Quillback

That Watermelon red flake looks killer! I like the idea of a phantom red craw also.

You do have to watch out for the deadly "White river fog", that oxygen less water can create an oxygen less fog on those calm summer mornings. It claims the lives of several boaters a year. There used to be a warning sign about this on the Eagle Rock bridge but the local hillbillies tore it down.

Caught a couple of nice ones first thing in the morning, 6.25 and 7.25 lbs., both came on a jerkbait, from the same location, maybe 10 minutes apart. Jeb got a 4.75 lb. fish later in the morning on a jig. Good early bite, then things got really slow, we left a little after noon. I think we got 7 bass total, and 6 of those came in the first hour. Water temp was nudging 49 when we left.

Depends what you mean by "reasonably priced". I've heard a lot of good comments on the BPS Johnny Morris Pro-Qualfier reels, never tried one myself, but I believe you can pick thm up for less than $100 when they are on sale. I picked up a Gen 3 Revo STX last fall, I'm impressed with it except they do have an issue with having to really tighten down the tension control knob if you want to fish it with a slow spool. You can get them for around 159-179 on sale. Shimano Chronarch G is another good reel in the STX price range. Lews makes a good reel from what I hear.

There's a COE park there with a launch and dock. Sits on a small cove sheltered from the wind, which makes loading a lot easier on those windy days.

I'm old enough to remember, back in the ealry 60's when I was 5 or 6, we used to drive from Wichita to Kennett MO to visit my grandparents. This was before the anti-litter campaigns came out. Everybody, and I mean everybody, when traveling down the highway and finishing a fast food meal, tossed everything out the window, bottles, cups, wrappers, bags, everything. The roadside ditches were filled with trash. Things today are much better as far as that is concerned.

Let's hope they get more than a slap on the wrist.

We've been catching them on jigs and tubes the last 3 weeks. Smaller jigs, 5/16 or 3/8 seems to be the best. We're also finding fish back in the coves, not all the way back on the spawning flats but in the deeper water that gives access to the flats.

Fished out of Jeb's boat today, we caught around 15 bass between the two of us, mostly sub-legals with maybe 5 or 6 keeper sized. Mix of spots and LM's. Our top baits were finesse jigs and tubes, with a couple on a jigging spoon, one on a Shad Rap, and one on the spinner bait. It went from dead calm and 26 degrees early to pretty darn windy and 71 degrees by 2 PM. One of out better spots, a small cove with rocky shallow flats near the cove mouth that is near a deep channel swing, kicked out 5 fish when we swung by it later in the afternoon when the wind was on it. We hit that spot early in the AM when it was dead calm and did not get a bite. Most of our other fish came from inside coves, just one every once in a while. Water was 43 -46 depending on where we were, but in spite of that we noticed a bit of surface activity when the water was calm, Jeb caught one of his spoon fish casting at a boil, it wasn't a big fish, but nice to see some signs of life.

Great video, thanks for posting it Mitch!

If the rivers are blown out you can try the Indian creek arm, the last couple of years I've caught walleye incidentally up there while bass fishing. Backs of coves and pockets is where they've been. You're going to have to work for them, but it's a scenic part of the lake and relatively uncrowded.

Is there going to be a grill of some kind there? If I come, I could bring a couple of packs of brats.

Thanks, if I ever decide to stay for a couple of days, that sounds like a good place. Just need to remember to bring a card table and a lamp.

Four guys with 22 lb. bags, pretty impressive. http://www.flwoutdoors.com/bassfishing/bfl/tournament/2013/6975/table-rock-lake-boater-results/

The thing is, we'll still get electricity here if Swepco shuts down, but it will cost more. There's smarter ways to do things, but the Arkansas utilities commision may choose to take the dumb route.

Congrats!

Having grown up during the 60's and 70's I'm not nearly as worried nowadays about "end of the world scenarios". I remember having bomb drills (nuclear bombs) in elementary school, couching down along the walls in the hallways, facing the wall with your hands over the back of your neck. Not that it would have done much good. Now I worry about biological weapons, or engineered viruses creating some sort of pandemic, not that I worry too much about it, but it's a concern. Ever see that movie "Dr Strangelove"? It's an old one, but a classic, and very funny in an ironic sort of way. Kind of gives you an idea of what could have happened in those days, could've happened any day, but fortunately it never did,

Fished with Jeb from near Big M all the way up to the Kings river mouth, we fished from about 0800 to 1400, ended up with a dozen bass between the two of us, maybe half of those were keeps. Nothing large, biggest was around 2 Lbs. Mostly LM's and I think there may have been 2 Kentucks. Got a few on a Pointer 100, one on the a-rig and 8 or so dragging finesse jigs and tubes in 5-15 FOW. Did have one really strong fish that ate a tube, just didn't get a good hookset on it and it got off pretty quickly. All of our fish except the a-rig fish came from 2 locations, a channel swing halfway back a cove and a small pocket entrance in the back of another cove. Water temp was 45 or so near Big M and 47 in the large cove near the Kings mouth. Quite a few bass boats out there today.

