Quillback

I imagine afternoons are worse, lots more pleasure boaters out. But when we pulled out at noon, only half dozen or so rigs in the lot.

Today wasn't bad at the ramp. lower parking lot has room for a row of rigs parked diagonally and the upper lot is wide open. Courtesy dock is useable also. It's probably crazy on the weekend.

I don't get any errors, but the photos are smaller, using the same pixel size as before, but now for some reason they pictures are smaller when displayed in the message.

I saw the proposal, my understanding is that the shad netters are netting their shad in rivers (I believe it was the Arkansas river) and then selling them to guides to fish with. Big worry are bigheads or other carp getting accidentally netted and then turned loose in Beaver. The guides claim they can differentiate between the shad and juvenile carp, so to them it is not an issue. I can understand why the guides are upset it can be tough to net shad in Beaver.

Traveled over to Shell Knob today and launched at the Bridge. Fished with a fellow Bella Vistan, Mike. Mike has been an occasional fisherman during his life, but in the last few months has taken up bass fishing. He has a little problem with his casting as in distance control. I think we had to go back into the trees at least a half dozen time to get his jigs back. There were times I wished I had a machete (for the vegetation, not for Mike) Fishing was a bit slow, my excuse is that I am not familiar with that area. We went point hopping, best points had some breeze on them. Dragging 1/2 oz FB jigs with twin tailed grubs or craws produced the most bites for us, usually shallow at the edge of the brush, but a few out in deeper water. We got about 20 bass, a dozen were smallies, a few spots and a couple of largemouth. Got 2 nice smallies in the 17-18" range, a couple of nice 16" spots and one keeper largemouth. Mike got 2 walleye on back to back casts with his jig, first one was just short of 18" and got released, 2nd one was an obvious keeper, didn't measure it, but probably 21" or so. Water color is somewhat stained with several feet of viz, surface temps 79-80. We left at noon, bite slowed down, and the wind was getting annoying.

I was out today and saw very little top water activity. Tried to force a bite by throwing some top waters, but they weren't having it. Plenty of little shad skittering around, but no blow ups. Kind of ticks me off.

Champ is waiting in the parking lot for the Yamamoto truck to arrive, they don't even get into the store.

Good to hear she is doing better, and I hope that her condition continues to improve.

Well went back to Clifty today and it stunk. Didn't see any top water activity anywhere. Even the black bass were hard to find. Saw some striper boats around point 5 and scattered around the channel in that area so maybe that is where the stripey ones are. Surface temp was 79-80 so maybe that has something to do with it.

Congress would have to provide the funding and direction to the COE for facilities expansion/upgrades. Wouldn't matter where we are on the COE's priority list. There was some facilities work done last year, but relatively minor stuff. If the $1 trillion proposed infrastructure deal goes through, sure would be nice to see some of that money directed towards COE facilities (not that I am holding my breath on that one).

Been picking Sugar Snap peas for the last week or so. The purple green beans are starting to form pods.

Depends where you launch your boat. West side of Hobbs is near the Rogers area, if you launched there, might take 30 minutes. If you went out of Rocky Branch which is near the northeast side of Hobbs it is 10-15 minutes. You might want to get a map of the lake, I don't know off the top of my head where you can get a map, but the local Walmart used to carry them at the counter in the outdoors area, Hook, Line and Sinker in Rogers may have a map also. Keep an eye out for floating wood as there is some floating around here and there.

Cool, that is what is important, having fun.

There's stripers in the Clifty arms and in the main channel around point 5. If you want top water action you need to be there at daylight. Calm morning helps as you can see the top water activity from a distance. Would not hurt to bring some binoculars. Try and be stealthy, don't use the big motor to closely approach active fish, use the TM. Long casts help considerably even though there are times they will get close to the boat if you are quiet. Use poppers or spitters that you can toss for distance. When you see one on top within casting distance, get your lure on them as fast as you can. Spoons probably will work also, cast to the activity, let it sink for half a second then rip it a few feet, pause again, repeat. Another lure to consider is a Storm Wildeye shad, 3 inches or so. My neighbor and his son caught about 30 stripers last May doing nothing but targeting early AM active stripers and rolling those Storm baits through them. Clifty area is a bit of a run from Rogers, you might want to trailer over to Rocky branch and launch there.

