Quillback

Floyd hung in there. Fun to watch when it goes down to the wire.

Strader just got a 5 1/2, it's down to the wire with him and Floyd.

It's looking like a dirty water largemouth bite. Birge is sneaking in there. I haven't watched all day, but so far I have seen few smalls boated.

Looks to be a little slow this morning.

Yeah blowing pretty good hear now. I do wonder why they start relatively late in the morning. You'd think they would start at 0700 instead of 0730. Looks like Wheeler and Birge will make the cut, Connel right on the line.

Lake surface temps are 67 or so, may have come down a bit with the cool nights. I poked around and can't find anything about why they are minimally generating. A couple of years ago the COE stated that the goal was to keep Beaver at 1120 or lower. With this no release situation, it has risen a few feet and is now at 1121.

Done some more looking around, Amazon has a Mossy Oak 10.5 gripper that has the locking feature. The Spor one i have, you have to put the business end inside the fishes mouth then lock it down. If you try and lip them with it, they will squirm out.

Stopped to get some boat gas yesterday at the Shortstop in Garfield. Guide pulled in with his boat on the other side of the pumps and we talked fishing for a bit. He's a trout guide on the river below the Beaver dam. He told me they are having issues with the turbines so they can't release water, except for a minimum amount. As a consequence, water temps in the tail water are in the upper 60's and if it gets much warmer could cause issues for trout survival. Without water releases, Beaver lake is rising too, up 2 feet in the last week. Anyone heard anything about this issue? I can't find anything on it.

The one I have is a Spro. It looks like they stopped making them. Rapala looks to have something similar. They are cheap plastic, but they have a lock down feature which really helps to hold the fish. Only place I can find them on the web is here: SPRO 9 Inch Fish Gripper — Discount Tackle

I watched some this morning. A couple of guys mentioned they were seeing plenty of fish, but they were hard to get them to bite. Birge is doing well up in the dirty water fishing really shallow. Seems the other leaders are pretty much using their scope in the first period, it may get tough for them once they lose the scope period. Fun to watch, nice day, bluebird skies, water color is a pretty green, but I bet with these high skies, it will be tough sledding for the rest of the day. I hear you Bill on those deep K's, best one I caught yesterday was on a swimbait rolled on the bottom in 35 FOW.

I'm hoping you'll take it out on the lake and catch a bass with it. That would be neat!

The Washington state record rainbow is a triploid. 25 lbs. and change. The Colville Indian tribe runs a net pen operation on Rufus Woods lake, they raise triploid rainbows. Some of them escaped, but they still hung around the pens eating food that fell through the nets, that 25 lber. wandered off and got caught. The tribe started stocking triploids in Rufus Woods shortly thereafter and their are some big ones caught by anglers fishing up there. There are some pics on the webz, just do a search on Rufus Woods rainbows. Big pigs.

That's pretty neat, great finds! Bella Vista city wide garage sale was last weekend too. I never look around because when I do all I see is junk. I guess I am just not persistent enough. I'm always happy when the sale ends because the traffic is crazy.

WOW! Tank City! Congrats!

Launched at 0600 and fished most of the morning, left at 1030. The 2.8 Keitech was my best bait, fish were a bit off the bank, most were in 10 FOW. Also caught a couple on the ned, a couple on a 3/16 oz jig, and a couple on top. There was some top water activity to include stripers early. Did not connect with any stripers but caught a spot and a smallie out there over 75 FOW. Wind got up a bit and that sent the fish down. I have started using plastic grippers to hold fish that I catch on lures that have multiple sets of trebles, I'm tired of getting stuck and with old age comes a certain loss of reaction time - in other words I ain't as fast as I used to be. Biggest smallie was 18". Spawned out fish, fought like an old shoe. All the 14 inchers I caught today fought much harder than that fish. I caught 21 total, 4 were bigger than 15". Did not see any MLF boats. WT 67