Seth

I keep the following rods on my deckwhen chasing bass. The only rod I wouldn't mind having is a medium light spinning setup for NED's and grub, but the 7' M/F works just fine for me. I'd say I use my spinning and bottom setups 90% of the time. If I still have them all out on the deck at the end of the day then I probably had a tough day of catching. 7' crankin stick with 10# mono 7' mh/f casting with 17# fluoro for bottom baits 7' mh/f casting with 20# fluoro for chatterbaits 7' m/f casting with 14# mono for spinnerbaits/buzzbaits/squarebills 6'6" m/f casting with 10-12# mono for jerkbaits/topwater plugs 6'6" m/f spinning with 15# braid and 8-12# fluoro leader for finesse/flukes

I think we give bass too much credit at times. My buddy and I have stood side by side plenty of times throwing a Megabass 110 and a Luck E Strike RC STX and couldn't tell a difference in which one worked better.

It was WAY too cold for the yellow shirt! As you can see, we all looked about like Randy as he is headed off to school in the Christmas Story.

An HJ10 or HJ12 sized Husky jerk in Tennessee Shad or Silver Blue has always been one of my favorites on Taneycomo. They both have an orange belly and I'm just partial to anything with an orange belly when it comes to bass and trout.

I bought a tourney pro a few months ago and thought the handle slop was a bit odd as well. It doesn't bother me enough to get rid of it though and everything else about the reel is awesome! The casting distance is awesome!

That dang Mitch! He was always stirring up the hornets nest back in the day. The first time I got acquainted with Mitch and Smalliebigs was when they tore in to me for mentioning some stuff about smallmouth fishing. I've never been attacked quite like that and I had no idea what the big deal was! After the squabble went on for a bit, I realized where they were coming from and they realized I was just an ignorant smallmouth newbie that meant well. We're even friends on Facebook now so you know things are legit! I've been on here since October 27, 2005 and have no intentions of leaving anytime soon. Fishing is great and I really love this forum. When you get enough heads in one spots, there is bound to be a few skulls crack together. That's happened on every decently populated hunting and fishing forum I've been involved with.

The fish we caught this past weekend were all over the spectrum when it came to color. Most of the rainbows were washed out, but we had some that had great color. The same went for the browns as well. I thought we had more pictures of rainbows, but it seems we gave most of the love to the browns that we caught. This was the only rainbow that I could find.

Do these browns that are getting brought in not have the bigger spots? I know we caught several silvery browns this weekend, but they were still obvious due to having much larger and fewer spots than the rainbows.

The orange boat was us. I would have loved to fish it, but we ended up bringing our dads along so that put four of us in the boat.

We had a stellar day as well. White and gray jigs, 4" jerkbaits and a flicker shad were our baits of choice. I'm not sure how many fish we caught, but I would say 60+ is being conservative. The best fish of the day was a 20" brown my buddy landed. I'd guess 2/3 of the fish were caught above Fall Creek, but our two best, the 20" brown and an 18" rainbow came from below Fall Creek on jerkbaits.

It should be a nice rod for shooting docks. I personally shoot 1/16oz jigs on a 7' Shakespeare Microseries light action rod and 1/32oz on the a 5'6" Berkley Cherrywood ultralight. Both rods can be had for less than $20 at your local Wally World. Spool them up with some chartreuse 4-6# mono and have at it.

Been using Cabela's Guidewear for a few years now and love it! I have the uninsulated version and I just throw on a couple layers of fleece and stay plenty warm. It's kind of like wearing breathable waders in the winter time.

This weekend is looking bitter cold. Might be a good time to make a trip down there. The crowds should be pretty light.

I forgot it was even about actually catching fish and not something in the food section. My apologies for contributing to this derailment. I'm not usually one to do that.

I don't have any experience eating duck, but if it is like most things then you just have to know how to cook it right to make it taste good. If you don't like deer then you probably over cooked it!

That's Bagnell Dam, not TRL Dam. The one I am asking about was from several years ago. The Bagnell Dam pic on page 2 is from this recent high water event. I went back through the history of the Upper Taneycomo section and found it. They said this was across from KOA.

Trout is one fish I actually prefer baked a certain way versus fried. Butter and season each side of a fillet with lemon pepper. Wrap in foil with a half a slice of bacon on top and bake at 350 degrees in an oven for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove, open foil up on bacon side, raise rack up and broil the bacon for a few minutes until it crisps up. My fiance isn't a big fish eater and even she loves eating them prepared like that.

Wasn't there a also picture of a paddlefish caught in a tree during the last big high water event on Taneycomo a few years ago?

Paddlefish are notorious for coming to the surface to roll and getting hit by props. It's not terribly uncommon to catch them without a rostrum during the spring snagging season.

We hammered the browns the same way this summer when the water was up and had an absolute blast! I'm thinking I need to make some phone calls and try to get a group together to go down and get in on some of this high water action again.

I wonder if the crappie that lived under it found new docks nearby or moved with the dock? Somebody go shoot a jig under it and find out! ?

I promise I had my orange vest on while out in the field. This was taken at the house real quick before we hoisted her up and peeled her out. Inline muzzle loaders are basically just single shot rifles anymore. I'd not think twice about taking a deer at 150 yards with one. If it had been 80+ degrees, I might have been sporting the yellow shirt. I had some insulated bibs on over the stuff I am wearing in this pic plus a hand muff to keeps my hands from getting cold. It was chilly and actually felt like a true late season deer hunt.

I've been hunting for a wide 8 pointer that my dad spotted on Christmas eve in a wheat field. Due to the monsoon, I was only able to get three sits in. The first two produced plenty of does and fawns, but I elected to pass and hold out for the chance at this buck he saw. Well last night I finally saw him making his way up the powerline towards the wheat field. Something didn't look right though. After I cranked up the scope to 9 power, I realized he was missing one side of his rack! As luck would have it, he walked straight to me from 200-250 yards away and came out a mere 40 yards away in to the wheat. With him missing one side of his rack, I just couldn't get myself to shoot him. There was a couple does in the field as well about 120 yards away that were feeding towards me. After several minutes, the biggest one finally turned sideways at 109 yards and I let the muzzleloader eat. She dropped in her tracks so no tracking needed. I'm good on deer meat so I am going to donate her to some folk's my dad goes to church with that need the meat. I'm sure they will prefer her over that buck anyways. I told myself before season that I wasn't shooting a buck unless it was going to beat anything that I had shot before. I've seen two deer this year that would have made the grade. The first was during rifle season about 300 yards away. A spike showed up and the buck ended up chasing the spike off away from me. That buck got killed two days later by another hunter. of course the second one is the one I mentioned in my previous paragraph. It was a good season though. Plenty of deer were seen, but it just wasn't in the cards for me when it comes to putting one down with a big rack. All I can hope is that some of these deer we had on camera and the one I saw last night will still be around the properties I hunt come next season. I'm about 99% sure that I am calling it a wrap for this year. I've still got a couple bow tags so maybe I'll make it one more time. Who knows!

I used 1/16 and 1/32oz I can shoot better with the 1/32oz so I caught the most on it, but I think the key was just getting it way back under the dock more so than the fall rate. Most came onblack/chart with a few on white/chart and orange/chart.

Most bites were withing a few feet of the surface. The deepest we caught any was maybe 5-6' down in front of a well. It was very aggravating! Usually you can pull a couple out of a spot once you catch one.