jdmidwest

The above is true for Rainbow Trout. Like other streams, Browns, Brook Trout, and Cutthroats have a size limit and a catch 16" and 2 fish per day restriction (Brooks 14", 2 fish per day). No Trout Stamp required to fish there, it is to keep trout. Arkansas fishing rules and regs are here. Arkansas Fish Regulations

Looks like a nice one, too bad you don't have the original tube. All sections are straight and the same length. Looks like it is in great original condition. Would be a nice rod for someone.

The Heddon 17 Black Beauty probably sold for $17 new. Heddon used the model number as the price point for selling, so I have read. Some of the best rods were the Heddon 125's. The Black Beauty was a very nice rod, nicely colored and simple black wraps. Its a bass rod or big river trout rod. I have watched the Heddon rods for years on Ebay, they sell very well, but prices vary as does the quality. Old bamboo rods could be mistreated and you could end up with a lemon. Bamboo rods were all they had 50 years ago, alot of nice ones were made, and alot of poor ones were made. I have just started fishing a few bamboo rods I have picked up on Ebay and enjoy them. You could build them with slow actions and medium actions just like graphite and fiberglass. I fished a 7' 6" rod this weekend at Montauk and had a blast. I used a 7wt line on it and it cast it well. I believe it was designed to be a bass rod also, but I worked soft hackles and streamers with it. I don't think it will be a dry fly rod. I also have a 9' rod that casts a 5wt well and it does well as a dry fly rod. Name your price or post some pics, it would give us an idea what you want.

My daughter and I have been going camping on Father's Day weekend for the last several years. This year I decided to take her back to Montauk and start her off trout fishing. I also decided it would be a good time to teach her to flyfish. We have been lake fishing in the boat and have fished ponds with spin gear in the past, but this was her first time with the flyrod. We drove up Saturday and found a spot in the park to camp around noon. We set up camp and at lunch at the lodge then headed up into the fly area. This is the first time I had been to the park since the floods. The river has changed for the better, the stream had a good flow throughout the park. I tied a bead head on for her and let her go. She caught a sculpin before I had my rod rigged up. A short while later with some instruction and a few flies, she had her first fish. As you can see in the pics, she was excited. I did not really get to fish much, I was too busy retying flies, straightening out knots and tangles, watching her backcast, and trying to teach her to watch for fish picking up the fly. We fished Sunday for a while from about 8:30 till noon. I was fishing my new Sport King bamboo rod. Its 7' and was told it cast a 5 wt line. I found it to be more like a 7 wt rod and it will probably be for bass and bigger rivers. It was made back in the 50's for Montgomery Ward by Horrocks Ibbotson and is still in great shape. I traded some computer work for it and I think I came out ahead. I am afraid I am taking a liking to the bamboo. It may cost me dearly. The campground was maxed. The stream was crowded even at the later hours. There were lots of fish in the fly area. I did not see anyone catching very many though. Sunday, while fishing above the bluff in the fly area, I had a solo whitewater kayaker paddle upstream by me with his helmet and nose plugs and his wet suit. It was quite a site, I wish I would have taken a pic of him. I asked him if he was lost and told him he would probably get a ticket if he was caught in the park waters as there is no swimming or boating allowed. He informed me that he asked permission and it was Federal water so they could not stop him. The park Ranger had a different view as I met him going by to find the guy. I wonder how that turned out. Maybe I'll take my yak next time. Here are a few pics of my best Father's Day yet.

Been here all my life except for a few years in STL and KY. Great area but a 3 hour trip to trout water. I usually spin fish out of the yak also, especially when travelling with a group. When I float alone, I get out and flyfish for the most part. Crawdad lures like the shad rap or the shallow shad rap work wonders on the smallies. Later in the summer, I break out the floating rapalas and nail them on top.

The area is great for smallies. Goggle eye and panfish too. It will be a long float but with water levels like they have been lately, you should move along well. I would take along a GPS to keep track of location if you are on a schedule for Sat. If you take time out for caves and fishing, you may have to paddle to catch up as there are some long holes in the stretch above 2 Rivers. Smallies are hitting well now, streamers and woollies are hot flies. Crawdad crankbaits and roostertails for spin gear.

