Quillback

It's great that they took out the Elwha dams, but after watching salmon recovery efforts for years in the PNW, you always have to factor in netting. When the Elwha dams came out there was already contention over who would harvest the fish even before a single salmon reached the upper river. Wild Chinook salmon fillets run $25 or more retail per pound, it is hard to keep people from catching them with that kind of payoff. Chinook from the Puget Sound rivers spend their adult lives off the Alaska coast and when they migrate home, they face commercial harvest off the coasts of Alaska and BC, plus recreational harvest. You can have the greatest habitat possible in the rivers, but you still need salmon to make it to the spawning gravel. I hope that sometime in the future it all works out and the salmon and steelhead runs return to where they were years ago.

My goal is pretty simple, I just want to get out and fish as much as possible.

He does have an arm. WA has a couple of good WR's too.

Fished with Dutch today, we launched at 0900 with the forecast for the temps not getting above freezing until then and we fished until about 3 PM. It never got very warm and we had a bit of a breeze, cold day. The fishing was good however, we caught 29 smallmouth between the two of us. Dutch got one that went 2.5 lbs. for our biggest, most were in the 13-17 inch range. 1/2 Zinkers on 1/16 oz heads were our best baits, and the fish were in 10-20 FOW, on steep rocky banks, for the most part. We also got a couple on Keitechs.

Just finished watching the WA/TX game (recorded). Both CFP games were good ones. I hope WA can play with MI, but MI's defense looks pretty stout. Football this morning, now off to Beaver to tease the smallmouth with Dutch. Gotta love the retired life! Well, except for the getting old part. 😃

Yeah man, getting ready to hit Beaver today, AKA the Dead Sea. 😃

A shorter, thicker version would be interesting for sure.

i second what Dock says about cutting it down to 4" or maybe less, at least for winter fishing. I would probably throw it on a 3/16th or 1/8 oz head and swim/drag it through cover.

That is weird, I don't think I have ever seen a swimming squirrel.

That's good - I'd hate to see him go to someplace like LSU or even worse, Texas A&M. 😃

Yeah I know, I guess there just aren't that many where I usually fish. When I first saw it in the water when I was bringing it in I was thinking that was a funny looking bass.

It is hard to be optimistic about the future of Hogs football. I thought they should've gone after a young coach that can connect with players and is hungry to win. Instead they brought back Petrino. It is good to see Mizzou putting a quality team out there.

The most important thing about this trip was I caught my first Table Rock goggle eye! I have heard so many stories about the great (supposedly) google fishing in TR, but I never have caught one of those elusive suckers until today. 10" long and thick, if I had a half dozen more I would have had some fried fish! Caught a couple of ridiculously fat spots today too, barely keeper length, but they were piggies. Thanks for the trip Dayne!

Looks like OSU had some opt outs, but not at Mizzou, from what I could tell. OSU's defense was solid, no opt outs there, but Mizzou finally wore them out in the 4th quarter. Good win for the Tiggers!

I don't watch many bowl games, but I will watch this one. Good matchup MO vs. OSU.

My plan covers out of network emergency services. Routine stuff that you'd get through your network , but for some reason you want to go out of network, gets partial coverage. However those out of network providers must accept Medicare. There's about 4 pages of out of network reading in my plan. The big one in my opinion is getting out of network coverage for emergencies, you'd want to make sure any plan you sign up for has that coverage.

I've got UHC also under Medicare Advantage, I paid $60 for my last eye exam.

I might do that.

Too darn cold for me to fish out of the boat, but after being cooped up in the house the last few days, I needed to get out and do some fishing. Caught 4 smallmouth, 3 on Neds and one on a 2.8 Keitech. Caught them all in the cove where the Lost Bridge south ramp is located. One 50 yard stretch of bank was where they were at, and I also fished a lot of bank where they ain't. With the water low like it is you can fish about as much bank as you want, I enjoy getting out and doing this a few times in the winter, simple fishing, one rod and a tote bag with some tackle and you're good to go. Several striper boats fishing the LB South area, saw a guide boat pull into the dock and they were taking some pics with the days catch. I was a couple hundred yards away, so no idea on numbers or size, but they had some.

Great stories Bill, thanks for sharing!

Sorry to hear that. I know someone that fished with him a few times and they caught some really nice fish.

Yep, the weather wimp in me does not like the look of next week's forecast.

That is a tank of a smallmouth, congrats!

It was glass out there for most of the day. Water temp was 52 and the air temp 64 when I put it on the trailer about 1230. Caught 20 today on the Ned rig, all spots except for one 10 inch smallie. 4 keepers. Fat and sassy are the spots, they should stay that way until the spawn. Best fishing was on steep banks with rocks and trees, fish were in that 10-20 foot range. Merry Christmas!