Seth

There's a lot of fish I would be missing on the rivers without my jet boat. It's a vital part of my fishing and I don't think I could live without my jet boat anymore! I do agree though that the pleasure jet boaters are a pain in the but to deal with, but I can still catch a lot of fish on the Gasconade even with them buzzing by me every few minutes. I don't fish the Maramec, but I do fish the Gasconade quite a bit between Jerome and the Missouri River. What's scary is when you get the people running there tunnel hulls with big blocks that can run 70+ mph come screaming by and acting like idiots. You know they have been out on the water drinking all day as well. I'm surprised there haven't been more major accidents during the summertime.

I fish a 12' spinning surf setup with 65# power pro. You get good casting distance and it's plenty strong for landing spoonbill, but not ridiculously difficult to break off if you get hung up. Another thing I recommend doing is using some 50# mono to ring your weights and hooks on and then attach it to your braid. There's been a few times where the fish flopped and the hook points nicked the braid and cut the line right at the boat.

Did color make much difference?

My favorite colors are white/chart, orange/chart, and black/chart slab busters. Its rare one of those dont work well for me.

Did you see any spoonbill up that far on your float?

My buddies fished the Niangua arm yesterday and tore the crappie up. Not sure if they were mostly males or females but I did notice a few egg sacks in the gut bucket after he had cleaned them.

Nine kids from the hunting and fishing club here at school went down to Maramec yesterday. I believe all but two caught at least one fish. I think I caught 10. Fish bit the best on orange trout worms drifted with just enough rod bounce to make them quiver. The kids got a kick out of sight fishing for the trout with those worms. One girl had never trout fished before and her reel broke not long after we started fishing. I went ahead and put three on the stringer and let her borrow mine for a while and rigged her up with some dough bait under a float. The fish were biting, but hard to hook up. Finally she got a hungry one that swallowed the hook and she got her first trout. She thanked me several times and that alone made the trip a success.

I dont believe you are even supposed to be casting over the line anymore. Years ago you just had to keep the boat behind the line but Im pretty sure that got changed to not even casting over the line.

Longs has been loaded with spoons since the first night. The high water will send them fish clear up to lake springfield I bet. Congrats on the 82 pounder. The biggest we got when we were down opening night was 60-65. We caught a bunch of small males for the most part.

Thats the same thing we experienced in the Flat Creek arm of the James River. Lots of nice keepers and very few short fish hanging about 15' off the bank near brush. Definitely the best crappie fishing we have experienced down there.

We hammered them good between 1-5am the first night. Mostly small males but did have a couple sows near 60 pounds. Last night wasnt as good due to boats having them stirred up. Only caught three small males last night.

I white bass fished a little bit wednesday evening and only caught a few There was a small pocket of them at Longs Camp and I caught five in just a few minutes and then nothing.

I figured an arig would be dynamite for school white bass. Do you need to downsize the baits to something like a swimming minnow or stick with the regular sized swimbaits?

Depends on the catfish. If it's blue or flathead then no, if it's channels then please pass the carp!

Just curious but what kind of baits are you guys throwing for the whites and are you casting or trolling? My dad and I are coming down next week and staying at Flatcreek so just wondering if I need to stock up on a certain kind of bait before our trip.

I can tell you guys haven't tried asian carp. The meat is delicious but the bones pose a problem. What we did was pressure cook the fillets down with Lawry's seasoning salt and lemon pepper to dissolve the bones followed by mixing egg and crackers together to form fish patties. Vacuum seal two to a pack and when you are ready to eat, just open a froen pack, toss in a little olive olive oil and basically just heat the up and crisp to your liking and enjoy. I had them fried once where the guy was able to get most of the bones removed except for one set of big bones that you could easily pull out before eating. The carp was WAY better eating than the channel cat that we fried up at the same time.

The asian carp are crazy bad up there anymore. I went up there fishing at night last June and it looked like the wind was rippling the water as far as you could see up to the dam all night long, but it was dead calm. There were thousands upon thousands of 10-15" asian carp feeding on the surface EVERYWHERE! You couldn't throw a casting spoon without hooking in to one every cast. Its bad!

I heard Kimberling City got hit pretty hard. Does anybody know if Cape Fair got damaged as well?

I've caught a few out of the Rollins Ferry access, but mostly just get largemouth and kentuckies. It seems the smallmouth fishing gets better the closer you get to 44. With that said, there was a smallmouth caught in a tourney out of Rollins Ferry last Sunday that weighed almost 4 pounds. It was a nice one!

Went to the Osage with a buddy and we caught 13 bass and 2 drum. The drum my buddy caught was probalby pushing 15 pounds. It was a tank and put up one heck of a fight. I was getting cabin fever REALLY bad and man did it feel good getting out there and rippin some lips. Jigs and jerkbaits on any type of rip rap bank is what we fished. Seems you wouldn't catch anything for a while and then you would find a pocket and catch several. We had multiple doubles.

I haven't done any fishing in a while. We bought a house and that's taken up most of my time for the past month and I was in hunting mode before that. Usualy the bass fishing is pretty good this time of year though. Hopefully I will get a chance to find out first hand before long now that we are settled in to the house for the most part.

You can definitely tell a difference when the outboards take off and when the Gator opens up. Those things sound so good!

Flathead are delicious! Fish are always better from cold clear water in my opinion as well.

Looks like a great turnout. I sure wish i was down there participating, but had other plans for today already made. Good luck anglers!

Is it easier to run up river with the water off than before? I never made it above Lookout when the water was off due to there always being wade fisherman in the middle of the river. Just curious if it's too deep for them to stand there now with the water off.