Was one of the group named Shivelbine from Cape Girardeau? Mr. Woods from the canoe rental in Alton used to laugh about them, all they ever used was corn. He took them out one morning after they had been drinking all night and one of them remembered he had forgot the corn. He stopped at a little store on the way so they could pick up corn, he came back with a can and Woods nicknamed him "Cream Style" after that. In his state of mind he did not read the label when he picked it up. For some reason, alot of the locals around 11pt like to use corn, preferable Always Save. You see the cans everywhere.

Bears were around before, then were run or hunted out like most of our native game just like deer and turkeys. MDC is responsible for bringing back the deer and turkeys to the numbers we have today. I don't buy the theory that they came in from Arkansas, I think a few were planted as an experiment and they have took hold. I would not think that they would make it public that they have reintroduced a possible dangerous animal but that is just my opinion. I don't recall the specifics, but I remember a project that worked with the reintroduction of timber rattlers along I 40 or I 44. I don't think they actually traded anything for them, but I think they released them as a part of the project. The trading part is an inside joke with some of my friends. We blamed the poor turkey season this year on the MDC trapping all the turkeys and trading them for cougars or armadillos. Elk were native animals, but with our input, MDC decided against the reintroduction of them. So were mountain lions. Bears in MO would not be a bad thing, I would like to see enough to have an open season on them. The problem with bears is that some people feed them and they lose the fear for humans and can turn on them. Then there is an issue with livestock damage. Otters should be extinct again. Blue herons take alot of fish also and need to be thinned out also but they are a protected species. When can we decide that they need to be controlled also like the otter? What is the benefit of having the heron population?

Just read the article on Yahoo about monkeys learning the advanced art of fishing. Seems like they have not progressed to Catch and Release. Monkeys learn to fish.

This is what I see with Firefox 3 rc1 with ad blocker turned off. The google ad disappears with the adblocker ad on turned on.

Phil, I did a complete reinstall to version 3 rc1 and the banner ad disappeared. It was there before when I had 2.0.14 and 3 rc1 both installed. I also installed adblocker and flashblocker to stop all the animation. I know ads are a source of income to the web host, but they are an annoyance to the end user. I have never clicked on an ad or have ever bought anything off of one. Opera is good also, fast and clean. The graphics are a little lower resolution which gives it the extra speed.

I see the ad for google and rockaway. I do not have the ad blocker extension enabled. I use a flash blocker the stops all the animated ads from loading. It just shows an arrow that I can click to load.

Firefox 3 RC1 is out today and it looks pretty good. I have been using it from almost day one. I never had a use for Netscape. I find it hard to use Internet Explorer now. I have liked the tabs since day one while I have been stuck on dialup here in the country. I usually have 3 tabs running and switch between them to read content. Lately, Firefox had been slowing down. The version 3 is fixing some of those problems. I have been using the beta versions for a few weeks with no problems. RC1 is running smooth tonight with a little performance improvement. Tweaking Firefox has always been the beauty of it. Most config settings could be manipulated with the about:config file. Version 3 uses a Sybase database file that requires a little more programming knowledge to tweak. I have always used extensions like flash blocker and pdf downloader to control the way I surf the net. I have a version I carry on a memory stick along with other portable apps that I can use on any computer without loading anything on the host or leaving anything on the host computer. My bookmarks and prefs travel with me. You can't do that with IE. Opera is a good option too. I use it on occaision. It handles graphics differently to give it some speed so I never have much use for it. My eyes are fading anyway, I don't need extra fuzzies. Safari is okay, I never have give it much time though. From a security standpoint, most attacks are on IE based browsers. There have been some on Firefox, but they have been plugged pretty quick. If you are looking for something better, faster, more secure, go to www.mozilla.com and try it out.