I recall catching a small blue or two, but never getting into them. Good idea on the rubber ball.

If they are going to allow additional development, then they need to consider expanding/renovating public facilities such as ramps and parking.

When I was young, living in Massachusetts, caught some of those smaller stripers, they call them "schoolies" up there. Lots of fun on light tackle. Always liked to twitch a floating Rebel minnow for them for top water strikes.

Hard to tell, but looks like a cottonmouth. You should've grabbed it and brought it home for some better pictures.

HAHA, no modifications going to happen. I'm going back to black bass unless one of my buddies wants to give the stripers a shot.

Didn't investigate the stomach contents. Probably would find a bunch of stinky half digested shad. Fishburger, great idea, I'll have to do a search for a recipe.

I fried some last night, not bad at all. I always trim off as much of that red meat as possible, really seems to help.

Yes sir, Zoom UV Speed Craw. Had another walleye take a look at one, but it was while I was bringing a 12" spot to the boat. The craw was halfway up the leader, and the walleye was after it. Nice keeper sized fish. I made several casts in the area I saw it, but could not get it to come back.

I went back to the same place in Clifty where I caught one yesterday. Stayed off the bank a bit and threw topwater baits around. Got out early, I was on my spot by 0530. Beautiful morning with a full moon and cool air temp. Started off throwing a Yellow Magic Havana, a 5 inch walk-the-dog type lure for those of you not familiar with it. First cast I had a striper blow up on it 4 times and miss it every time. Threw it back in there, 2 more blow ups on it, again all misses. Threw it again at the same spot, finally got one, but it was a small one by striper standards, about 3 lbs. I released it. Threw the Havana some more, hit kind of a lull, not much activity, only had a few swirls at it, fish just seemed to be a bit shy of that lure. So, I went back to the Yellow Magic popper and the smaller, more finessy lure is what they wanted. Got some tremendous strikes on it. I was throwing it on a medium weight 7 foot crankbait rod, 10 lb. mono, and those fish were in control. Just had to let them pull drag when they wanted, keep pressure on, and eventually they'd wear out. Fortunately no trees in the water for them to wrap up on. Got my three fish limit, I estimate they went 15, 11, and 8 lbs. Kept all of them as once they are worked this hard, survival chances are low in warm water. Wish I could have kept fishing as they were still blowing up, but catch and release was not an option. Did some black bass fishing afterwards, caught some short smallies, one keeper sized meanie, several small spots, all on the C-rig with a craw. Also caught a walleye that was 17.5. Wish he would have made that keeper mark as I was going to be cleaning fish and it would have been good to have a couple of walleye fillets. Water temps were 73-75.

Appreciate the report, even though the fishing was slow, I was curious as to what the water color was in that area.

A striper bite broke out. Fished with a fellow Bella Vistan this morning, we launched at 0515 and zipped over to the Clifty arm. Started fishing a pojnt and noticed some stripers chasing shad, tossed a Yellow magic popper at them and caught a 10 lber. My buddy threw a Whopper Plopper at them, he had a couple of swirls but didn't hook up. The top water bite did not last long and they were scattered, didn't see any schooling. Caught one more little striper about 3 lbs. and that was it for the striper bite. We then went to bass fishing, found a few decent keeper sized smallies, couple of nice spots, and a dozen dinks. Dragging 1/2 oz War Eagle football jigs with twin tailed trailers was the best technique. Got a couple on topwaters and one Carolina rig smallie. Caught one largemouth that was 14" or so, but never ran across any other largies. Decent water color in Clifty, you can see botoom in about 7 FOW. WT 75. Several striper boats in there pulling balloons. Cold this morning, had to wear the hoodie for a while.