Quillback

Dutch and I fished around the Indian Creek area today. Some fog on the lake early, but not bad. When I was on my way driving through Pea Ridge, the fog was really bad. The fishing was good, we caught 50 fish, I believe 8 were white bass, one 19" walleye, one largemouth and the rest were smallies. Dutch caught one smallie that we did not measure, but I bet it was 18" easily, but it looked to be spawned out. We caught a bunch in the 12-16" range, but except for that one, no bigguns. Fun fish, they are fighting hard this time of year. We saw shad spawning in one cove, the only place we saw them spawning, but it is early. for them to be spawning. In that cove we also had some top water striper activity, we threw at them, but never got one to bite. Ned rig and 3.3 Keitech were our best baits. We got a handful on top waters. WT 63.

I'm glad they are letting some water out of the lake. I don't know if they are running Beaver too, have to check. Speaking of shad - we saw some spawning on Beaver today. A buddy of mine fishing Table Rock saw some spawning on a dock today.

Well done!

Good deal, thanks for the write-up!

It's becoming a yearly thing, floods and Vernon.

I was fortunate to work for a start up tech company that gave us stock options. It worked out well for me. People who have an equity stake in a company are motivated to do good work. If you own part of the business and profit when the business does well, that is one heck of a motivation. Microsoft was one of our customers back in 1989. That is when they first released Windows. I know quite a few people that were working for MS then. They made a lot of money from MS stock. They all worked for it, 12-14 hour days, and that's what motivated them. The sales reps for that company I worked for raked it in. Million dollar systems, 4 percent commission with kickers, plus add on sales with commissions. We had such good stuff in our niche that sometimes all the sales reps had to do was answer the phone and take the order. That wasn't true all the time as we would also have some epic sales battles with our competitors. Best gig out there is to be a motivational speaker. We'd bring in one every year at our annual sales conference. They'd get $10K plus expenses for a one hour speech. And these are what I'd call mid-level types, really good and famous speakers can get $100K easily. Of course you've got to be really good at it and there is a lot of competition, but what a gig!

Looks like we may get some heavy rain Saturday night into Sunday.

Thanks, bookmarked the website. What a beautiful fish!

I like your analysis. You can fish with guides and somehow it works out that in the end, it's free! 😀

Know any tarpon guides? That's another thing I want to do, catch a big tarpon or two.

Getting some rain here this AM.

Used to do a couple of jet boat trips a year for winter steelhead in Washington. It was a lot cheaper then, $200 per day. Certainly beat having a jet in the garage that I would only use a dozen times a year. Guides would supply all the tackle and bait too. You'd just have to show up at the launch with your rain gear and lunch. Once I get freed up where I can travel for fishing trips I plan on going places and hiring guides. Gulf, Great Lakes, Fork, Rayburn to name a few places I'd like to fish.

It used to be a person didn't need a license to fish the salt. The good ol' days.

If I was going to hire a guide, I would certainly consider Pete Wenners, mainly because I have watched so many of his video reports.

Ya'll are getting a lot more than down here in NW Arkansas. Couple of hard showers early and that has been it.

Doing a little research on this and it appears it is an algae bloom. That's my best guess. 😀 An algal bloom is a rapid increase in algae growth that can occur in freshwater and marine environments. Algal blooms can be green (see image above), blue, red, or brown and sometimes they are so bright that it looks like a layer of paint is covering the surface of the water. Many algal blooms release toxins, but some are non-toxic. Algal Blooms - Missouri Coalition for the Environment (moenvironment.org)

Been pretty dry here. I would like to see 1 to 2 however, not 4-5.

I've had flounder rolls in restaurants. Roll a fillet around some stuffing, bake it and pour some kind of sauce over it. Never made it, just ate it, so I could not tell you how it's done. Probably a recipe out there on the web.

Great fish! I have been thinking about the wacky Senko myself, just have not thrown it.

One of those days where you wonder does anyone work anymore? I saw seven or eight bass boats being towed towards the lake on the way home. Dutch got big fish of the day with a 3.5. I hooked onto a monster "something", it wasn't a bass, an un-stoppable force that swam off the bank (slowly) and swam under the boat and found a tree to get me hung up in. Big cat or maybe a drum is my best guess.

The ned was working last time out and so was a wake bait. 2.8 and 3.3 swim baits ought to also work. I have no advice for fishing when the lightning is crackling as I tend to skedaddle in those situations.

Different spot than where I saw them.

Thanks for the pics!

HA! You could put me on a crappie spot with a thousand crappie swimming around and I might catch two of them.

That is one nice looking rig!