Bill Babler

Tons of locations. I'll let the James River, River Rats fill you in.

Most times for me white bass are just to unpredictable. You have to run clear up that river and you had better be there either early or late to do any real damage. It always makes me queezy on Table Rock to try and guide for them in the Spring. Another factor is weekend fishing up any of the river systems. I just hate the combat fishing that they are all about. I do not at all care about wasting my time if I'm off in the evening or morning to try and catch them, but I just hate putting peoples hard earned money to the test in trying to guide for them in the Spring when they can be so durn fussy. Regardless of what anyone says or does, timing is the only thing that matters. They are either there and they want to bite, or they are there and will not bite, or they are just flat not there. They scare me. Bull Shoals is another matter. Here in a couple or weeks or so they are much more predictable and you can have a very good shot at hitting them. Bass on the other hand can be caught now, not in huge numbers by me, but nice size and much more reliable. Weekends do not seem to matter as both the fishermen and the fish are much more scattered and not fishing right on top of each other. Folks, you may go thru my website or PM me to talk about private fishing. Try just to keep it to current fishing information here. Thanks. Good Luck

I believe it is 5 miles above the 86 bridge. A solid 4 miles into Arkansas. A few years ago Phil and I were up there and they were just thick up there. If you go on up you will come into a heron rookery called the chicken Coop. That area is also usually flush with them. Phil and I must have been there in 2010 as the ramp was flooded the next year in 11. Has anyone launched there this year? The deal is the rain. When warm water or even an influx of any water runing down the rivers, the whites head up in masses. I caught them a week ago on an A-Rig above the blue hole till I was tired of it, one evening on a tip. Next two days after the cold snap they were gone, and I have not found them since.

They were just starting. Have no idea what this influx of muddy and trash-up water will do. Probably warmer and they will start zooming up into Arkansas. Has anyone been up the Kings as far as he Romp Hole? Got a feeling that is going to be the place to be. Phil and I caught them there several years ago this time of the year pretty good.

Current Table Rock Lake fishing report. Kings River Arm White River Outfitters Missouri Launched yesterday with Bob and Kyle Nichols from Moline Illinois to a very nice day, with water temps in the Kings River being in the 48 to 51 degree range and the water on the main lake at 44 in the Shell Knob to Big M area. Mostly fished an Alabama Rig, but did throw a jig some and swim a 4 inch Chompers Ctail grub. Had a total of 18 bass with 9 solid keeps up to 3.5, 2 white bass and a crappie. Bob caught a double on very nice keepers with a LM and a K on the rig at the same time. He said he felt both hits, one then the other and thought he might have two. That's pretty good to call a double on an A-Rig. Where were they last week when I needed them? Pretty much had to wait or kick a boat out of every location, cause it was just a zoo. Most anglers were after White bass or crappie, but there was a tremendous amount of traffic. Fish for us were still deep with most bites coming in the 20+ foot range after we had let either the rig or the grub count down to about a 10 count. Good Luck

Next time I look all you Whimps will be fishing Table Rock with a 5wt. fly rod and a size 20 midge. Champ I didn't think that thumb looked all that bad. But one question? With those big Mitts, how in the world did you get that little thing tied on.? I bet my gal friend tied it on for you. And I'm with you, Denny calling anything "Big and Ugly" just is not right. You boys and girls need to fish more manly stuff like I do. OOOP's I forgot about the floater. "Never Mind." Dave thanks again for the care package. I will post pictures of my success. GULP!

You are a pan fishing machine. Great lookin fish.

Good Grief

I'm beginning to think that I did not make an adjustment to shallow up enough on Sunday. Quill glad you caught them on our Holly water. 2 more to add to those would have gotten you a very nice payday on Sunday. I just hate the shoreline.

