Bill Babler

RS, you got the bait right, but the location is abit off. He fished one day with David Mangelsdorf as his non-boater, and another with Jim Thompson, who now ownes Central Pro Am. He was flat all over, with the most of his fish, comming from the SK to Baxter Area. I know one day he ran to the mouth of the Kings, caught a limit, then went up the James to Buttermilk to try and catch a bigger-in. No doing, he ran to Kimberling City, then turned around and ran clear back up the White River to where he caught his first limit. Jim Thompson was in his boat and he said he nearly wore him out running the lake. Had a limit the day Jim was fishing with him in 20 minutes off point 21 on a Shakey Head. About 14 pounds, I believe. Those are big for SK area as far as K's go. Had a 3.5 today up there, but for the most part Shell Knob K's don't run as big as down lake. Don't get me wrong, you can catch a very good one up there, but its hard to put a 3 pound 5 fish bag in the tank up there. You put 13 pounds of K's together from Shell Knob bridge to Eagle Rock, and you got a good bag of them. Good bag of K's from Campbell Point to Kimberling City will be 14.5 to 15.5. Best bags are from Kimberling City to Gage's Marina. 15 to 17.5. Might get lucky this time of year with them full of roe, and put an 18 pound bag together, but if I did, I would probably just retire and live on my laurals. Dave told me the day he fished with him he ran to 21 and had a limit of about 12 pounds in about 40 minutes, on the Head. I have fished pt.21 for 30 years, and never caught them that fast there. Great Crawler location in Summer, and a very good spot for chasers early, but to load a limit off there in under an hour, I have never even come close to that. After the derby, Jim and I fished it and we caught some, but nothing like he did. I believe this is right, but you know how fishermen are!!

Was not able to hit the water yesterday, but what a day. 70 plus degree, breeze and very.very overcast. About 1 PM Beck calls me and asked how many walleye is the limit per person? What kind of a question is that to ask a guy that is not fishing?? Shell Knob catchin is what he was a doin. He totaled 5 keeper walters, had 3 other heavy weights pulling drag that came unbuttoned, not to mention 30 bass with 15 keepers up to 4 pounds. Got me so Rilled up that I was up drinking coffee at 4 AM. Tetrick and I hit the SK ramp at 6:30 new time in the dark and we were just squeeked at being the first boat. That's 5:30 old time and people were there with a hankerin. Not the same kind of day. We started out in just long sleeve shirts, but soon doned the rain gear and a pullover or two. Heavy wind, Rain and Surf. Bright Sun also was our foe. Started off great with 3 nice keepers in the first hr. and a half, and then the weather hit. Only 1 more keep, and a total of about 15 shorts with us pulling out about 1:30. Lots of boats on our stuff, but really don't know if it would have mattered with the weather. Most of the fish came main-lake Campbell Pt. to Big M on Jigs and Stickbaits. Did have one or the kepps, on a grub, very early. SK ramp was full to the gills, and saw as many 6 boats trying to fish the same locations, in the creeks. Got one little short bank up the Kings away, and wanted to hit it. Tried twice and it was covered. I have fished the Knob for 30 years, plus, and have never seen but one other fisherman on that bank Ralph Lambert. It is a nothing bank with no transition, no deepwater, no spawning location, no timber no nothing, except a ridge that runs off it underwater about 40 ft. from the bank. It is very good, but people until today, just did not know with the exception or Ralph and I that it holds fish. I don't think the FLW boys really knew, it was just a place to fish and that was at a premimum today, as all the bank was covered, weather it be bluff, creek, cove or flat. Did not throw a blade, but maybe I should have. Water in the SK area ranged from 46 to 50, even back in the creeks and pockets. I just may stay after trout until the hoop-la of the FLW clears out on Friday. I guess the Heartland starts Saturday, so I may wait till next week.

I have surfed the net till my pinkys have ached, and "NOBODY" beats Tacklewarehouse for service, realtime fast and dependable shipping and I've not seen lower prices on new items. I believe they are the bomb. I have purchased in the last 3 years, over $00,000.00 from them in at least 30 orders, and never have I had one be anything other than perfect. They get my total recomendation for excellence.

Snakem, Great day, wish I would have been there with you. Nice meeting you and your lovely friend.

