Bill Babler

Buddy and I are going to take a Mt/Wy fly fishing tour in August for 3 weeks. Any info on rivers you like or great wading or guide service ie names of guides would be great. Let me know your hot spots Thanks

Yep, anyone that saw it live it was pretty clear some shenanigans were going on.

Wife and a church group floated the Niangua a few years ago. She said she saw more boobs than a girls locker room. Language was so fowl it was hard to keeps the kids out of ear shot. I posted this several years ago. Lots and lots of peeps out there.

Met Ron several times. Really nice guy. I’m pretty sure from the visual evidence that Spencer cheated. Durn shame. Spencer has refused to pay the fine and hired a lawyer so we’ll see how this goes. There were at least a 1/2 dozen other guys that broke the rules catching the same fish twice in a single day. Spencer was the only one that moved the hook from outside the mouth to inside the mouth so they say.

Avena threw his rope around Wheeler and Connell. He showed his rear something fierce last TR derby. He is not them and would push any rule to the limit or beyond. MLF right now has a huge amount of negative publicity and I’m thinking they have more than earned it

Went down to the Kings after seeing a post by Jeff Fletcher holding a 23 inch Jaw, from years ago. He had stated the fishing was now poor due to gravel filling the pools and riffles and an extreme over otter population eating the fish. I guided the Kings in the late 90’s for one summer putting in at Stony and taking out at the 86 bridge. Went up to Stony about 1pm and was really surprised at how poor the road conditions were. It was way worse than it used to be. Heavily traveled but not maintained. Got down to the river and I’m guessing 70 to 100 people in the river. Couldn’t believe how many cars. Looked like a Chiefs game. Bottles, cans, fire pits and lots of trash. Went back to Romp, really cleaned up since the flood a few years ago, but again maybe 30/40 people, and the road was close to a 4X4 only to get down there. River of course running extremely shallow and I doubt if I’ll float it. Kind of like Jeff’s Facebook post, hard to go back. Good Luck

Yep, way to much crap going on in that circuit. Think Bobby Lane got fed up with it. He wants to win a classic but has been really perturbed in the past while leading a derby and having others come in on him. Yes , update score tracker, but don’t tell who is leading. Makes their area a target for all the cheats, Avena being the worst. There are about 10 guys on that circuit I wouldn’t trust to clean toilets fearing they would steal the toilet brush.

Guess he failed a poly on catching a fish outside the mouth while sight fishing. Several others were called on the carpet and passed the poly. Durn, hate to see that. He failed 2 hook manipulation questions. On another note you can’t catch the same fish sight fishing twice in a day. Avena caught the same fish 4 times in two days, 2 times a day on livescope. No difference to me, Your looking at them as easy with the LS as with your eyes. He Cheated, plain and simple you have a GPS mark on the fish and was looking right at it on multiple catches that’s BS. When that much money is involved it really tests your honesty. Hurts my feelings cause I love to watch the BPT.

We had 3 inches last week. Mowed grass on Monday for the 1st. time in 4 weeks. It’s raining heavy at the Knob now

That’s a dandy. Thats KAA Camp. They’re out in wake boats prior to sun up, but they represent a teeny tiny bit of the traffic at the jct of the Kings and the White. Just a bit upstream from the SK ramp that’s a White Water Mecca

7-20-23 Got on the Lake at 5:15 out of Sweetwater. It’s only a 15 minute drive from the house. Really fixed up nice but to much riprap around the launch. I’ve heard of some vandalism there but not enough to scare off a midweek early morning trip. Water temp at 5:15 am was 86.5 with the air temp at 85 and no breeze. Humidity 90 plus percent with not a ripple on the water. I just almost put it back on the trailer as it was so bad it was hard to breathe. Kings river water has about 8’ to 10’ visibility and that’s mighty clear for that part of the lake. Threw a jig and a 6 XD for at least 2 hours with no bites on the 6 and one dink on the jig. Lake was totally full of both gizzards and threadfins of all sizes. Got tired I was wringing wet and jumped in the lake. No relief there as it almost made me hotter. Got on the stupid live scope and of course immediately started catching fish. Yep, dink after dink on either a Dixie Jet or a War Eagle slab. Gave it up at 10am with probably 30 fish. All K ‘s with 2 squeaker keeps. Every fish I caught was suspended. Most every fish I saw was suspended. They have moved out some. They had been around 20’. All these guys were 30’ to 40’ with lots of Shad balls mid morning at the 30’ to 36’ depth over deep water. Really got to hot and should have went in earlier. “ Before I started.” Won’t make that mistake again, as it was totally miserable yesterday morning, especially for the dink fest I had. Good Luck

