Quillback

Good to see another stretch of river restored. A lot of that kind of restoration work was and is ongoing in Washington. The big daddy of them all has been the removal of 2 dams on the Elwha river. Lots to read on that if you are interested, do a search on Elwha dam removal. Field Day Friday: A peek into the former reservoirs of the Elwha River – Wild Steelheaders United

Heard a 2nd hand report of a very experience TR fisherman that fished Big and Little Indian yesterday and had 2 bites with no fish in the boat. Bo always used to say that this lake can fish small at times.

Same old, same old, best bite was deep with the grub. They were a little deeper today, 40-45 feet. Shad were down there with them. 5 inch Yammamoto grub in Natural Shad. I believe they have stopped making the 5 inch in Natural Shad, you can get 4 inch, but not the 5's. I caught a few on the jerk bait early, but no size. Caught a meanmouth on the Ned rig, and all the rest of the bass I caught were spots. Caught 20 of them with 5 being keepers. There were not very many people out there today which surprised me, I thought with it being such a nice day that you'd be able to walk across the boats. I think I saw maybe 6 boats total today. Several eagles out there riding the thermals, always neat to see them.

Almost 5 feet long and 55 lbs. Man, that is a brute! Muskie weighed at UPS Store challenging Minnesota record | The Globe (dglobe.com)

Cold with a strong north wind blowing here. Getting ready to stuff the bird and then stuff the bird in the oven. Looking forward to eating some turkey with family. Happy Thanksgiving!

That's great! Man it was windy today, kept me in the house, but good to see you got them.

Slinkies were popular in Washington for steelhead and salmon fishing. I used pencil lead myself, get some hole punch pliers, you can snip off whatever length of lead you need, flatten one end, punch a hole in the flat end and hook your swivel up. Snaggier than the slinky, but a lot easier to make. I would use a baitcaster too, that way you can thumb the spool and let line out to let your stuff slide down with the current.

Glad to hear you can make it Eric - have you heard anything from Mike?

I asked him about a month ago if he was coming and he was undecided at that point.

They were in the area from dam site park south to the island where point 1 is located.

There are some good ones, I'll get one or two in the winter on a jerk bait and they are usually in the 13-15 inch range. I have seen some pics of some real slabs being caught on upper Bull on guided trips that were caught on jerk baits.

I know someone that has been catching some lately, and by some I mean 5-10 keepers a day. He's got an inventory of brush piles he runs and catches them on crappie jigs. But you are talking someone with years of experience on this lake. If I had to fish TR for crappie right now, I'd go up one of the river arms and run brush piles and hit some docks too. After about 3 hours of futility, I'd put my crappie stuff away and go bass fishing. 😄

It was tough, I caught a couple of keeper sized smallies and a couple of 10 inchers on a 100 yard stretch of bank early on a jerk bait, and fished the next 3 hour for one 13" spotted bass. Thought for sure I could throw the Ned rig around trees back in Indian and get a few fish, but it did not happen. A good number of stripers were in the lake coming up on top to eat little shad out in the main lake in front of the Dam Site park. I threw some stuff at them, had one nip at a grub but that was it. Didn't have my long distance casting stuff with me and had a hard time getting close to them. WT- 58

Cool - Let me know if there is anything I can add.

That is a big crappie. Never have fished Tenkiller, but everyone I know that fishes it says it is a great lake.

Saw that the winners are on the Auburn fishing team. These guys maybe have more money than the star football players.

Couple of young guys from AL win it. Looks like the final was a Livescope deep fishing shindig. I really thought some locals would win this, but from what I could tell, it was predominately out of state guys in the top 10. The weigh-in was goofy, big crowd of fishing celebrities milling around on the stage getting in the way.

Of course would've like to have seen the Hawgs win, but at least they were in the game. That dang 3 man rush is aggravating, opposing QB's get all day to survey the field and find an open receiver. What use is it dropping 8 guys in coverage if they can't cover?

Talking about this tourney with a buddy of mine and if you could bet on this, we both agree that someone fishing the rig deep was going to win it.

Stumbled across this today: State record shattered with 24-pound tiger trout caught in Eastern Washington | Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife

Angler Almost Ate Record-Breaking 18lb Fish Caught in Pennsylvania River (ampproject.org)

My buddy was out on the lake today, the guys from KY showed up again to fish the deep fish. He talked to them, they had 11 and change yesterday which they said was good for 29th. This morning they had 2 in the well. They are using Livescope and dropping a spoon on them when they seem the. What was interesting is they told my buddy that if they see only one on the screen, it won't bite. See a group of 4 or 5 and they'll come after it. Gotta eat that "shad" before one of their buddies gets it.

I did fish it from the boat for a bit, caught a 12 incher off a laydown and that was it. I believe that if I had spent all day throwing it I would pick up a fish here and there.

That link won't show results until it's over. They haven't even posted the results from Bull yet. They are doing a lousy job of making the results available, they have them in a digital format, it's no biggie to have that on the web page simultaneously. Only way I know to see the results is watch the weigh-in. I watched it for about 5 minutes yesterday, that was all I could take, but at the time the leader had 15 and change. Is the field cut to 20 today? Thought I heard that mentioned at the weigh-in.