Quillback

I am looking forward to the Hogs playing Mizzou on Jan. 2. No doubt Mizzou has a better team, but I think the Hogs will play them tough. Hard to gauge this Hogs team as their schedule has been nothing but cupcakes so far. They really need to schedule some games against tough opponents before they start SEC games. They'll play Auburn before Mizzou so they'll at least have one reasonably tough opponent before getting Mizzou. Mizzou vs Tenn, on Dec 30 should be a good one too. As of now they are the only 2 ranked SEC teams.

Indeed, that is some impressive crappie catching for Beaver.

Nice, snow is coming down here in Bella Vista, 3 inches or so on the ground.

Yep big win for Mizzou. And I agree on the officiating, way too many fouls and so many were borderline.

BTW, any smallmouth this trip?

When I get some time, I'll see if I can move these pics to the Gallery. I have a few pics there from last year. It would be neat to have them all in one spot. You can view them by going to the Browse tab, select Gallery, then Jeff's Pics and there will be a subfolder for Jigfest. There's only nine pics there for now.

I'm up for it, and hopefully we'd get an incidental bass or two.

Going to watch this one, Illini ranked 6th in the nation, Mizzou has beaten some quality teams and is looking good.

So far so good, I haven't fished them much yet, but it worked for a bit yesterday. So many dang jerk baits out there these days.

The jerk bait thing died off pretty quickly. After that it was milk run time and I moved around quite a bit, more than I normally would, but it would be a bite or two at a spot and that would be it. I couldn't get bit deeper than 25 feet, but know someone that was deep spooning a got a few. Caught one of my keeper smallmouth back in a small cove that I hardly fish anymore. 8-10 years ago that cove always fished well in the winter, but it just doesn't hold hardly any fish anymore unless it is in the spring. Went back in there to fish it a bit in the hopes there might be some back in there and got that smallmouth in about 5 feet of water near some rocks.

Well it's just not me out there, a lot of boats out there yesterday. Even on my way home saw several rigs heading either towards TR or Beaver. The fish are seeing a lot of baits.

Launched out of Big M at daylight, ran a couple of miles to yesterday's hot spot. It was pretty good there for about a half hour, got a couple of keepers on a jerk bait - they were over open water that was 20-30 feet deep, I assume chasing scattered shad. After that it got downright tough. No wind all morning, bright blue skies, very few shad were on top. So I ended up bouncing around, hitting points, a couple of coves and some steep banks and picked up one or two here and there on the Ned. Only got one more keeper and ended the day with 15 bass, three of them keepers, and one short walleye. Lost a Jackall Rerange, got a bite when I paused it, set the hook and the line broke about 3 feet above the reel, so if you catch a bass with a Rerange in it's mouth with about 30 feet of InvisX attached, well you know where it came from.

Nice one, those big drum can pull. I have yet to catch a drum on Table Rock.

People were out in force today, nice day so it isn't surprising.

Today was a weird day of fishing. Some really light biters, some fish that whacked the jerk bait but would not get stuck. I had 4 different fish follow baits back to the boat and turn away at the last second. I was in a shad school or two and saw several bass come in and grab shad out of those schools. My best bite was trolling a tail spinner over deep water, I caught several bass just about as fast as I could toss it behind the boat and get moving forward with the TM. Weird thing was if I cast it and worked it back I didn't get as many bites. It was also late in the day when I got on that trolling bite and had to go, so I left some on the table. Caught some on Ned rigs and a couple made it into the boat on jerk baits. Had 19 total with 4 keepers. WT 51, air temp 72 on the drive back.

Yeah that movie is a hoot, I haven't seen it in a while, time to watch it again.

Was talking to somebody today about the Ford Pinto, which reminded me of this scene in the movie Top Secret.

A dozen years or so ago I caught a striper on one and used a nylon net to boat it. Hooks got caught in the nylon and in the ensuing struggle between me, the striper, and the net the 110 got broken. But other than that, I don't see them being any more or less durable than the other JB's out there.

Left a message for Miles that you all won't be there Thursday night. If someone decides they want to stay Thursday, give Miles a call and maybe you can work something out with him. Total cost for two nights is $650 and I'll leave it to you folks to figure out how to divvy it up based on how many show up. Hope ya'll get into them!

Well we can leave it open for Thursday night, but it will cost you guys about $30 or so each to do so. Anyway, I'll give you guys about 30 minutes to decide if you want it Thursday, because we really need to let Miles know soon.

OK, I PM'd it to you.

Yep.

I booked you guys Thursday through Saturday night (leave Sunday AM). But if no one is staying Thursday, I'll call Miles and tell him you all just want it for 2 nights.

Well I had a decent day, but got on OA and saw a couple of reports where people had better days than me, so maybe they are on the feed now. Or it could be the proverbial head fake. 😀 Weather forecast for the next few days looks good, so If a person has time, you could get into some fish. I caught a couple dozen today, only one keeper, but it was a decent smallmouth. A lot of my fish were spots in the 14-14.5 range, nice fat fish and fun to catch but that 15+ inch spot was elusive. All my bass except one came on a Ned rig, fished 10-20 feet deep around rocky structure. Caught one on a 110 JR and one non-fryable walleye on the JR. Heard through the grapevine of a couple of 4 lb. largemouth being caught in other areas of the lake. WT 51.