Yes, thanks to me and Pete, I think we robbed the nest of its Golden Eggs. I saw boats on stuff of there I didn't even know existed. I think mainly just to get out of the way of someone else. Just way to crowded up the White that really cannot stand the pressure and is for sure not used to it. The White for the last 5 weeks has just been hammered. Mostly the reason being that we did not have a shad Kill. I don't believe it has been real heavy from Clevenger up Long Creek either. Most of the pay sacks have been coming from the Branson Bell up the creek. In the CPA and the BFL 90+ percent of the field turned right. That has become wrong, as the winning stringers and best bags have been coming going left. In the derby on Sunday of the 100 boats, the majority went left. I should have. As soon as the shad stop trying to die from point 5 to Campbell Point, things will get back to normal and folks will be able to spread out again. Good Luck

I think Dave pretty much cut thru the bull and went right to the chase with the Lew's reels. I know we are talking about braking systems here and when you talk about leaders in the industry there up until about 5 yrs. ago had been only one. Daiwa by far leaps and bounds ahead of all the other, especially the Steez. "Boy what an investment however" Every part of the Steez including the braking system that is composed of both a magnetic and centrifugal system along with parts that are machined to tolerances very similar to a watch made this reel by far and away the best freshwater reel in the world without competition. A very informed person in the industry told me that the number one sale pitch for a reel, is how many bearing does it have. As he went on to tell me, that means about as much as teets on a boar hog. It is by far the number one tool to sell reels, but the worst possible reason to buy a reel. He went on to say that there are three things when you speak of bearing that are in the reel that make or break so as to speak the product. Weight, hardness and exact size tolerance. "Yes we are still talking about reels." Daiwa with the Steez is still without question the top of the heap. But and here is where we get to the Hog Killin, Lew's, our home town company has come to this game with a big gun. That gun being quality and price. You can bet your last Alabama Rig that the "Big Boy's" know they are there and are working to stay a step ahead. Lew's comes at us with a reel lineup that is frankly when you look at price, is second to none. Speaking of two of their fine family of products are the Tournament Pro at $199.99. This reel come at you with very exacting tolerance not the Steez mind you but exacting. It features 11 highly specific bearing and a MSB drag system that features both magnetic and centrifugal breaking. Once adjusted the reel holds it adjustments and does not vary. New to the lineup is the Team Lew's Pro coming in at $299.00. This reel may be on the upper end of most of our price range, but it is a reel that is very competitive with the Steez, not only in quality but in weight featuring a titanium body and the MSB system It comes in at 6.1 oz compared to the daiwa Steez at 5.7 oz. The difference is in the pocketbook where the Steez is a $600.00 reel. The Lew's comes at you with both right and left hand models and in 6.4-1 and 7.1-1 speed ranges. Do to the quality of the components and the extreme tolerances the reels are created with both the braking system and the drag will maintain there exact setting weather you are using it rain or shine or letting it set for months in the garage thru the Winter doldrums. I have had other reels, Shimano included that had to be repeatedly adjusted on both braking and drag. This is due to the tolerances of the components used and the quality of the materials they are made from. No one in Missouri sells a better reel than Lew's. In Fishing, they are for sure even without saying the next Big Deal. Good Luck

You can go to www.whiteriveroutfitters.com and find all my information. I don't speak to much about the guide business or solicit here, I just try and provide very current lake fishing information, for those desk bound and Winter weary. I will tell you and show you when I catch them and do the same without the show when I don't. It is all fishing and no-one catches them all the time. Thanks for the inquiry.

Great Job. If a man found a location that you could get bit, you had better just stay there and wait for something else to move up. Your thinking was correct. Excellent placement with 101 boats. When did you get your first bite? Lots of guys are telling me they just could not get bit early. Also that water up there really warmed up. Mine stayed pretty cool all day.