Guys, I will be back with the keeper information, I have been pretty busy and its hard to take time to write. In short the keeper is a soft plastic grommett about the size of a number two pencil that is 1/4 inch in length. It has a slit in the middle and you take a pair of needle nose and grip the grommett, the slit gaps open and you slide it up your line to the desired lenght of leader you want between your weight and hook. This for me depends on the locations I am fishing. Heaver cover shorter leader, more open longer leader. When you slide the keeper into place and release it, It will gently close around the line and provide a knot free stop for the weight. Your entire carolina rig has only one tie. That is the hook. Hopes this helps.

Guess you should have gone to Asher. To many places to fish, and not enough time.

Big reports of whites up to the tubes this past week. Lilley is up there now, so we can expect a report, good or bad later this evening I guess. Wish I could have gone with him, but the honeydues came a callin.

"Brace your feet." "Put on the Lifejacket" "Hide the women folk'" The FLW and Heartland Derby boys have A-rove. Our little pond is being besieged by about 500 out of towners getting ready to deal the just awakening bass a serious caloric misgivin. When they thought they were awakening to a crayfish and threadfin buffet, they will be getting hard steel, as these boys are slinging and playing for pay. Stickbaits, grubs, rigs and jigs will be Pounded, Hammered, Tossed and Flung from the Youcum Split to Beavertown. From Flatcreek to the 86 Bridge, fish look out, it ain't what your thinkin. Hard, hard prussure and lots of boats on the water, to say the least. Bet us locals can catch some right in amoungst them if we try. However, it may be time to head back to Bull for some of those whites, or a "eye" or two. Or maybe our own crappie, whites and walters, will get it cookin this week as the temps warm. I will try and remember that I don't own the lake this week, and it is sound advice for all of us. They have to leave, we can stay. Be Patient out there

Good Golley!!!! and Great Day!!!! If you are thinking that fish in the post is 4'11" you had better check your scales mister. That is a Toad Frog!!!! Fantastic day on the lake many Kudo's

For those of us on a tight budget, but wanting to increase the quality of our fishing gear for the upcomming season, Falcon rod company of Broken Arrow Ok. is offering one of the best senarios I have ever seen. You can trade your Pre-Fished Falcon Rods in for the newest rod selections, and recieve a 50% credit applied to your new purchase on a trade up. What is really great about this is a price increase of about 15 percent took effect this year, so the current price of your rod accually increased, allowing you to trade it in on new for still more savings. Example trading a pre-fished Eakins Jig rod in on a new Cara. You probably paid $119 for the Low Rider. It is now selling for $139.99. Your trade in is $70.00 The new Cara, and "Brother, these are sweet" Sells for $179.99. You have $109.00 in absolute top of the tree cross matted graphite rod that weighs under 4 oz.s. This is for a 7 foot MH Jig Rod. Slap a Revo, core or steeze on it and you have under 10 ounces on the heavest rod you will ever need on Table Rock. I will have a complete line of Falcon Rods at the meeting on Thursday night, also featuring, Several pre-fished rods for sale, Low-rider and Origional. Falcon Lowrider is the number one selling bass rod in the world. Or if you are interested in any pre-fished falcon rods please either call me or send me a PM. If you would like to see a particular rod at the Thursday meeting let me know, and I will bring it. Thanks Bill

Great Report Denny. Glad to see they are on that grub. We thru that grub till it melted ie, er, I mean froze last week and could find no takers. Kind of like everywhere else on the lake, if you find a spot that is holding fish, you better fish it and stay on it, cause they for sure are not everywhere yet. We heard rumors, of one of the local guides having a 21 fish, 11 keeper day, in much the same area of the lake. I know he fished it last week and like the rest of us, Sunk it up pretty bad. Different day today, hope it continues to build. Thanks

Couple of the guys yesterday for lack of anything better to do, fished Long Creek, Cricket Creek and Youcum for crappie, and whites. One had been catching about a dozen nice crappie a day up there until last week. Water temps had dropped to 42 from 47 degree. Fished the flat coves in cricket above the long creek split, and then fished long creek flats from the split to youcum. Had the boat in everything from 15 to 30 ft. and the total for the day using swimming minnows, tubes and maribou was 3 non-keeper size crappie. No whites. Wind, flats, trees, and channel swings all came into play as these boy guide up there, and know how to catch-em. They said they did end up with 5 nice crappie from a deep tree between Gages' and the roadbed. Fish were 15 ft. in the top of the tree. They have down graded the temperature for this weekend now and we are to still have very cold nights. I just would feel very uncomfortable putting my eggs in the Table Rock Basket for Whites, if I only had a weekend to fish. One thing on the Whites, Jeremy is usually on top of the cricket creek area and can really catch-em so if he says to go there, might be a good choise, if you have to fish Table Rock. Good Luck

