Quillback

Sorry to hear it was so tough, I can imagine with a 500 boat tourney plus the regular weekend traffic it must have been pretty busy.

Way to go, some very nice fish. Every once in a while I make the run to Clifty, nice area to fish. Ought to be some stripers showing up there soon.

Caught a 12" redear in one of the Bella Vista lakes on a shakey head while bass fishing. Not a big one by Havasu standards but the biggest one I've ever caught. Fat fish, looked to be full of eggs, I bet it went at least 1.25 lbs. Didn't have my camera with me unfortunately.

I'm partial to a chartreuse jig head for walleye. I like a 1/4 oz with a 3.3 Keitech and I like a short shank hook on the jighead. Dirty Jigs with a 1/0 is my preferred brand. A couple of weeks ago I caught 3 keeper walleye on the Keitech and they were all on points of some kind, and fairly shallow, less than 10 feet. Smaller secondary points back in the coves can hold them too. I like to slow roll them, Keitcehs will swim up as you retrieve them so I'll periodically let them drop to keep them down, and you'll get bites on the drop too. Fun baits to fish, they'll catch just about everything.

It seems when you get these really big rain dumps I don't know that there's much the Corps can do to keep the level down, whether it's at 910 or 915 to begin with I don't know that it matters much.

Up she goes! I was happy with it around 915, oh well...

Owned a 17' Montauk that I salmon fished and crabbed out of in Puget Sound. Never ralphed in it, didn't get swells in the sound, wind chop could get pretty bad, but I tried not to go out on the windy/stormy days.

Yep I think the good old days of filling the freezer on a charter trip are over. You could go on day trips out of Westport WA for bottom fish back in the late 80's early 90's. They'd target black sea bass which run 3-5 lbs (and are very similar in appearance to largemouth) and your limit was 10 and you'd get some bonus lingcod and a few other species. They'd fillet your fish on the run in, so you'd step off the boat with 20+ lbs. of fillets. $80 plus a tip. I remember my grandad doing one of those Gloucester trips back in the 70's. He came back with a lot of fish. Mostly cod and haddock. Haddock used to be so available and cheap to buy, but they got severely over fished, as far as I know they still haven't recovered.

We may be fishing picnic tables soon, man the rain is coming down.

I've been seasick ONE TIME and that was enough for me. Went out on a salmon charter out of Westport WA, 8 foot swells plus wind chop on top of that. One hour out to the spot and once we got there I started to get sick along with everybody else except for the boat crew. (I am sure they get a good laugh out of these situations). I'd barf and feel good for about 10 minutes, long enough to do a bit of fishing, and caught my limit of 2 coho. Looked at the guy beside me once and his face was green, literally green, I've heard of people being green when seasick but that is the first and I hope last time I ever see that. Anyway that is the about the most miserable I have ever been in my life.

People do, but not me, LOL.

I was wondering the same thing, lake is down and water is clear to boot.

I second that, a great report with good info.

In August and September the albacore tuna run up the Pacific coast as far north as Washington. You could go on a tuna trip out of Westport WA. The fish were way offshore so the charter boat would leave late in the afternoon and chug all night out to where the tuna were. You'd fish all the next day, then chug back that night. If things went right, they'd literally fill the boat with tuna, and it would just wear people out fighting those things. Never went myself, I can get seasick and nothing would be worse than being on a boat for 36 hours and being sicker than a dog. And in the summer you could buy whole frozen albacore for like a $1/pound at the docks. Albacore is what they use for canned tuna and that's about what it tastes like. Not bad on the grill.

Sounds like a great day, it will be interesting to see how the BPT tournament goes, going to be a lot of spotted bass I think.

Whatever the rules are, if you're out in the middle of the channel on a lake like Table Rock in a hard to see, low to the water kayak, you're in a hazardous situation. You're going to have bass boats, pleasure boats, pontoons (there's a toon in a dock near Emerald Beach with two 300 HP outboards on it) flying by, doesn't matter who has the right of way if you get run over you're going to be in a bad situation. Kayaks are just hard to see no two ways about it.

Thinking about ways to improve fishing isn't "complaining".

You did good to catch 4 keepers up there. Bite has definitely been off this year in Indian. Spots have been weird, last time I was out, I cast to a bass that was chasing shad on top, got a hookup on the top water, that fish came off, worked it back to the boat and had probably 10 spots follow it in, couple of them were decent fish. They spooked off and couldn't get another look from them.

Congrats to you and the grandson!

I pretty much fish the upper White so my observations are what I see there. There are plenty of bass up there, but I'd say at least 70% (that's just an estimate) are spotted bass. I love catching spotted bass on appropriately sized tackle, but I would like to see more largemouth. Since most tourneys originate down lake, the bigger largemouth are going to get hauled to the tourney weigh in sites and they aren't coming back, they're gone from that part of the lake just like they would be if someone filleted them. I do believe that has an impact on the number of sizeable largemouth on the upper end. Stocking largemouth bass on the upper end may help shift the balance towards more LM's, but maybe not, however we'll never know if it is not attempted. I'd also like to see tourney release spread out lake wide rather than concentrated on the lower end. Maybe that means getting some kind of ferry operation going to do a better job of redistributing the fish, especially for the larger tourneys that have hundreds of participants. Something AGFC was doing on the Arkansas river during a big bass tourney held there was giving anglers bags of bass fingerlings, I believe it was 500 per bag, to take with them and release into the river. Anglers seemed to have no problem doing this, in fact it seemed to be very popular with anglers. I certainly believe something has to be done, changes need to happen, there's just too many of us out there putting tremendous pressure on these bass we all love and management techniques that worked 20-30 years ago need to be changed.

Accidents do happen. This turkey fan deal doesn't seem like a good idea to me. https://www.wideopenspaces.com/hunting-accident-kansas-turkey-hunters-shot-while-behind-a-turkey-fan/

Some nice birds for sure. Heard some gobbling while fishing Beaver yesterday.

There are certainly some quality walleye in Beaver.

Yep, I agree, time to go to Catch, photograph and release at least during the spawn and hot part of the summer.

Hard to find a more exciting and fun way to catch fish than a smallies on topwater. Congrats!