon out there. I had zero Pooper fish, mine came on the spoon and a Yamamoto cut tail along with the small swimbait. To tell the truth I was looking for something with teeth, but did not get one of the tasty morsels to nip at me today. It was an all bass bonanza. Surface temps ranged between 69 and 72 degree. Good Luck

Great report, catchin where they are and super clear, clean screen shots. Thanks a bunch. Did you read my White River report before posting this. Your my hero as your pictures are 1000% better than my words.

We had the pleasure of hosting the MotorGuide team here at the Lodge. It was for sure tough in the Point 16 to Long Creek section of the lake and that is a big chunk of this pond. The guys caught what they caught mostly on a crank bait, blade and topwater. I could really give a flip about this talk of shallow. There are fish right now to be caught and for some reason Cindyjo is the only critter on this board doing the right thing or at least doing it and telling about it. There were fish caught this past weekend in extremely large numbers and I mean quality fish. Most all the best reports are coming from up the White River. Not Shallow. Lots and lots of keeper size fish, coming from 60' just pretty much where they are most of the time at this time of the year. 30' to 60'. You have to drive right over them to pound the bank, so take a look at the depth finder as your coasting to the shoreline and you might see the graph light up. There were 4 guides up the White River last Thursday thru Sunday that had their clients catch and release close to 500 fish. Lots of keeps in the mix. Not a one of them made a cast a rifle shot from the shoreline. They fished humps, flat rolloffs and channel swings above Baxter, some of these guys did not have to move at all after the 1st. stop fishing a single location for as long as 4 hr. None of them saw a single tournament boat on Sunday. Those guys stayed pretty close to BC. Take a breath, rethink and use your underwater eyeballs and that War Eagle jigging spoon instead of your shallow water surf tools and see what's lurking in the Briny Deep. Good Luck

Launched at Old 86 at 7 AM yesterday morn to perfect conditions. I thought. Fished the Pooper for about 45 minutes with no love and switched to a C-rig as the boys guiding this end say its been the deal. 1st. cast with the boat in 25' I caught my biggest brown fish of the year, a solid 4 pounder. Reports here are the fish are 15' to 30' tight to the bottom. That was about 8 AM My next fish came at 11AM on a Keitech Swimbait. It again was a good one at 3 pounds and I repeated that feat 3 more times on the same location. My total for the morning was 5 fish with three keeps two baby SM. Off the water at 1PM with all most a heat stroke man it was hot yesterday. Lake in the dam area was simply covered with boats, some circling and waiting to fish certain points. I fished from Long Creek to point 5 and more than once got crowded. Don't think it mattered as it was tough as nails for me. Surface temp at start was 73.3 and at the ramp when the trip ended 76.1. Good Luck

I'm going to have to get up the James.. Thanks, great screen shot. Take the sensitivity off auto and run it thru your manual mode and you will make that so clear you can see every fish in that school and you won't have all that clutter or echo's Start at 65% and work up as needed. You are doing very well.

One of the local ministers came by yesterday to ask if he could bow hunt. He said, " I know when your healthy you guide the Rock, I want to show you what we been up to." He handed me an Iphone so full of big bass pictures I thought my eyes would explode. Said he had caught in September and up till now in October at least 50 Smallmouth over 4 pounds and that many LM over 4 lbs. Said he and his buddy have caught 10 jaws over 5 with one of those being a 6.1, and his best LM was over 8 pounds. I saw the Pic's and know this is the real deal. All the fish were caught on a jig, and all between 10PM and 5AM. I'm going to get some more info, but I don't think he travels far, I'm thinking from the dam up to the Longcreek bridge. I'll bring more info, as it becomes available to me. Probably the best collection of night time smallmouth pictures I have ever seen by more than a long shot. You talk about humbled. He was not bragging or showing off, he just wanted me to see how the fishing has been going for them. Said he had fished the Rock since childhood and this is by far his best year for big SM. Only fishes at night.

Wonderful report, glad you mixed them up a bit. I was hoping someone had been out the last two days flinging a topwater. Trout have been biting like little pigs so that makes it easy on a guy with a bad knee. Only have to put the trolling motor down one time and I'm good to go.

Thanks for posting, fantastic read.

RPS can tell you for sure, but I don't believe that is a dock, it may be a boat. There are at least 3 simi-homemade rigs like that fishing out of Eureka Springs. They fish Holiday Island to up above Beaver Town in the Winter. Looks like one of those rigs to me. However I may be totally off base, but believe I'm right. Randy would know for sure.

MIll, we had bait all over us. There are a ton of shore minnows right now and also lots and lots of very small blue gill working the shallows. Every time the plooper hit the water bait would explode. We had one case that the lure was jerked away from the fish, but the others the fish just either missed the bait or swirled up behind it. Beck had the same think happen on Monday. Between us we were using 6 different color or topwater, so I don't think its the color. I might try either a chugger or a walking bait on Thursday when I'm back out there. The Spro Rat may also be the answer and I will toss it. It is also a wake bait but requires a very slow retrieve. The fish up tight for me were mostly LM or Jaws, We did catch the one K on the Ned after it missed the WP, and if they are going to miss it a great tip is to have that Ned or perhaps any small soft-plastic ready to throw back in there. I must admit that I was not totally on my game and should have been ready from the start for that little trick. We did not throw it back at the big one, and should have. It did however refresh my memory and we did the next time and caught him. There is just a load of fish either on the bottom or suspended off the long runnouts and the flats. They can be fussy or crazy good. We had them coming at it like a freight train and also had them running from it like Trump from the IRS. Kind of like Quill did the other day, if you find a school, hang with it and continue to change presentations and baits. My best deal was a 4 inch Yamamoto brown purple cut tail. And yes that bait seems to be available again. Speaking with Bill and a couple of the other guides they are stopping there boats in the 80' range and then start creeping in on the points sometimes they are suspended and sometimes on the bottom. Biggest concentrations have been from 50' into about 28' Good Luck out there.

Had my first TR guide trip since July 26th. and did fair to middlin. Pulled into Baxter at 0600 to an empty parking lot and had to work a little to launch the boat. It is much easier to launch the Alweld on the trout pond. Set out to pick up Skip and Tyler and see if we could catch any on the Pooper. Had 5 rises all misses with one that almost made the boat capsize. I think it was a big jaw. Picked one up on the Nedrick after he missed the Pooper and that was pretty much all till we moved out. Found them at 46' on a drop shot and told the boys it was time to catch fish or cut bait. We had wanted to catch them shallow and on the high blue slick condition they were not having it. Surface temps were 73-76, I thought they might be lower as it was 41 air temp at the truck when I launched. Ended the day with between 15 and 20 with a very nice amount of 15" K's, all deep. Had two on a real image jigging spoon and the rest on the shot. Great to get back on the water. I had worked Taney the past couple of weeks but TR is a completely nother deal for a cripple. I'll be healed soon, so you basses had better look out. Good Luck

That is one super trip. Thanks for the screen shot.

Rotator Cuff has been a breeze, I am ahead of schedule on that deal and already could if they let me throw a ball. The disaster on this deal has been the Staff Infection in the knee. Believe me this is nothing to have or ever be around. I'm headed for the shed to play in a boat this morning with Son Steve's help. Again, thanks All