With temperatures expected to increase to the upper 70's the latter part of this week, and into next week. They will be commin on. Was in Roaring River quite a bit last week, and it for the most part is one of the earler places they tend to congreate with its warmer water, nothing, but a sparkling of a few scattered males had been reported. Really by next weekend, don't expect it to be a goin much on the Rock, but Bull Shoals will be. Reports comming in from all over the lake of catchs being made. Not consistant mind you, but quality fish being caught. I would expect it will be turning on pretty fair under a consistant warming weather pattern in the next couple of weeks. Good Luck

Captmac, Thanks for the report. That has been whats up there for the past two weeks. Not on a blade, however. The big fish should start to move soon. Have fished the Kings 4 times in the last 10 days, and you can catch fish and a lot of them, but for the most part they are small male blacks starting to cruise. Lots of keeper size fish, if you are fishing the right stuff with a jig or wart, but keeper size is what they are, nothing to win a derby with, or for that mater even get to excited about. Fished one short stretch of bank in there last friday, and had 10 keepers off a 100 yrd. stretch on a wart. Best 5 might have been 11 pounds and the entire group of 10 might have pushed 22 pounds. Have read reports of 4 plus pounders and lots of bigger keepers being caught in there, but I have not been able to gather any of them up. Hope for a better week this week. Can you believe this Cold Snow. Burrrr!!!

All are welcome. Show up as you are, we are looking forward to putting faces with names.

Thanks alot Eric. I am going to start with a presentation on the evolution of the three black bass species over the years on the rock, and then go into locations and Springtime patterns on all three sub-species. I will be giving a detailed siminar on what equipment I use to target each of the bass and the best presentations of these baits for success. I will have mounts of each of the three that have been caught on Table Rock. 3.5 pound K, 6.1 pound SMJ, 8 pound LM. We will also have some very nice give-aways, maybe including something from Spro. What could that be???? This is very informal, and I will take questions thru-out. Hope to see a good crowd, to kick off the Spring season. Again, thanks for the offer, we appreciate it.

That Rainbow needs to go to the Naknek River for a workout. He would loose some of that gut working the current for a living, and I'm sure he would feel much better about himself

I have very seldom seen the the water temps range so much from day to day or from location to location. It would be almost futile to give out the temps, as they would change dramaticlly before you even went out. Long Creek 42-46 Main Lake Area to Kimberling City 44.6 Kimberling City to Baxter 44 Big and Little Indian at Baxter 43 to 44.5 Baxter to Mouth of Kings River 45 Lower Kings River 43 to 45 Mid Kings River to Deer Bluff 46.5 to 47.5 Upper Kings above Jaques Branch To Arkansas Line 43 Main Creek Arms on the upper White-Cedar,Carter 44--Viney, Rock Creek 44.5--Owl, Panther, Roaring River, 46 to 48 White River to Holiday Island 43 to 44.6 Leatherwood Creek 44.7 Holiday Island to Beaver Town 46.5 The are the only places I have been over the last couple of days, hope it helps, but it is changing as we speak. One thing that has happened is the lake is clearing at a very fast rate. Even though it is getting warmer, the water is clearing just as fast as the temps are rising. The clearer water warms much slower. Good Luck

