Quillback

Now yesterday was cold, only got up into the high 30's with a gusty wind from the north.

Some great deer, congrats to them!

One angler in the boat must be at least 50.

That's interesting. I assumed that guy in Uvalde must have had money to blow, because by the time those trout got big enough to be worth catching, they'd die in the heat. You'd think he would've ordered a load of 12" fish.

Curious as to why someone in TX would want a bunch of 6-8 inch bows?

Did my walk yesterday afternoon, nice north wind blowing.

Len Dawson.

Some nice fish! Dress warm for Saturday.

Good idea for a fund raiser. I'll kick some money in.

Too chilly for me, and it is too far away. Good luck, be interested to hear how it goes.

No snow here and for that I am thankful. I believe firearms season for deer opens in Arkansas today, if I was deer hunting I'd want some snow, I always thought it was fun to bird hunt in fresh snow.

I remember watching one of those shows, probably the sporting chef, where they ate crow. They seemed to like it, but it looked like a lot of work.

Well I drove there from Boston, but it was because I moved there. But one of the reasons I moved there was for the outdoor life. I really don't have a good estimate on how many miles I have put on vehicles going hunting, fishing, and hiking over my lifetime, but it's got to be at least a couple hundred thousand.

First off, let me say that there have been some animal encounter on the way to the lake. I think they're after me. Yesterday morning as I was going through the old part of Pea Ridge, came around a curve and there was a skunk in the middle of the road, but it wasn't dead. Thought for sure I'd hit it, but was able to slow down enough that it had time to run off the road, but it was close. Then, as I was on road "E" a few miles from Big M, rounded a curve and there was a buck standing in the other lane, maybe an 8 point but I didn't get a good look because as soon as I saw him, he saw me and jumped right in front of the truck. He turned and started running down the road in front of me, but I was so close all I could see was his head and I was going faster than he was. I was braking, but as you all know, you can't stop on a dime when you're towing a boat. Well he realized he wasn't getting away from me, so he turned sideways and BAM, I hit him. Fortunately, it didn't knock him down, and last I saw of him he was jumping the fence on the roadside and disappeared into the darkness. And to top it all off, this was my first day with the truck as I had just got it back from the body shop. Once I got to the launch, took a look at the front end and there was no damage. And then this morning I'm almost at the Big M park entrance and what I think was an owl (all I saw was something large with brown feathers) does a kamikaze dive into my windshield. WHACK, came out of nowhere and surprised the heck out of me. Kind of glad the next few days will be too cold for me to go fishing, I'm getting paranoid. Fished with Dutch today, we worked hard for some fish, maybe got close to 20 between the two of us, Dutch's worms out fished my jigs, I had 5 out of the 20. The fish were scattered and on the bank. Nothing of any size, Dutch might have had a keeper on the first fish he caught, but after that, they were 12-14 inch fish. Mix of spots, smallmouth and a couple of dink largemouth. I fished Wednesday by myself, expected to find some deep fish, but it was a barren wasteland in the places I usually find them, so ended up banging the bank with jigs and caught 9 with 2 keeper sized smalls. The deer are getting stupid, we watched a small buck chase a doe around on the bank, and saw another one that looked to be a 6 point walking the bank in another spot. Weather is going to change, sure will miss these 70-80 degree temps.

I've had food poisoning before, it's a bad experience.

HAHA, went fishing this morning, but I do wake early anyway, can't sleep past 5 AM.

I watched it, as expected, no howler found. The evidence they found in the form of DNA was all bobcat, and one hair from a bear. They also were given a game cam photo from a Highlandville MO hobby farmer that most likely was of a black housecat. At the start of the show, Josh, the host, made the statement about the Ozarks that "Most of it is unexplored."

One of my favorite places to fish, congrats on a good day!

Glide baits are pretty neat, I need to fish them more.

Flocks of specklebellies flying overhead today. Seems like every time I step outside and hear and see them.

Runs tonight at 7 PM on the Science Channel. I'm going to record it. These search for Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens, etc., shows never produce results, but since this appears to be in the Ozarks, I'll give it a watch. Here's part of the description: Jess and Phil venture deep into the Ozarks to investigate a mysterious predatory beast. Surveillance footage and recording of bone chilling howls.

Man, they grow them big up there. One of these days I am going to take a trip and head that way.

After fishing this morning, I rolled over to the local pistol range to expend some .45 ACP. At the range there was an older gent shooting a .45 Derringer and a group of 3, 2 guys and a gal, younger people shooting various handguns. When I finished shooting, I was talking to the guy with the Derringer and one of the young guys comes over and asks us if we want to shoot something "Bigger than those .45's", and he pulls out a Smith & Wesson .500 revolver. It's the performance model, big ol' pistol with something like a 10" barrel. The dude puts out a box of shells and hands me the pistol. There were 2 different types of shells, a big size and then another size up, I have never seen handgun rounds that stinking big. So I load one of the smaller shells in the cylinder and shoot it. Didn't know what to expect, but the recoil wasn't that bad at all. So I told the guy that the recoil wasn't too bad and he points at one of the big shells and says "Shoot one of these". I declined, one was enough thank you very much. So I was about to leave and the gal comes over and says she wants to shoot it. She's not a girly girl by any stretch and I think she might have heard my comment about the lighter than expected recoil. She then loads three of the really big rounds in the gun and I decide to stay and watch. She fumbles around for a bit and I got the impression that she'd probably never shot a revolver, let alone something like that .500 S&W. The guy didn't coach her much either. So she points it down range, pulls the trigger and BOOM, the pistol almost jumps out of her hands and flies past the left side of her face. I was over on her right and I thought it may of hit her, even though it didn't hit her, it seemed to have stunned her a bit as she was kind of staggering around, mumbling something, and waving the pistol around. After about a minute of that it was determined by her friends that she was OK, and that is when I left. I'm glad I did not shoot one of those big rounds.

Banked it for a couple of hours this morning. Caught a half dozen smallmouth and one spot. All on the Ned rig, dragging it on the bottom. Fun to do some bank fishing every once in a while and with the water down there is plenty of bank you can access in the lower end of the lake. Still some trees with color out there: Caught these two on the first two casts, but took one pic facing the lake, and the other facing the bank:

Looks like you won't be starving. 😁