Ya, I agree for sure. What folks are not seeing with these tournament winning weights is that these bags are for the most part coming with very few bites. Just the right kind of bites. My thought on this weekend were that the teams would beat these fish up pretty bad especially with multiply tournaments going on both days. A good White River Bag regardless of who you are is a 17 pound bag. My thoughts were that I could catch maybe 12 fish and that is what I have been catching, that would put that kind of weight in the box, assuming it would not take 20 plus pounds on a Sunday after the weather and such a big Saturday. I have been catching all LM and just about no K's. I have had about 6 deep piles up the White that I am catching a 4 to 6 pounder off of about every time I go up there. Not off each pile, but a big fish off one of the locations. They are not fished, by anyone that I know of. They did not bite up there yesterday. I threw a rig on them a jig and a big worm. NADA. I went up for a minute on Friday and caught a couple on a transition, and that that might also be a place. With all the derby's we have been having and people can really fish now and know locations, if it looks good it has been hit multiple times during the day. You have to have some stuff that is just not visible to really help. They just did not bite for me. The water had really cooled off. It was 40.1 degree up the White on Saturday morning and when I pulled out at 3:30 at Schooner it was still only 42 even. About a 3 to 5 degree drop in surface temps with the cool rain and 28 degree Saturday night. Not one friggin bite till NOON, not even a sniff. I was just giggling at this telling myself gosh you really are stinking this up. But like I tell my clients, the harder it is the harder you need to fish and I kept my nose to the ground till juat about right at the end. I thought I fished well, and caught the ones that bit. I think again if anything I just heard the best bite including the Fann's bite has been coming from Beardsley to Youcum Creek. I hate to fish that area, but probably should have.

I fished the Solo Pro yesterday and ran up the White River. I believe there were 101 boats, a very nice field. I was boat 69 and that Phoenix ran down every other boat headed up the White River. Which to my surprise were not very many. Most boats either turned left or went up the James. I did not shut it down till the Eagle Rock ramp. I fished every thing and fished it very well that I have been catching fish on for the last 6 weeks, and did not have a bite on anything I threw. I was just amazed. I fished very slow and made presentation to all the channel roll-off brush piles that I have marked up there and talked to at least 3 other derby boats and a couple of locals. Nothing. Pulled up past Big M headed down stream and at 12:06 got my first bite of the day. I preceded to catch 3 keepers on 3 casts, all on a FB jig. I had not had a bite on the A-Rig all morning. All 3 were K's with 1 nice 17 incher but the other two were board bumping very thin males. All had crayfish sticking out of there craws. Threw the jig for 2 more hours without another bite and then pulled on a bank just upstream from Baxter and caught 4 in 4 casts all short K's. Total for the day was 7 bites all on a jig, zero bites on a A-Rig. Caught every bite I had and just could not put it together. 8 pounds got a check. Thought I probably had around 7 but did not weigh them in with all the boat traffic. I put in at the Schooner creek ramp at 6 AM and had the last parking place. When I pulled out at 3:30 there were only 4 rigs left in the lot and the weighin was not until 3:40. Someone always catches them and I heard it took 19 pounds to win. Good Luck

It took 12 pounds in the weekend series, out of State Park. Marcus Sakoia won it. I heard they had 38 boats. I'm pretty sure none of them went to the White very far, that is just a monster boat ride from State Park.

Anglers in Action is hosting both a team event and a Solo-Pro event. That is the reason for all the boats. Have heard there are already over 100 boats for Sunday. Probably going to be 50 to 75 for tomorrow, in the cold and rain. It is just suspose to be miserable. High of 43 with rain and wind. Yuck. I'm working on tackle. Bite is starting abit from Baxter to Kimberling City. Beck had a pretty good day today fishing that area. A-Rig. I pulled out at 4:30 at Shell Knob and had surface temp of 46. Lots and lots of fisherman. I only got to fish a couple of hours, but Quill and I saw the same thing. Mine came on a jig on the chunk with some timber. 20 to 25 dragging the big jig. 3 small keeper swimmer blacks. and a couple of shorts. No K's. It is 7:14 PM and there are still boats running in front of the Lodge, coming out of Long Creek.

About the second time you engage the handle of that reel while the A-Rig is still flying thru the air, you will change your thoughts on that reel in a big hurry. Why pay 80 bucks for it. A couple of days ago at the outlet store you could have picked up 250 of them for 40 bucks, in the reworked/returned bins? I'm sure there is still plenty there. Just sayin. Lew's Super Duty Speed Spool is the only reel I will use with a A-Rig. Go to their site and read about this fantastic light weight reel. It is absolutely built for the Alabama Rig. It is priced very reasonably at $179.00. You can use it double duty as a very good big Jig reel. I'm using 80 pound Power-Pro and it is a fantastic system for the rig. You can run the heavy line back on the spool or a old reel and put carbon on it to fish your big jig or swimbait. Your braid will be good the next time you want to put it back on to fish the Rig. This A-Rig bite will leave us so you want something that you can use multi-system, and that Super Duty is fantastic. I sold all my Curado 300 series, which was claimed to be the best reel for the A-Rig. It is good, no doubt, but this Lew's Super Duty is light weight and a smaller frame. The Curado was just abit big for me. Good Luck

