Quillback

Somebody must have thrown a switch somewhere as today was not nearly as good as Wednesday. Caught a couple of solid keeper sized smallies, and another half dozen dinks. The better ones were on the jig and a couple of the dinks hit a 3.3 Keitech. The bites were few and far between. Cloudy and drizzly today, maybe that is what did them in. Saw a few stripers on top, but not enough for me to consider chasing them.

I wonder how that development over by the KC bridge is going, the one on top of that red dirt hill. Gotta be some bucks involved there too.

Bikes, schmikes. Seems like every time I drive over to Cape Fair on HWY 76, there's something to dodge and it is never bikes. It is a curvy, hilly road with a 55 MPH speed limit. Couple of weeks ago, in the pre-dawn darkness, came around a sharp curve doing 50 or so and there's 2 dudes standing in my lane, there was a truck and and suv parked there, off the road for the most part, and those 2 standing out in the road, no idea why and didn't have time to look to see why they were there. If there had been a vehicle oncoming in the other lane, I don't know what I would've done, but there wasn't fortunately. Would've been a split second decision, either take those 2 out or take a head-on. No good answer.

Man, that is a big ol' brown, congrats!

NW Arkansas has turned into a bike Mecca. Hundreds of miles of dirt trails and lots of concrete. There's a whole culture built around trail riding. Jerseys, expensive rides, contests - kinda like bass fishermen. In spite of literally swarms of bikes on the weekends around here, it's not a problem. If I was going to gripe about road obstacles, it would be about RV's, people hauling 5th wheels, loaded dump trucks, loaded tractor trailers - get stuck behind one of those on HWY 76 near Table Rock for a fun time, I'll take bikes over that kind of stuff any day. Speaking of HWY 76, you'd be suicidal to ride a bike on that road.

Steep banks, no trees needed. We did catch a couple at the end of the day around some trees.

I don't see it, I agree it's a gamble that quite a few of them lose, but there is no shortage of people fishing the Opens and whatever the MLF qualifier is. BASS college series openings filled up in record time this year.

They were biting today, Sunday it was tougher than heck, today it was like a springtime bite. We put 28 smallmouth in the boat, 8 or 9 of them were keepers, no big keepers, but we had several that were in the 16-16.5" range. We probably had at least another dozen hookups that got off. Really light bites on jigs, most of the bites were just gradual load ups, no thumps or ticks. Best banks were rocky where the boat was sitting in 20-30 FOW and you could almost reach the bank on a long cast. Bites could come at any time from when the jig hit the water until you were about ready to reel it in to make another cast.

Dutch did not mention my moment of the agony of defeat. Right at the end of the day with about 5 minutes to go, got a thump on a jig, set the hook, and it was as good of a hookset as I can make, had a fish on, didn't feel exceptional, but got it to about 10 feet from the boat and it rolled and got off. It was a big bass, dunno how big, but off it went. Dutch saw it also, so I have a witness. Still bugs me a day later. Nothing I could've done differently, it was just not meant to be.

"The biggest lake, Balboa, also has a very healthy population of spotted bass, the biggest lake, Balboa, also has a very healthy population of spotted bass." What? You are now a spotted bass guy? You know there are more than a few of those things in Table Rock right? 😀 What's going on in BV in a nutshell is that it is not primarily a retirement community anymore. I certainly don't like the direction it is going either. POA is spending money like drunken sailors, just saw that they want to spend a couple million on the driving range, putting in a bar and some sort of ridiculously expensive putting green.

Nice rig Cody. I'm probably not going to attend this year, but hope to get a ride in your boat in the future! Have you guys thought about moving jigfest into the spring?

My grandpa used to do the same thing, shoot rabbits from his tractor. He had a Remington Nylon 66 .22 semi-auto. He also used it for coon hunting, he painted the front sight with some kind of glow in the dark paint. Had that one myself for 30 years after he passed, gave it to my uncle along with the 30-30 so he could pass it on to his kids/grandkids.

I like that 1873 you got there Marty. I have a replica, Cavalry model, 7.5" barrel which I believe your is too. Mine is chambered for .45 Colt. Fun to shoot with Cowboy loads, minimal recoil and I'm fairly accurate with it. 7th Cavalry rode into the Little Bighorn battle with every enlisted man carrying one of these revolvers with 24 rounds of ammo, and they also had their 1873 Springfield carbines. The indians got the pistols after the battle of course and they all pretty much disappeared. There was one that was traced back to the battle that went for sale at an auction, I forget what they got for it, but it was in the hundreds of thousands.

My thoughts exactly. Up early today, going over to fish out of Cape Fair in Dutch's boat.

Good story Marty. I had a 30-30 that belonged to my grandpa, never hunted with it and a few years ago gave it to my uncle who plans to pass it on to one of his kids.

Got going about 7AM, went across the channel to a rocky bank, fished a jig and they were all over it. A bite just about every cast for maybe 20 minutes. A bunch of little dudes, but caught 4 that were in the 14-17 inch range. About a 40 yard stretch of bank, and the fish were in 10-20 FOW. Once I got all the bites out of that stretch that I could, I moved on - I got one more bite over the next three and a half hours. Caught that bite, it was a 17" smallie. Finished up by going to the spot where I caught them to begin the day, could not get a bite there on the 2nd pass. It was time to go. Saw some striper activity in the channel near point one, not much, but a few came up. Indian Creek courtesy dock needs to be moved out some, but don't know if it can be as the dock cable is anchored pretty close to the dock. I may have to start using Lost Bridge if the water drops another foot or so. WT 61.

I retract what I said about the Pigs being a "tough out". Looks like they have quit, hard to know at this point what effort, if any, they put into the Mizzou game.

Never have caught one.

Interesting fish. The guys that fish that specialized carp gear like to catch them.

Fishing is still tough, at least for me. Caught 10 bass this morning, all spots. Chunky fish, but not that many of them. Got the better part of my fish between 10 and 12 AM, early AM was really tough, but that may be more about fishing bad locations to start the day rather than a later bite. Caught most of my fish on jigs, off the bank in 10-20 FOW. WT 61-53 Caught one on a crank:

Caught a bunch of fish this spring and early summer that were schooled up in one spot for several weeks, probably 90% spots, most were anywhere from 30-50 feet down. No air bladder issues. Sometimes these fish would zip up from the depths and eat shad on top.

Not an alternator, but a generator. New Ram pickup EV has gas-powered electric generator (cnbc.com)

I think I remember the temp being 62.

One of the Monkees? Trying to raise money for a come back tour.

It was slow today for me and Dutch. We caught 11 total, and Dutch caught a 2.5 lb. smallie that was the big fish of the day. We had a flock of 10-12 turkeys come down to the water, they let us get pretty close before they walked off. Didn't see any beards. We caught most of our fish on jigs, for what it is worth.