Quillback

I have a number for a striper guide that I can PM you if you want it. Saw him at the ramp last week and he had 3 stripers in the 5-7 lb. range. I've caught a few myself, but not nearly as knowledgeable as the guys that chase them all the time, but if you are thinking of going anytime soon, you want to be down at the lower end of the lake. Sometime starting late October or thereabouts there will be a top water bite, that's how I like to catch them. You can get them on spooks or poppers on top or you can throw a fluke or tube at them. You want a setup that will allow you to make long casts. I know a guy that hammered them on umbrella rigs in the fall several years ago, so I think that is worth a shot, but it is something I don't throw. Dan the Fisherman knows a lot about those stripey things, maybe he'll have some input. Bfishin does too, but he only advises on how to catch 50 lbers. 😀

I've got friends that are fishing just about every day. It's tough, but they get some every day, mostly shallow. Early bite. I'm going tomorrow with Dutch, I expect it to be tough, but it's good to get out.

Royals Achilles heel, the bullpen, blows it again.

I'd go by what the guide book says. I have not fished the tail water with Power Bait and I was unaware you could not use a treble.

Never have heard of them being numbered. When they talk about a drift rig, they are probably talking about fishing that setup from a boat. I haven't fished worms from a boat on the White river since we made a trip over there in the mid-80's, but what we did then was use a bell sinker, with about a 3 foot leader to the hook. You'd want just enough weight so that as you drifted down river in the boat the weight would tick off the bottom every now and then as the boat and your bait moved down the river with the current. Good way to catch trout, but lots of snags, you end up spending as much time tying on tackle and re-baiting as you do fishing. I always used an egg-shaped slip sinker when bait fishing from the bank. Run your line through the slip sinker, 2 or 3 feet up the line, then clamp a split shot below the sinker. Easier IMO then tying on a bell sinker, then tying your leader to the sinker and it allows the trout to pull line through the weight when it bites, more likely they'll hold on. I always liked to use enough weight so that the sinker would anchor itself to the bottom. That way you can tighten up your line and prop the rod in a forked stick and wait for a bite. Might be the best way to fish with an impatient 6 yo, you can do other things, while waiting for a bite. If you're drifting that worm, which is an effective way to fish, you've got to be holding on to your rod and dealing with getting frequent hang-ups, and it may be hard for a 6 yo to do all that. Not to mention bite detection on a moving setup that is bouncing off rocks on the bottom. If you want to do the anchor to the bottom deal, It all depends on how fast the current is and how deep. I'd bring weights from 1/4 oz up to 1/2 oz. If I had to choose one bait, I'd go with Power Bait in pink or chartreuse. I'd use a #10 Eagle Claw gold treble hook and mold a ball of bait just big enough to cover the hook points. I always like to use night crawlers. I always used a whole crawler on a #8 Eagle Claw bait holder hook from one of those snelled leader packs. Hook that crawler through the middle so that those little bait holder barbs are in the body, but leave both ens of the crawler free to wiggle. You have to be careful casting the crawler as it might fly off if you snap that cast out there, so just lob it. Redworms are good too, so are crickets, use a smaller, lightwire hook for crickets and worms. Another idea and a way to keep the 6 yo entertained is go catch some grasshoppers, trout will eat them too. I'm sure you know this, but the White river can come up really fast when they release water. Make sure you are fishing from a place where you can get up on the bank quickly if it starts coming up. If the 6 yo isn't having fun with the trout thing, you can always go over to Bull Shoals, find some place where you can fish off the bank, and toss a cork out there with a red worm 3-4 feet below the cork, try and find some bluegills, the size won''t matter much to him, but if you can find them, the action will be fast and nothing is better for a youngster than seeing that cork get pulled under. I don't know that area too well, but maybe there are some small ponds around, usually the ponds will hold a bazillion little gills and are a great place to take a really young fisherman. And gills love grasshoppers too. It would be great to find a grassy bank where you could catch hoppers and then use them to catch gills. You'd stay pretty busy and have fun. Good luck! '

Well you got some fishing time in, you''ll have to go again, make those fish pay for only biting once.

