Seth

It was a good weekend for thunderchicken chasing. My dad helped my youngest nephew tag a jake. The nephew I took botched an opportunity Saturday morning, but we made up for it when he tagged a 23.5lbs tom with a 10" beard and 1 1/2 and 1 5/8" spurs on Sunday morning.

I've definitely chucked reels for less! Would have been nice to at least get some eyes that monster!

I didn't go opening weekend, but went this past Sunday afternoon. Tons of small fish in the stream that escaped during the winter flood so you had to weed through them to get to the decent ones. They were all over the green/white rubber leg, white trout magnet and orange trout worm. My father in law fished velveeta under a float and couldn't keep the little guys away. He caught plenty of fish, but nothing worth keeping. My best four were all 14-16".

If you want to know the next day predictions, you use the link https://www.energy.gov/swpa/generation-schedules. The USACE app was just redirecting to that page anyways. I'm hoping the CFS app will update with that information as well. I'll know if it does later today.

Does it update in the evening with the predicted flow for the following day like the USAC Little app did?

Auto renewal is where it's at! I think the ONLY things I don't have on auto renew/pay at this point in my life is the trash bill and the electric bill. The only reason they aren't on there is because they don't offer the option yet.

Once the water shuts down, it just gets flat out brutal. Even the scud bite Saturday morning was a lot slower than we were used to. Luckily we were able to get a limit of quality fish while 4 units were cranking. After they shut the water down, we were just going through the motions and wasting time. We trolled flicker shads from Lilleys down to Monkey island with nothing to show for it. After that, we ran back up and my buddy threw a black jig while I used a 1/50th oz olive/orange head jig under a float and may have caught six fish in the last three hours. There were plenty of fishing of various sizes midging around us all afternoon, but we just couldn't get them to eat what we were offering. I wish I had brought some zebra midges to try.

I'm having a dry spell right now. It's been a while since we've had anything worth getting excited over to net.

That's the one perk of being the fry man. I got to "test" several pieces of crappie and turkey before anybody else. 😁

I'd say cook at normal times and those of us who are mad at the fish can come in and eat whenever. Once I'm on the water, it's hard for me to come back in. Normally I just forgo eating when I'm fishing and make up for it all at once at dinner time. I'm afraid I may have over done it a bit Saturday with that last plate of desert though. All I could do at the Monkey was sit there in misery from being so full and watch the shenanigans go down. I was already full of what was already out, but I had to wait for Cody to finish the gumbo to try that as well as partake if the many fantastic deserts that were present.

Yep and when it's a dual possession deal like that where both receiver and defender appear to have control of the ball, favor always goes to the receiver. The people saying it was a pick are clueless on the rule. If anything, it could have been ruled an incomplete pass but since the ball never budged upon hitting the ground it was ruled a catch.

I was planning to fry the turkey on Saturday, but could do it Friday evening as well if need be. I'll just need t make sure it's thawed if we are doing it Friday. I'm not going to be down until Friday afternoon/evening though so Saturday would probably work beter for me. What's our total head count so far? Trying to estimate how much I should bring.

The fact that Allen hit heaved that ball up and actually hit his receiver in the hands is crazy. There were four Chiefs defenders surrounding him at that point. If that receiver hangs on, the ending gets even crazier!

It's so fun watching Mahomes, Jackson and Allen duke it out. They are all studs. Watching that and still seeing the Chiefs get the dub is the perfect combo.

That has been the biggest eye opener for me as well. In the past I'd have just thought I wasn't around the fish, but that's rarely not the case. Good spots always hold fish, they just ain't always biting!

I love listening to guys tell me how they sat on a big school of crappie for hours and only managed to catch a few. They can't grasp the concept of leaving inactive fish to find active fish because they can see them on the graph. If I'm not getting bit every few casts then it's time to roll out. There are way too many other crappie around to deal with inactive fish.