I flyfished the area below the Bayou access Sunday to Riverside Camp and picked up several. No big ones though. The areas above the first waterfall above Bayou to Dam 3 have really changed. The guys I floated with floated on Friday before I came down and were not taking time to fish on Sat. River was running about a foot high and was hard to hold the boat in the eddys and fish. Alot of the moss beds were gone. I buzzed thru Bayou to the cabins Sat and did not cover it well. We were going to float thru to Riversides 8 mile pullout but never made it past the camp. River was pretty crowded. Bayou was crowded. The range of fish were fingerling cutts to the big bows. Most were 10 to 14 inch fish. The walleye was a surprise. It hit a cleo spoon. I don't know if they have just stocked fingerlings or they washed out of the hatchery. I did not catch any browns. They caught a fingerling brookie on Friday. That is a first in years. I don't fish it as much as I used to, in the 90's I used to be down there at least 4 days a month. When they started throwing Muskies in, the fingerlings disappeared pretty fast. I shelled out $70 in fuel alone this weekend for the trip down, can't do that much at that rate.

Took a little trip to the Spring River this weekend for our annual float. Fished dam 3 to Riverside. The river was running about a foot higher than normal and everything has been pushed around from the flood. Gravel bars have been stripped of willows and sycamores. New holes have been made and new channels cut. Fishing was good even though the water was off color. Due to the current and my friends impatience, most of the fishing was done on the run out of the boat. I used shad raps and spoons to catch the majority of the fish. My best fish was a 22" bow, my friend caught another close to the same size. We also pulled out a nice walleye below one of the falls. Fish run in size from fingerling cutthroats to the big trout and walleye. Pretty good crowd on the river, first nice weekend of the year. Fished around the camp today with the fly rod and picked up several. Snail flies and wooly buggers were the fly of the day. Drove over the 11 pt at the Narrows on 142 and it is still running high. All local rivers around here washed out from a 3" rain Thursday. The flood is rumored to have washed out rainbows in the hatchery and smallies and a few stripers at the Federal Hatchery in Mammoth. The fish my friend caught had a chewed up tail like a hatchery fish. My fish was bright and fins were excellent.

Copper or Amber if you fish streams or hunt. Brings out contrast better and brightens things up. Gray works but it darkens. Last time I went for new ones, they had a 2 for deal. I had to go with the glass lenses and paid a little more for them. My normal pair is photograys. Otherwise, if you have a script, you can order them from Orvis or someone who sell sunglasses.

Thanks to our buddies in Mo Government, we have to choke on the ethanol junk till the mandate is repealed. How someone let this one slide through without protest is beyond me. Ethanol gas is junk. Ethanol production is a governement subsidized boondoogle that uses more resources than it saves. My 4.3 chevy engines do not like it. The boat and the mowers seem to run weaker too. And it cuts on gas mileage. Ethanol is a finger in the dike that someone dreamed up. We need to take control of our own oil production. We need to build more refineries to produce gase and diesel, not make some other environmental problems with the ethanol plants. We need to let the mideast oil companies sit on their oil while we use our own for a while and let them eat sand. We have the reserves and the technology to convert our oil shale deposits and convert coal to oil so why not do that? Why burn food products like corn?

I fish out of a sit in and a sit on top kayak, a Creek Co 8' pontoon, a 17' Grumman alum canoe, and a 14' Monark Jon Boat with a 9.5 Evinrude. I have also hunted out of all 4 successfully. I have never tried a solo canoe or know of anyone that has one. The only ones I have seen have been ones with full spray skirts and the owners wear helmets, and they were at Spring River or Upper St. Francois River during whitewater events. For the record, I have never tried a whitewater kayak, a belly tube, folboat, a bass boat with a bigger engine than a 50 hp., any ocean going boat, or made my own raft out of sticks either and can't give anyone my opinion about them. That said, a 12' kayak is a good size boat for someone that fishes streams and ponds in this state per my 5 years experience with them and personally trying out over a dozen different lengths and hull types. I strongly suggest you try out any personal watercraft before you invest in it if at all possible. You could end up with something drawing dust in the garage.

When I think of canoe, I think of the 16'-19' boats I have owned or fished from over the years and I think the guy in the other thread was looking at a longer boat also. My statements were a comparison to that size boat. I have never been in a solo canoe, so I can't comment on them. I am sure they are fine craft and anyone that wants one should buy one. I don't recall seeing too many of them on rivers. Just don't knock kayaks based on a few paddles in a rental boat. I don't carry 5 rods, I carry one rigged and a spare tucked away. I don't pack for a 5 day float, mine are day trips. I don't do whitewater, I hunt and fish out of them. The best feature is you are in a comfortable seat all day and your back does not hurt when you get out.