Probably some distant relatives of mine that are still in the old country. 😀

Wife of a good friend has a job where she gets unlimited time off and sick days. Gets paid over $100K/year which is not unusual in the software world. Things are booming in NW Arkansas, I'm not crazy about it, one of the reasons, is as you see also, is traffic is ridiculous. To fish Table Rock or the lower end of Beaver, I have to drive through Pea Ridge. Along the narrow 2 lane HWY I have to drive to get to the lakes, there are hundreds of new houses, plus new apartment buildings. They've just recently moved a bit east of town and are clearing land for a couple of more BIG housing developments. Hundreds more houses if they can sell them. They aren't small houses, either, small lots, but good sized houses that are going for, I'm estimating, $400k at least. Someday there will be a bust, it always happens.

My grandad was born in 1914. When he was a toddler he contracted what they called Rheumatic fever. No doctors around, no hospital or ER to got to, no medications to give to him. All they could do was wrap him in a wet cloth and hope that would break the fever. It worked, sort of, he lived but it damaged his heart and he always had problems with blood pressure that was too low and died when he was 56. He had a sister that died when she was 2, I believe it was influenza. It's hard to beat me in a game of "How miserable were your ancestors". 😀

All I have to do is reflect on my ancestors lives of just a couple of generatons ago - they were farm laborers before we imported farm laborers. They had nothing. Things nowadays aren't that bad.

I want to make it to a KC game one of these days, it would have to be a day game. Drive up there early in the AM , see the game, drive back. Probably be a 16 hour day.

Yep, if you can keep a 6 yo interested in trout fishing for more than 15 minutes, you're doing pretty good.

Did you fish or were you an observer?

Junior cranked two HR's last night. Hey the Royals are playing the Cards this weekend!

First person I thought of when I saw this - Johnsfolly.

That's awesome, you're going to have me out there dragging crawlers if you keep that up. 😀

I like the walking part, and no problem getting wet. I like a river or lake where you can do a lot of walking (and fishing), it's fun to throw a rod in the car, bring minimal tackle and do some fishing. Put my dog to sleep recently which was tough to do (his liver was shot), but it does free me up to do long fishing trips.

Is the Mulberry a good river to fish as far as bank access?

Peaks the night of August 11/12. Locally it is supposed to be partly cloudy that night. But there are some flying by now, went out and watched the sky for a few minutes this morning and saw one.

I've seen more of them this year than ever. Get quite a few peck-peck bites on the swimbaits which I believe are yellows. Not happy to see them, but we're now stuck with them.

Good luck, hope you get into some eyes. I haven't caught one in a while, the places I've been fishing in Beaver have shad, white bass, black bass, yellow bass, and a few small stripers. You'd think there'd be an eye or two in the mix, but I can't get one, not even a dink.

The Yakima river where it runs through Yakima canyon in Washington is single barbless hook. It's full of wild bows. It's a very popular stretch of river, lots of drift boats and some bank access. I never seriously fished it as when I was in that part of the state I was bird hunting, and when I was fishing it was for salmon and steelhead that were closer to where I lived. Everyone that fished the Yakima fly fished, I'd fish a spinner with a single barbless hook and those rainbows would practically fight each other to get that spinner. It was tough to land them as they'd jump and toss that spinner pretty easily, but it didn't matter to me. I didn't know about marabou jigs for trout at the time, but I might make a trip back there in the future and you can bet I'll be packing some jigs. Ought to be fun.

I'm not going to float, I don't trust my back in a yak. However I might make it to the takeout, just to say hi. Just need an estimate on when folks are planning to reach the takeout. Might be worth bringing a small grill and burning some dogs if there's enough room for that and if ya'll are interested.

Went out for a few hours early. Weather was a little different, east wind and it felt cold out there early. Fishing was slow, some bites here and there, I'm getting bit in the backs of coves in water that is 20-30 feet deep, most of the fish are near the bottom, but sometimes they'll be up shallow over deep water chasing shad. Had one of those mornings where I had as many missed bites as fish caught. They'd whack the swimbait, but drop it, nothing to set the hook on. Hooked something that felt submarine sized, had it on for 30 seconds or so, it was slowly swimming away pulling drag, acting like it wasn't hooked or didn't care that it was hooked. It came off when it decided to do some head shaking and rolling around, I'm guessing by a little bit of slime left on the line it was probably a big cat or possibly a big drum, but I'll never know for sure. Caught 5 smallmouth, 5 white bass, and one yellow bass. Kept some whites to clean and kept the little yellow dude just to see how it tastes, probably like white bass I would think. 3.3 Keitechs on a 1/4 oz head. WT 85