Copied this from an email Bassmaster sent me. Sounds like the fish did well, I think some of us were concerned about how the fish would fare, but looks like theyt recieved good treatment. TULSA, Okla. — Every single bass weighed in at the Classic lived to be caught again by other anglers. One of B.A.S.S.’s most important principles is our commitment to fish care and the catch-and-release ethic. So when it came to the 2013 Bassmaster Classic presented by Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa — and the long 90-minute drive from the take-out to the weigh-in — B.A.S.S. officials and fans of the sport wondered how the fish would fare. With the extra precautions taken by the Classic contenders, B.A.S.S. officials, B.A.S.S. Nation conservation directors and biologists from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC), 100 percent of the fish were released back into Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees alive. “Bass are able to tolerate the stresses of being caught, confined in a livewell, then handled in a weigh-in, much better when the water temperature is low,” explained Gene Gilliland, assistant chief of fisheries for ODWC. “In the case of the 2013 Classic, water temperatures at Grand Lake ranged from 39 to 45 degrees.” The contenders did their part by pumping fresh water into their livewells during the day, and on the hour-and-a-half drive to Tulsa, they ran recirculating aerators continuously to keep the oxygen levels in their livewells high. “The Classic anglers always take every measure possible to ensure they care for their catch, from hook-up to livewell to the stage,” added Noreen Clough, conservation director for B.A.S.S. “And we at B.A.S.S. take every measure possible once those fish hit the scales to minimize their time from weigh-in to getting back into the water.” “As the boats came into the holding yard in Tulsa,” said Gilliland, “trained B.A.S.S. Nation conservation directors and ODWC biologists checked each angler’s catch and treated (fizzed) a handful of fish that showed signs of swim bladder over-inflation. Once inside the BOK Center, the fish were bagged quickly, weighed quickly and hustled backstage to a waiting 600-gallon ODWC fish hatchery truck filled with lake water. We bubbled in pure oxygen to maintain the best possible 'recovery-room' conditions. We kept the tank the same temperature as the anglers’ livewell to eliminate any temperature shock. “After being weighed and placed on the hauling truck, the fish were monitored continuously,” continued Gilliland. “At the end of the weigh-in, they were taken back to Grand Lake and released in several different locations. The following morning, each location was inspected to see if any fish had expired. None were found.” All 548 fish lived to be caught again by Oklahoma anglers, thanks to a continuing commitment to fish care and a willingness to make improvements in every facet of the process.

The ONLY way this changes is if somehow, there is something that energizes the middle class job market. The last time it happened in any sort of real way was in the 1990s with the tech/dot.com boom. It created a whole new class of industries, with a whole new job market. Can government stimulus do this? Not by just throwing money at existing industries. That's good enough to stave off further depression sometimes, but it would take far too much money to really get things booming again. But that doesn't mean the government can't encourage the creation of new industries. They tried with "green energy", but the problem was that they bet on individual companies at the same time that China was willing to steal the developing technology and outcompete (with massive Chinese government subsidies) those same companies. The key to stimulus money, in my opinion, is to spend it on basic research and development, and green energy is a perfect place to do so. It might take longer, and it might still fail, but there's still a chance that green energy could be the next big development that would result in a huge new economic boom, one that would sustain itself for many years. So you've basically said corporations are in it to make profits, not create jobs, not support infrastructure, etc., but if we would just fund your favored sector "green energy" then the folks who will profit from the government money tossed thier way won't act like the other greedy corporate barons in other industries because they are "green"? And I can't see it causing a huge economic boom, if anything the trend has been towards higher energy prices as we attempt to become more "green". I also find it ironic that as oil prices have jumped it's now become profitable to use very non-green sources of oil such as oil sands. And who gets hurt by high energy prices? The poor do, they still have to heat their homes, drive to work etc., it's also ironic that the green energy types who are likely to be the ones constantly advocating for the poor, are screwing those folks by supporting policies that are driving us away from producing cheap energy, high energy costs are extremely regressive. I guess we could spend more government money ahd heat the homes of the poor and fill their gas tanks (better yet buy them a Prius), course we don't have any money to do something like that, but that fact seems to escape everyone.

I don't think you'll find anyone here that isn't willing to see money spent on kids like Luke to give them a chance at living a good life. I'd argue that having that money coming from the federal govt. is the least efficient way to help kids like Luke, we've been doing this since LBJ started his war on poverty and we've still got kids like Luke and parents like he has. We need to fundamentally change the way we provide social services, unfortunately this type of change seems beyond our ability to make it happen, so what we do is spend more money, which I guess makes people feel good, but it just isn't getting the job done, and you provide a perfect example.

Wow, one of them is bid up to $46.99! One thing I've noticed about WW's and this includes the pre-Rapala originals, is the bills are somewhat fragile. If you grind them through the rocks you're risking breaking off the bill. Not a big deal on a $3.99 Wart, but I'd cry if I spent $47 bucks on one and the bill broke off.

I quit watching when the score was 45-22. Arkansas offensive strategy (if you want to call it that) was to spread 4 around the 3 point arc, pass the ball around until someone finally decided to launch a shot from beyond the arc. Even though this approach was an obvious failure, it seems that making an in game adjustment is beyond their capability. Maybe they did something different in the 2nd half, but I wasn't going to waste any time watching.

As several previous posts have pointed out, the big money is spent on SS, Medicare and defence. That's where the money is. It could be that this sequester will force Congress and President to look for budget cuts in these programs, my guess is we'll see a trade off, budget cuts in the big programs and some kind of redo of the sequestration.

Very nice!