Quillback

Got out early, nice cool morning. A touch of wind at first, but flat calm later in the AM. Found some deep keitech (3.8 on a 3/8 head) fish again, and caught some on the c-rig also, using a Zoom UV Speed Craw. Caught a couple dozen, mostly spots. Got a few keeper size spots today, but nothing huge. Keitech fish were suspended over 50 FOW near some trees on a rocky point, c-rig fish were mostly off gravel, off the bank in 10 FOW or so. Hardly saw any top water activity except for rolling gar - and one spoonie that jumped straight up out of the water. Lots of schools of small shad swimming around on top when the wind was calm, but the bass were ignoring them for the most part. Left at 11 AM, recreational boats were making their appearance and the fishing was getting slow. This post has been promoted to an article

Nice bunch of crappie!

Some nice trout - excuse my ignorance - but what is Rock Bridge? Is it a trout park?

Thanks for the tips, love those grass jigs, keep making them!

Good deal, sure is fun to get them on the TW. Sure was a nice morning, I didn't go fishing today, but took the dog for a long walk.

Thanks for the report Thumbs, and good on you for taking a vet fishing.

Well you have Carp, Spotted bass, Stripers (in Beaver and some in Bull), trout, probably some question as to the origin of the smallies, Largemouth, and walleye - are they pure White river strain fish? I don't see where doing some genetic manipulation on largemouth is going to effect any sort of natural fish species in these man-made impoundments.

Welcome!

Got fishing about 6 AM this morning, really wish I had gotten out a half hour earlier. Threw my summer time rig to start the day, Zoom Ol Monster on a c-rig, fishing a gravel point. Usually this time of year it's a great way to get a shot at a couple of nice fish, but this morning I only had two non-keepers on it. Switched out to c-rigging a Zoom UV Speed Craw and caught my biggest fish of the day, a near 18" smalls. Quite few fish chasing small shad, but they were scattered, threw a top water at them for a bit, but only had one hook up that got off halfway to the boat. I am thinking if I come back next week to have a little popper tied on, the shad they are chasing look to be pretty small. I have a rocky point that 2 years ago had a really good deep keitech bite that lasted for a couple of weeks. Had to wait bit for a couple of guys in a boat to move off it, but when they did, I swooped in like a vulture going after a road kill skunk. Soon as I dropped the TM I could see suspended fish at about 20-25 feet over 50 FOW. I started off throwing a 3.3 Keitech on a 1/4 oz head, made a dozen casts with it, didn't get a sniff. I was starting to wonder if my depth finder was functioning properly, because I sure should have gotten a bite or two. Decided to switch out to a 3.3 on a 3/8 oz head and I got bit on my next 8 or so casts - You wouldn't think a 1/8 oz weight difference would mean much, but it sure worked. I threw it out, give it about a 5 second countdown, reel a few turns, let it drop, repeat. Most bites came on the fall, you'd just see a little twitch usually on your line. I'd like to say that I caught a bunch of monsters, but it was a spotted bass bite and I don't know if I got any over 15". At the end of the day I caught 25 spots, 2 smallmouth and a couple of largemouth. As Bill and Randy mentioned it was hot and still, I got off the water at 1115 and I was pretty wiped out, not used to this hear I guess. Surface temp 84. Water is stained brown. This post has been promoted to an article

Great trip! I watched a fishing show where they were fishing somewhere in that area and catching big yellow perch, I mean big ones. Looks like a great place to fish with lots of diversity. Did you hear a lot of pheasants? Never have hunted in that part of the state, but I believe there is a lot of public land there to hunt.

Neat trip, going out west is always fun so much neat stuff to see and do. There was quite a bit of petrified wood in Washington where I used to chukar hunt. It had all been encased in lava and was exposed over the eons as the lava rock eroded away. There's some chunks on the shore of Beaver lake near the COE parks, little stuff, no big logs.

I will miss the online Bargain Cave, I have picked up some stuff at great prices there over the years.

Can't say I am ever happy when asked for my SS#, especially if it gets stored in a database.

It's like we've gone from winter right to August. Weatherman last night was saying we might hit 100 latter part of next week. I'll have to dig out the drop shot stuff and the jigging spoons.

So sorry to hear that.

That is a neat fish. Didn't know they existed.

Looks like a neat place to visit. Amazing how much stuff JM has built - the Pyramid, Aquarium in Springfield, and golf courses. Now that I think of it, I believe the Pyramid was existing and JM took it over and converted it?

Some great fish there, congrats!

Glad to hear you and Pat got into them!

Wow, that is crazy!

I did a search on St Louis Cardinal internet radio and got quite a few links, here's one that seems to work, you can click on the channel you want to listen to. http://www.freebaseballradio.com/StlouisMay.html

Very nice!

Nothing natural about the big impoundments around here, if there was some way to manipulate largemouth so that they'd grow bigger, I have no problem with that.