Lets start with last Tuesday. I really worked hard at trying to put a bite together for last Sundays derby, and the lake kept pulling the rug out from under me. On Tuesday, I fished the dam area with the McStick and caught decent Smallmouth, and a couple of very nice LM out of cedars on bluffends. Wensday, I fished the White River Arm and had the mouth of the Kings and again caught a very respectable ammount of fish on both a jig and stickbait. Probably a dozen keepers, but nothing over 3 pounds. Thursday, I took one of the FLW boys prefishing for their big derby here in a couple of weeks, and fished the White River. There was an excellent bite, BIG BITE up the river with one fish, pushing 7 pounds, and a couple of more in the 4 pound range. Lots of fish, just shook off on the jig, so we would not ruin them for the weekend. Friday a guide trip out of Chateau. 5 guides with 3 clients per boat on a "Blue Bird" day and we all had the tough days. I let my guys try and throw sickbaits, for about 15 minutes and figured that was never going to work as we would have to take a time out to go for hook-extraction, if we continued. Only 1 fish on a hula-grub. Chris T. guided with the Group at the dam on Saturday, and said it was just flat BRUTAL. From point 5, to Long Creek, and it really should be very good with the wind on the Smallmouth banks, it is just terrible. For the most part, Kentuckies have been very hard to come by and on the bright days, the SM'J don't want to bite, so it is reduced to a LM fishery. We all know how hard that is. It will be better this week, if the temps stay up. Saturday I guided my FLW guy again and we fished the Mid-Kings River and it was starting to clear. Did catch a very nice number of fish with lots of off-colored keepers coming out of that dirty water. Just not the kind you need for a derby. 2.5, to 3 pounders, and that is probably pushing it. Pulled the boat and went back up the White. Clouds had rolled in a bit up there, and the jig bite was just as good as it could get in the creeks from Arkansas to Shell Knob. Bowed up on a fish in each creek, and they were the right kind, and shook the tube and the jig out of at least a couple of dozen other bites so they would be ready to go Sunday. Sunday Beck and I ran from Kimberling to Arkansas line up the White River at an air temp of 17 degree. Man that was brutal. Set-in ketchin fish right off the bat, but the wrong size. Where we were getting 4 and 6 pound bites, they had gone to keeper bites, and just that. Water turned slick and clear, but the fish were biting on chunk-rock transitions, and bluffends with timber. Caught well over 20 fish with most of them being keepers, by 9:30, but just that, 15 to 16 inchers. Most skinny LM Males, up a curisin and a lookin. Had a limit in the boat in about 40 minutes, but for sure the wrong kind. Kept working our way back to Kimberling and picked up a nice 3.78 on a jig, and Bill Caught a 4.20 on a stickbait, but it was just not enough, not being able to get rid of our male blackies. If we could have gotten one of those big girls to bite early up the White River, we would have been ok, but no go. Boys that won it were fishing the Kimberling area as were most of the other top teems, we just turned the wrong key yesterday. Lots of fish and some fun, but it takes "Big-Ens", to win derby's. The weights, were way down from Saturday, and so were the bags, but Sunday was just way to bright. Water temp, and colors are changing rapidly, and by the end of this week, things might explode around here. Good Luck

The Fann Brothers, a couple of the real nice guys in this sport and for sure two of the best on Table Rock, "Barr None". Won with 19 pounds and change. Big Bass I believe was 4'14oz. They fished the Kimberling City area with Suspending baits for their win, staying in sight of the weigh-in for most of the day. Surface temps in that area 44 degree.

Nice Fisseys ya'll. That is one super crappie. Phil and I had another wonderful day on Upper Bull, I think he is going to post. Started out very cold 19 degree, but the fish were awaitin, and had their mittins and earmuffs on and were allowed to come out and play.

Very nice an very informative post. You all were a lot braver than us locals. You all might have been locked into just to small of an area. For instance, last week we fished from Campbell Point to Eagle Rock in a 3/4 day outing. Found fish on only probably 4 locations, and had probably 20 stops. Throwing a stickbait most of the time and would hit transitions, with wind. Fish 50 yrds pretty quickly and if nothing, GONE. It was pretty windy for us to fish deep, so didn't even bother. Bite was not exploding, but a couple of dozen fish a day. Seemed like if we were going to do any good, we would have one in the first cast or two on a location. If we presisted on a location that we were not immediatly bit on, we didn't do any good. They were there or they were not. Again, thanks for the fantastic report.

Well, it sure doesn't take much to get everyone's dander up. If you think I ment by my post, that I am a better fisherman than for that matter, anyone else on this forum, you didn't read the post correctly. My POINT was, locals that fish the lake on a weekly or even a daily basis, should not feel prussured by guests coming to a strange or a lake that they very seldom or never fish. It is just pure common sense, to believe that we that fish here ofter, should have a spot or two that a stranger would not know of. Most people that don't fish the White River Chain, Just don't fish the way we do. As I said in my post, I, in 30 plus years of fishing Bull Shoals have never had to worry about competition for fishing locations. Exception, the Pothole, Beaver or Swan Creeks. The way 90 percent of the lakes in this world fish, they are bank fisheries. The White River Chain, all the lakes on it are for the most part not bank fisheries, and that is just hard to figure out if you are not from here. I very often, have people stop and ask me while I am fishing, if they can help me, if my boat is broken down. Most people not from here just don't realize or understand that all fish do not live along the shore line, or within casting distance of it. For the most part, here very few fish do live there. The entire jist of the post was to assure locals that fish here, that there is enough water for everyone. I'm done on this topic.

Don't get off the fishing forum much. Had no idea, we could not broch this topic. Me bad.

Glad to hear the "Fish Gut Deal" I have a new career opportunity waiting for you on the dock. LOL Bill