I’ve accomplished nearly all of my personal goals regarding big fish and tourneys over the past few years so my goals are changing. The only two goals I really have are to fish with dad as much as possible and try to take more youth out fishing.

I don't see it making much of a difference. There ain't a wintering hole on those rivers that most of the avid winter bass anglers don't already know about. Those guys don't even have FFS on their river rigs. I'm sure you could use it to see a fish eat your lure, but it's not making a difference in who is winning a river tournament. Ya'll act like this is a new phenomenon, but a lot of the guys I know have been fishing these river tourneys for 30+ years now. If they were going to destroy the bass fishing, it would have happened a long time ago. A lot of the guys that fished the rivers when I started aren't even doing it anymore. I'd bet the tournament pressure is lower now that it was when I first started fishing them in 2012. That's not a bad thing either because it was a bit ridiculous at one point when there were a good 4-5 clubs running at the same time. There's really only one that draws good numbers and a few smaller ones now. As for crappie, side imaging helped increase my crappie catching ability FAR more than FFS ever has. I went from rarely getting limits to rarely not limiting when I got side imaging. Side imaging has been on for over two decades and yet there are still plenty of crappie to be caught. If that didn't wipe them out then I don't see FFS doing that job any better. The only thing FFS has really done in regards to crappie is allow anglers to target the larger fish. That matters in a tournament, but your average weekend Joe isn't going to pass on a bunch of 10 inch fish to try and catch a 14 incher. He's just looking for some fish to eat. I'm not sure how Truman , TRL, Pomme and other reservoirs are fishing these days since I mainly fish LoZ, but the average size for crappie is the best that I can ever recall on LoZ in my 15-20 years of chasing crappie on it. I do have FFS, but I am not using it to single out larger fish when I'm out fishing for food. If it's a tournament then I'd be out in the middle of a cove single poling for the bigger fish. Dock shooting and fishing brush is going to put a limit of 10-11" fish in my boat quicker than single poling would though so I do that the majority of the time. Of course this is all just my opinion based on what I've seen first hand as somebody who fishes river tournaments and owns a Garmin Livescope. I don't do the winter tournaments since those are typically won by whoever can get to a certain spot first and my boat is way too slow for that stuff. Plus I'd rather go fish for something else in the winter like crappie or trout than a bass. I'll save them stinkin bass for the warmer months where I can get out and swim if they are being stubborn. 😁

I’m for sure in. Probably won’t make it down until Friday afternoon though. I’m going to leave my boat down there after Masters the weekend prior so it will be available Saturday and Sunday.

I have quite a bit of wild turkey breast left that I can fry up. I’ve got some jalapeno pepperjack venison sweat bologna for snacking.

You proved there is at least one little largemouth hanging out by the White River Fish House the other day too.

I'll try to make it. With The Masters and RAW being the weekend before and after, it might be tough to make it down three weekends in a row.

Pretty slow since youth season. Yesterday was the first decent sit I’ve had since youth season. Ended ip seeing 15 deer and harvesting a big doe. So far this season I’ve taken three does with the rifle and doubled up with a 2.5 year old 8 pointer and a button head with the bow in early November. I’m holding out hope that a mature buck will start showing up between now and the end of bow season, but my hopes aren’t very high. I’m sure I will end up filling a few more antler-less tags before it’s over.

Thermometer read 4 degrees at take off for the Masters earlier this year. That's the coldest I've personally fished. I didn't think we were going to be able to fish it because it took my motor forever to start peeing. It actually got hot and shut down on me on our way up river that morning. We missed the first 45 minutes of fishing and missed the check line by 0.13lbs. I'm pretty confident that we would have placed had we not had to deal with that because all of our better quality fish came early that day. I hate fishing when it's that cold. Staying warm isn't much of an issue but everyting wants to freeze up or freeze to something and it drives me nuts!

You're probably right. I've been making deer fajitas for a long time and the goose fajitas were very similar in flavor to me. I love me some fajitas!