Quillback

Looks to me like a good game plan. I would look for deeper water near spawning banks. Good luck!

A little slower today, caught 18, with 2 keeper sized. Mostly c-rigged lizard fish, and a few on the wobble head. Got off the water at noon. Saw 4 deer in a group swimming across the main channel, why they decide to make that swim is a head scratcher to me. Maybe something chased them into the lake, but I did not see anything. Water temps 61-62. Lots of boats out again today.

Welcome, good to hear you helped Pepe out!

Very nice!

Green Pumpkin/Purple.

Decided before heading out that I was not going to fish the Ned rig, and I was going to fish pre-spawn staging areas and avoid the shallows. One of those day where I decided I was going to do things a little different. Fished a 6" Zoom LIzard for most of the day, caught close to 20 on it, a few obvious keepers and a few borderline fish. Fished it on a Carolina rig, mostly in the 5 -15 FOW range. Most of the fish came from staging areas in coves, but some were main lake fish. Caught a couple more on a finesse jig, but I didn't fish the jig for more than about a 1/2 hour. Hooked something big on the jig, but if was off the hook pretty quickly. Lots of boats out there, but you can still work around them and catch fish.

Bo, I think they went back on the day shift.

Some good fishing!

Here's a northern water snake pic. Sure looks like yours.

Picture is taken from too far away, we need you to get much closer and take another pic.

Do a search on "Bassmaster Classic qualifying 2017". You'll get some results that lay some of it out. Nothing I can find on the Bassmaster web site explains it. They've redesigned the site, and I am not impressed by the changes. From what I can tell, they have dropped the number of Open qualifiers from 6 to 3. The winner of BassFest qualifies for the Classic. They have a new event this year, an 8 angler bracket tourney. It's on the Niagara river somewhere. Winner gets a Classic berth. Other than that, it is all about the points (except for college and other miscellaneous qualifiers). I think it stinks that winning an Elite event does not qualify you for the Classic, but based on my limited understanding of the process of how they make these changes, the Elite anglers have a panel that has input on who qualifies.

Thanks for the report, some nice fish. I am getting the top water bug also, and plan to start throwing them more.

Looks like some good fishing. Pressure does seem to be pretty intense this year so far. The obvious stuff is getting hammered.

They changed it last year for the 2016 Classic, no longer does winning an Elite event put you into the Classic. As far as I know, that is the rule for 2017 also. I don't like it.

It's a hard one to call, a lot of those guys are familiar with Ozark highland lake fishing. Would not surprise my if someone from your list wins it. Aaron Martens is somebody I would look out for also.

Well Jimmy did not make it to day 4. He's only 5 lbs. back, but that wasn't enough. Maybe Matt Arey can make it three in a row.

I haven't seen any up the White myself, or had a shredded line deal like that.

That is some great fishing! I've heard a lot of fishing stories in my 50 years of fishing, but never have heard of someone wrapping the line around their neck, glad to hear you were able to get if off, and thank goodness it wasn't braid!

Wow, I did not realize that tourney had so many boats. Sounds like you guys found some solid fishing, good luck tomorrow.

Jimmy is still hanging in there, supposed to be breezy the next couple of days, should help his spinner bait fishing.

Jimmy is still hanging in there, supposed to be breezy the next couple of days, should help his spinner bait fishing.

17 lbs. and change for the fish kisser. Looks like the lake is fishing pretty well. I'd like to see Jimmy pull it off.

Saw a few bass doing some busting off shore yesterday AM, but just a few amongst all the carp flopping and gar rolling. Not enough for me to get interested in chasing them, but I sure am looking forward to the top water bite when it gets going.

Some good fish there Dave, they sure didn't seem to want the Ned yesterday for us, but we really did not stick with it for long either.

Heard a bunch of gobbling across from the Big M marina this morning. They may have been in the Viney state park.