Quillback

Picked up this 6.25 lb. fish this morning on a Zoom Ol' Monster. Only caught one other bass besides this one. My fishing buddy missed a couple and that was all the action we had. This bass must have been desperate, one of it's eyes was bad, you can see it in the pic.

Speaking of gas prices, gas just jumped about 20 cents/gallon in this area last weekend. DId a refinery blow up somewhere? What the heck is the reason? OIl and wholesale gas prices didn't move up, in fact they have dropped the last few days.

Yep oil is expensive and getting it out of the ground is causing environmental damage. But I still haven't seen any realistic plans to get us out of our carbon burning lifestyle. First off, government can't underwrite the expense, we're 15 trillion in debt and adding a trillion a year. You can say future economic growth based on alternative fuel will help our debt problem, but first that's a leap of faith to assume that growth will be there, and it will take too long to happen if in fact it does happen, we have to tackle our debt and spending problems NOW before we can even make any plans to spend who knows how much to convert us to a greener energy lifestyle. And you can't ignore the fact that any carbon based fuels that we save here will be used by the developing world instead of us. We're in a global economy, the Chinese are eating our lunch and will continue to do so, they're more than happy to burn oil and coal even at the higher prices we're now seeing. And don't forget oil is priced in dollars, part of the price increase in oil is due to a weaker dollar, weaker because of our debt and spending problems.

Speaking of subsidies, the Senate killed an amendment to end government buying of "excess" sugar produced by American farmers. This excess sugar is bought by the government and then sold at a loss to ethanol producers.

You always have to look out for unintended consequnces. We're shutting down coal fired electric plants as the EPA is tightening down on emissions regulations. What happens? We're now shipping coal to China where they're happy to burn it. And I doubt they are very concerned about emission levels. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-coal-idUSBRE83I0AK20120419

Jeb and I were out early yesterday around the Big M area, tough bite for us, we got 3 keeps and about a half dozen shorts. Came on a mixture of stuff, Ike DT 16, big shakey head, c-rigged craws and FB jigs. Thanks for the tip on the tube, may have to drag that around next week. Weather's gonna be hot, dunno if there will be much of a mid-day bite anymore.

Investing in our future is tough to do when we're 15 trillion in debt, and adding a trillion to that debt every year. I alos believe economics play a huge role in the energy debate, if you want people out of gasoline fueled cars then you have to present folks with clear cost saving reasons to do so.

I can't stay up all night and fish, the drive home is brutal trying to stay awake.

I know the details on 2 of those drowning deaths on Beaver, both cases it was teenagers who drowned while swimming. Neither was wearing a PFD.

Cool images, thanks for sharing.

Yep we're having some fun, we wouldn't win any tournaments, but we're getting some fish. We were off the water by 1100 yesterday, I think the worst part of a tourney right now is having to stay on the water when it's 90 degrees and having to work hard to grind out some fish.

The concern I have with a "keep bass" permit, is that once folks buy one, some of them will keep the fish to justify the expense. It could backfire, and end up with more dead bass than what we have now. Unintended consequences - it happens.

Sounds like a great time, glad to hear you all got into them. I can't catch a thing on those 6XD's, but I should keep trying them as it seems that they're working for other folks.

We were out at the crack of dawn in Jeb's Skeeter yesterday. We mainly fished up the White arm, with a stopover in a cove on the War Eagle arm. We ended up with 15-20 LM's and a few spots, Jeb caught most of the fish including big fish of the day, a 3.25 Lb. LM. Best bite was early, it got tough after 0900. Caught them on a variety of baits, c-rigged plastics, jigs, and flukes. First time I've been on Beaver on a Saturday in a while, lots of other fishermen out there. 3 times we had people jump in front of us as we were going down the bank. I guess that's the norm on the weekends.

No rain here and it is needed. Supposed to be a chance of T-storms today so maybe we'll get some.

Yessir that was us in the silver/gunmetal Phoenix. I remember seeing your boat several times, if we see you again, we'll stop by and say hello.

The Almighty Largemouth rules the roost. If we're gonna charge $100 to keep those dinky little creek runnin smallmouths, then we should charge $1,000 for a license to keep the King of All Fishes, the Largemouth. The above is all in jest, before anyone blows a gasket and freaks out.

Wow, nice fish! Jeb and I were in the Viney area also yesterday, we must have seen you Duck, just didn't know it. We ended up with a little over 30 fish, but only a couple of keepers. Had a good but brief topwater bite, then we went with jigs and c-rig plastics. They were biting that stuff early really well, then it slowed down considerably. Had a lot of light biters that were tough to hook later in the AM, missed a lot of fish.

Excellent, sounds like a great evening out on the water!

I don't know if anything can be done about it, if you spend time on the water fishing, you're going to run across this kind of stuff especially during the summer.

Probably got 1/4-1/2 inch of rain here in my section of NW Arkansas. Not enough, we need more.

$22K for a crappie? Time to break out the crappie gear!

A pirate walks into a bar, he has a hook in place of his right hand, a wooden leg, and a patch over one eye. Sits down at the bar and orders a drink. Guy sitting next to him asks him how he got the wooden leg? Pirate replies: "Got in a batle on the Spanish Main with a treasure galleon, canon ball took my leg off". Guy asks him why he had a hook on his hand? Pirate replies: "Boarded an English sloop, got my hand sliced off in sword fight." Guy ask him why he has an eye patch? Pirate replies: "Arrr, I was looking up at the mast and it so happened a seagull flew by over head and pooped in my eye!" Guy says: "Wow that must have been some really nasty poop to take your eye out!" Pirate replies: "Arrr, not that, it was my first day with the hook".

I was at Academy yesterday, they were pretty much sold out of the Ike's. Folks seem to like them.

Yep I agree, nice to have a good walleye fishery close by. One of these days I might even fish for them.