Quillback

During my working days I looked forward to three day weekends, now that I am retired not so much. Get off my lake!!! LOL.

There can be massive schools of 6 lb smallies boiling all day on top and I still will not be on the lake that weekend.

Thanks for the heads up, I need to schedule some appointments, might as well get them done that week.

I've been fishing the local Bella Vista lakes lately, just not up for the one hour drive for a few hours of morning fishing. But looks like the weather is going to cool down again, the kids are back in school and we will soon have Labor Day weekend in the rearview mirror so things are looking up.

I have wondered about this myself - I see it with stripers, hybrids and black bass. I believe they can hear the other fish popping on top and that triggers them. Maybe they hear it or sense it through the lateral line. But it seems to happen a lot, fairly quiet, then they are blowing up everywhere, then it quiets down again for a minute or two. When used to have an aquarium, I'd tap lightly on the cover before feeding them, soon as I'd tap, they'd be swarming on top ready for that food.

Big thing about stripers is finding them. In the winter there should be some back in the coves, Indian creek, Honey creek, all the way down to Prairie creek. You just have to get out and look for them, look for shad, top water activity, keep an eye on where other guys are fishing, that sort of stuff.

I used to fish saltwater myself quite a bit, mainly trolling for salmon, it was always with bait casters, and I liked Penn 309's. Like TJM says you really don't need a saltwater dedicated reel especially for a short trip, just rinse it off every day and you should be fine. I haven't fished for redfish myself, so no idea on appropriate spinning rod, but I think a 7' 6" medium action would work fine unless you're going after those big 30 lb. bull reds.

I have some great side scan images of that place, just can't figure how to post them here.

Nice range of species.

I went back today and caught another 4 good sized gills on the swimbait. I now have plenty of fillets so will probably leave them alone for a while. They are out chasing shad over 40-50 FOW, so I don't know if fishing worms will get them, but it is certainly a possibility. I have thought about some really small swimbaits on little tungsten heads, Z-man makes some little 2 inch paddle tails that could be the ticket for these open water shad chasers. The bass in this lake just moved into one of the coves and they are in there thick chasing shad, had a good late morning throwing the Keitech at them. Had another 8 boats or so there with me, but could still get in there and get some. Hard to ignore the bass and chase the gills when the bass get going on this shad bite.

Congrats JF on some new species! Those copper nose are pretty cool. I wonder if that camo sunfish has some redear in it's genes?

I did spend quite a bit of time poking around to find the few that I found. To do it right, it would be good to bring a small shovel or trowel and something to screen the sand out.

It's a neat place to fish, quite a bit of species diversity.

Getting them on top is always fun!

They are becoming my favorite for eating, a couple of weeks ago I fried some walleye and bluegills and I thought the bluegill was better than the walleye. To each his own of course, but I think these bluegill are very tasty.

That's the place!

Been dragging Keitechs around on Loch Lomond here in Bella Vista for bass. The bass are chasing shad mid-lake and I can usually pick a few up early in the AM. Was getting a bluegill or two, but was I was using a 3.3 Keitech on a 1/4 oz head and that was a little too big for them. Decided to go with a 2.8 on a 1/8 oz head today and put 8 nice gills in the boat which have been transformed into fillets in the freezer. They are out in the middle of the lake, eating small shad just like the bass.

That's a good one! I have a couple of sharks teeth and what I believe is a tooth from some form of ancient hippo. Found them in Chesapeake bay. There's a state park in Maryland where you can hike about a mile to the shore where there are some clay bluffs that butt right up against the water at high tide. Shark's teeth and other stuff erodes out of the bluff - I spent about three hours looking to find these little teeth.

I have some crinoids, just the stem part and some rings.

Yeah I'd say last week of October too. Should be cold enough by then that you won't see many wake boats

They are fine now, and I've been told the courtesy dock at Eagle Rock is useable once again.

OK, probably not zebras, found these embedded in a chunk of limestone. From back in the day where the Ozark plateau was seabed. Rock is about 4 inches long.

I'll tag rps so he sees this - he used to live in Holiday island and fished that area quite a bit. @rps

I used to think the same thing, but bit the bullet and learned how to throw a bait caster. You'll bird nest less with a heavy weight as you can just lob it out there.