Having fished from a variety of canoes, inflatables, and kayaks, I still like the yak. Canoes draft too much water, are too long in tight spaces, easy to tip over, catch too much wind, and unless its a short solo boat, its useless to fish or float by yourself in a stream. There were times when I always fished with a friend and canoes were fine, now I go alot alone and my kayaks fit the bill just fine. I can carry them into ponds and lakes on certain areas. I can pack 3 of them on my luggage rack. Now all of my friends own yaks too. I still drag out the canoe when the three of us go on a family float. Alot of rental yaks are junk, my boats are top of the line and the hulls meet different needs. My Pamlico paddles like a dream and will take waves and current well. My sit on top can be stood up in, its a little slower, but extremely stable. You sit higher in it and its better for fishing. Both will carry a load and are comfortable to sit in. I can be dry and out of the wind in the sit in. After 5 years and 5 different styles I have it figured out. Sit ins have to have a open cockpit to get in and out of with waders. 12' seems to be an optimum length for around here. I had a longer boat, it started getting tippy like a canoe in heavy waves. One downside to kayaks, they are not made for big guys. 240lbs and less are okay, you just have to watch how much gear you pack. Each boat has its own weight rating as do canoes. But I am looking for another. I have not tried any of the solo canoes, I am sure they have a place. The yak I am looking at is by Native Watercraft, the Ultimate 12. It is open top like a canoe, stable, has a skeg, and made for fishing. I am going to try one out next weekend. My yaks both hunt and fish. I bought them for hunting and fishing was just an extra. The yaks are stealthier, lay lower in the water, and are easier to camo.

After using canoes for lots of years, I have found Kayaks the way to go as far as portability, speed, stability, ease of use. That said, I have fished streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and duck hunted out of a Grumman 17' alum canoe and an Alumacraft 17' square stern alum canoe. Both have done well. The square stern and a 5hp motor make a great trolling rig on the 11 pt river. Alum is noisy and sticks to rocks when it hits them but they last forever. The new composites are great. If you want to paddle different models, contact float camps along rivers and float the different brands. Most use old town or buffalo. Some even sell them as a dealer new or used after a few seasons. My Grumman was purchased for $75 in Alton back in the 80's after several seasons on the 11pt. It is still functional today and the best way for two people to fish a river. On tailwater streams while generation is going on, I will stick to a kayak or other craft that handles fast water better.

I have always caught them on worms or jigs. They will take artificials if you pass one by them. I have hooked a few on rooster tails. We used to catch them all the time at Wappappello Lake when I was younger. The best time was in the spring while worm fishing during the white bass runs. Cut the rocks out of their head and you will have some Lady Luck charms. The dents on the rocks look like L's. Some kind of sensory device formed from calcium or something. Gives new meaning to rocks in the head. My uncle told me they are called drum because they drum their head on the bottom of the boat. They are fun to catch and put up a good fight. My aunt canned the fish and made fish patties out of them.

Which yak did you get? You are in for alot of fun this summer. Best investment I have made in a while.

Your rack should have a weight rating on it, the blazer I have maxes at 200 lbs. I have used 2x4 racks with success, cut notches on them to keep from sliding. Tie off bow and stearn to the bumpers. I have never transported more than one canoe, but mine is a 17' alum Grumman. I also suggest calling ahead and rent. Last time I checked, back hauls were as much or more than a rental. You can usually bum a ride back to your start if you are floating in a group. Downside, you have to go at their times and you are launched with everyone else. Most companies start after good fishing hours have passed.

I would probably go with a upper river float, high waters should have created some excellent fishing. The float from Alley to Eminence has some great holes and holds some big fish. Traffic on the river does not really pick up till school lets out so you should be okay. Contact local outfitters to get current stream conditions and areas that are floatable. After May, upper river is usually too low for the normal float camps to launch boats, but personal boats and kayaks do well.