The biggest problem with losing these very valuable A-Rigs is from the start we have been trying to put "WAY TO GOOD OF A HOOK" in them. You just do not need to put that big Owner-VMC-Gami in them. Use a lighter wire hook that will bend out when you snag it up. If you feel the need after it bends out a couple of times, replace it. A 1$ hook beats the heck out of losing a 15 to 30 dollar rig. Even you all that make yours, that is a lot of time and very, very hard work. I will post a picture of the absolute best head and hook combo I have found later this afternoon, after my guide trip.

Ya that is the exact looking rig as the PigSticker

Balsa, here with the hook restriction you do not want to over extend the bait in the body length. By doing that it creates way to many available targets that are separate from the bio-mass. Instead of hooking multiple rigs together, and I am speaking from experience here, create a single 5 wire rig with the arms a little longer. Put 2 blades on each arm and a dead bait on the end. Very similar to the 5 wire 15 target Picassa Bait Ball. Only you can do it better. Make the arms on the bottom 3 inches longer than the top arms and make the center arm 3 inches longer than the longer bottom arms. Doing it this way you are keeping the bio-mass closer together and hopfully deflecting the strikes away from the forward portion of the bait. In a perfect world, you want all the strikes on the trailing bait. Several of the local guys here have purchased wire benders and that has saved a lot of blisters. Just simply great work by you. thanks so much for sharing it. Good Luck

Very nice work. Always great to catch something on anything you make at home. Did you buy a wire bender and wrapper? That is a lot of work and very hard on hands without a machine.

Old 86 is frozen. There were boats running today, but I doubt that they were launched from any ramp. They will be open by tomorrow afternoon if it gets to 50+ We got to 47 here at the Lodge today and it is just pouring thru the gutters. This is the first day I have been out, and was totally surprised at the amount of ice and snow Branson had. Most I have seen in years. I am guessing it was close to 5 inches with at least 2 of that being sleet and ice. All our roads are completely dry after today. Safe to come ahead down and the ramps will be clear in the next day or so. Good Luck

I have been getting a kick out of the hose deal. At our resort on Lake O. in the late 60's and early 70's it seemed we replaced fuel hoses most all the time especially from a 6 gal tank to the motor. They were always cracking and breaking and getting soft and hard. I really do not believe this is the issue.

You are not alone. Ask some of the 100 plus anglers that fished it this last weekend in the bfl that blew chunks on it. A 5 wire rig is the rig to chose, but the configuration of the bait and blade pattern is very important. The idea is to present as many targets as possible to the fish but in turn have them chose one of the 3 that are the hot or hooked baits. Thru a couple of years of experience now we have figured that out, to a very good percentage of positive hits on the hot baits. The main factor however is to fish it where the fish are at the time you are fishing it. ie Seasonal locations. So we have established it to be fished where the fish are. Now, we know where they are as far as lake locations, but what depth are they? The A-Rig is not a Buzzbait. It is designed to be fished slowly thru the water column that is holding the fish. Here is where your electronics come into play. Got to know where they are in the water depth. A very good recommendation is to go out with a local or a friend that is very confident with it and knows the correct procedure on how to set it up, or book one of our local Table Rock guides that fish it on an everyday basis. Bill Beck, Pete Weeners, Buster Loving, Eric Oliverson, Tony Wedele, Chris Tetrick, Tim Paige and a ton of other professional guides here are just excellent with the Rig. Usually 1/2 day 4 hr. lesson is all it takes to learn more than you would in 2 years trying thru trial and error with it. The Guides put in the trial and error time for you, so you should be able to not only learn to use it correctly but catch a fish or two during your outing. This is for sure positive reinforcement on the procedure it takes to use this bait to its best level of performance. Every person I take that has been or just started using the A-Rig, says " I had no idea that is the way to correctly fish that thing. I thought you just casted it out and reeled it in." Wrong.