Either one of those locations used to be good, but sadly those days are past. One of the biggest bass a client ever caught was off the Mill Creek bluff end point on a Redfin. 7.14. Now to fish either location you better be there by 4am for a few small fish bites. As soon as the sun comes up the wake boats will totally wash you up on the bank. There are still some, but as Randy alluded to there were trees, mostly deep pole timber on both locations with a big cedar on the Mill Creek point. Most all is gone now, with the exception of a very few pole timber. Either point, used to be one of my favorite float and fly locations now there are very few fish there. I’ve looked at it many times in the last 3 years with live scope and unfortunately it’s pretty sparse. Couple of stories on point 22. Caught my heaviest string ever there, years ago on a Little George. Somewhere I’m guessing between 25 and 30 pounds, may have been closer to 30 pounds. One late Fall there were LM busting Shad there the entire day. It was insane. Lost more than I got to the boat and just lost some giants. Son caught his best SM there on a Redfin. 4 3/4 pounder. Totally exploded on the fin. One of the most vicious strikes I ever witnessed on a topwater. Also in the Fall. Bill Beck and I mostly Beck but he called me over, and this was 15 years ago both caught and released with clients, close to 100 keeper spotted bass in a single morning, out off the deep pole timber Randy was speaking of. There were 2 groups of trees in 90ft. of water with the tops right at 30 ft. They would come out of those trees and light the lake up and go right back to the 2 pods of trees after the feed. 99% of the fish were keepers with some monster K’s. Clients caught every single one on white 1/2 oz. Jigging spoons, throwing them at the chasers and then jigging to the deep fish. They were totally on fire. Again in the Fall. One Summer day Beck also has clients limit on walleye on crawlers off the same deep pod of trees. He let the clients keep 3 each and the 6 he cleaned weighed 36 pounds. This was probably 17 years ago. Said they were 27’ over 99’ suspended right in the pole timber. Both of those groups of pole timber are gone now. You can believe I had them marked. Open ocean there now and at 7am from May to the middle of October it is an ocean there. Lots of memories. Good Luck.

Cow and Owl are in different time zones both fish and water wise Cow wouldn’t have the walleye population that Owl does. I’m hoping you prove me wrong. Good Luck and let us know.

I’d be hung up before I even threw it in the water. 🤪🤪🤪 I’m with Randy on the spoon however the walleye currently are super mixed in with the gills at the 18’ to 22’ range. I’ve heard thru the grapevine that live small crayfish and at least medium size minnows are catching some in amongst the gills. The guy that’s doing this is trapping his bait in flat creek. I don’t think you can buy that type of bait anywhere. PS. I tried the Lindy and also 1 oz. bottom bouncers. Gills ate me up, just had to quit.

I’ve had decent luck dropping a spark plug down the line, but they are little hang up machines.

Correct

Lake from point 9 at least, to up the White and Kings River is totally full of these. 6”-8”-10” and other sizes. They can be suspended under docks in the tree tops along bluffs or bluff ends or on gravel. Spoons and live bait are whomping them.

Yep, the neighbor has a secret point he has been working with that 3/4 jigging spoon and they are snapping at it. I do know that depth range has been that 18’ to 22’.

If you’re swimming the temp change is only about 8’ right now. I have not been able to pick it up on the Garmin. Im guessing about 7-8 degree from surface temp.

Today was funny. I had some I was for sure were walleye that did look at it and not eat it. They never came up off the bottom but a foot or so and were good size marks. I did catch two today on a 3/4 oz. Jigging spoon. One of which was the keeper and the other a fat as a pig 14 incher. They bite and fight so much different than a bass you really can’t mistake them.

Becky fried up the Walter for dinner with M and C and a nice toss salad. A 19.5” walleye made 16 good size pieces. We had 5 pieces left for a nice sandwich. If you can, eat them fresh and only what you can consume at a sitting or two there are plenty for everyone. Wanted another keeper for company this weekend but no dice. Was durn glad to see I believe at least 3 year classes of sub legal fish. I believe the walleye fishery at this point is in very good shape, even with the early harvest we have been seeing the last few years on the White and Kings Rivers. I really think they are in better shape than the white bass and the spotted bass. The last 3 or 4 years I have done way better on LM, Jaws and Walters than K’s. Lots of both LM and Jaws out on the gravel where the K’s used to hang. Not to mention those pesky gills mixed with the big eye fish. Good Luck

Jeff I just rigged a size 1 on a drop shot and threaded the 1/2 crawler on it. As I said I was after walleye and couldn’t keep these pesky critters off.

Sweet!

Got on the water at 05:15, and had the first one in the boat at 5:36 on a deep crank. Had 2 others on it but one jumped and spat it back at me and the other just came unbuttoned 1/2 way back to the boat. The one that tossed my cookies was a nice jaw and I’m guessing the escape artist was too. 18’ was the magic depth for me today on any of the baits I tossed. Jig was by far the best. Was after walleye later in the morning and caught 13 on crawlers. 18’ to 24’. Only had 1 19.5 inch keeper, all the rest were short and I mean short. Anywhere from 6” to 10”. The keeper was the only one I measured. They were that small. Absolutely no one on the lake till 10 am, then it got silly. I brought a samitch so I stayed out till 1pm. Caught all the walleye after 9 am. Big gills and little walter’s were still biting at 1. I used 2.5 24 count boxed of crawlers and I cut them in half. Probably had 2 dozen monster gills. Yes, you can target them on live scope. Lots of them are suspended at 10’ to 15’ over the 22’ number. If you see this don’t drop if you’re after walleye as they will snatch the squirm before it gets near walleye country. Flat gravel points are just covered with both young walleye and gills. Never did find a decent concentration of K’s and looked as deep as 40’. Found some babies in tree tops on bluffends but nada on quality. No walleye pic’s I just get them back as quick as possible. Not to mention I’m scared shirtless of them, both eyes and white bass always get a fin in me. ALWAYS. Surface temps at 82.1 on and off. Good Luck.

Those are some real chunky dories. I’m not getting in the middle of that. 🤪🤪