Seth

For whatever reason, I tend to catch much nicer fish the further up the lake I get on LoZ. Glaize to the dam is good for 9-10" fish with a few nice one mixed in. Our size increases dramatically once we reach the Nianguas and move on up the river towards Truman Dam. Not sure if it's due to less pressure o what.

Hannah Barron and her dad will pick up the slack for ya.

Google doesn't own everything. Unless the link is <subdomain>.google.com, it's likely not something that has anything to do with Google. I guess @Phil Lilley must be in cahoots with Google since I can find a link to this forum via their search engine! You better shut down your account and unplug the the wifi right away. OAF is no longer safe!

So use one of the many other search engines if you don't trust Google...... https://neilpatel.com/blog/alternative-search-engines/

Unless you have numbers and data to prove otherwise (something other than "your opinion) then it doesn't mean it's false either.

Biden didn't want to hurt the UAWs feelings.

I just wish the high fuel would reduce the traffic on the water. Lakes have been busy every time I've been on them lately, even when it's during the week. I'm taking some guys snagging on LoZ tomorrow. It'll run me $80 to drive to the lake and probably $50-60 in fuel for the boat (depending on how far I have to go to find the spoonies).

I took 15 high schoolers down today for our annual field trip. There were some concerns on what the weather was going to do, but it turned out to be a pretty decent day. It was chilly, but the rain held off for the most part and the fish bit well. Every kid caught fish and several caught their limits. I ended up catching 15 on the black/yellow jig and most of the students caught there fish on the orange wacky worm. One of the students caught a solid 17-18" rainbow and another caught a short brown. There was a gentleman doing well on his fly rod where the swift water comes from the cable and meets the main river. For whatever reason I couldn't hardly catch a fish on bait. Bait is usually the way to go when the water is dingy, but they seemed to want to eat something moving for us today.

My favorite is Zatarains Crispy Southern but our stinking Walmart quit carrying it! The Lousiana New Orleans fish fry is a good backup though. Andy's is a bit over powering for good fish like crappie but I prefer it for stronger fish like trout and paddlefish.

I like my trout blackened or made in to fish cakes the most. Smoked is good but I'm too lazy to go through doing all that. Anything is edible once it has been rolled in Andy's and deep fried so there is that too.

There were quite a few people along the banks that I'm guessing came through the quarry so I'd say yes.

We went opening day and caught a few below Bagnell and a few lake side during the day on the Niangua. I took some guys yesterday and had my butt handed to me for the first time in a long time. We put in at Wigwam, hit 8 and only one was a keeper. I'd rather eat crappie, but I will say that we blackened some of the smallest one we caught below Bagnell and it was actually pretty amazing! There are plenty of people who love the stuff though so I don't have any problem giving the stuff away.

I didn’t say that it wasn’t true and frankly I don’t really care. It is what it is. That just seems like something I figured I would have heard before now considering the sheer number of snaggers I have talked with over the years. You’re a pretty straight shooter so I believe you heard it at some point.

My bad. I meant to quote @fishinwrench's post. 😁

Got down around 1:45pm and fished 3.5 hours. I landed 15 in that time and missed a bunch on a black and yellow marabou jig. Not being able to see the take always leads to a lot of missed fish. The size was abysmal. Of the 15, only 4 were really worth keeping. The biggest was almost 15" and the other 4 for were 13-13.5". Everything else was 12" or shorter. Half of them came within the first thirty minutes of arriving in first hole (aka pond hole). The fish were hanging about 3/4 of the way across the stream where waders usually stand. The other half came just above the dumps right before it shallows up. I'd bomb the jig out as far as I could and basically just swim it just in front of where the dumps would shallow up and the fish would smack it. The only dump that didn't produce was the bathroom hole. I saw several people with fish on their stringers but never actually saw anybody else catch one. They looked like they had been on the stringer for a while.

Where did you hear that? This is the first time I've ever heard anything about crossing the two. This must have happened a long time ago becuase the chinese paddlefish was declared functionally extinct in 93 and complete extinction was estimated to have occurred between 2005 and 2010. The only thing that comes up on Google about paddlefish cross breeding is a paddlefish/sturgeon hybrid.

They are likely left overs from the previous year. They make that run every spring when the James floods and then get stuck. The water came up in February too so any fish stuck in the holes down from the dam likely continued on up the river until the hit the dam.

We boated three limits of crappie Tuesday and another three on Wednesday on the Niangua arm of LoZ. Crappie were stacked on docks about half way back in coves. They were fairly far back so you had to be able to shoot your jig a pretty good distance to reach them. Lots of good quality fish. We cleaned very few under 10" and ended up with a gallon of fillets each day. We took a break for about an hour on Tuesday to try and snag a few paddlefish and ended up with three. Two were just over the 34" length limit and probably weighed 30 pounds and one was right at 50 lbs.

I upgraded from a 998 to a G2N 9 with mega. While I could find what I needed with the 998, I will give the nod to the mega at actually seeing fish. Some of the images I had of paddlefish a few days ago were impressive. Last December I used it to target a school of whites on the Osage that were hanging out in the channel towards the head of a hole. I'm not sure I could have picked those fish up on the 998. It's not a game changer by any means though. The 12 year old 998 was more than capable and it still helped me find what I needed most of the time. Believe it or not, it's still possible to catch crappie without Livescope these days. 😁 These came from the Niangua arm of LoZ a few days ago. I drove around running side scan until I found the motherload stacked under a dock and we pulled three limits of solid fish (only a few under 10") from it.

I don't think you can really call them "invasive" since they were native to the Osage River system and naturally reproduced prior to the construction of the dams. Regardless, they really aren't much different than say a trout stocked in Taneycomo at this point. As for controlling the shad populations, that just seems like a far fetched argument. Hybrids do that job better than about anything that swims and I'd rather catch and eat those over a paddlefish.

It's pretty easy once you figure out the system. I'd rather go chase crappie than paddlefish these days, but everybody else loves to catch them so I still end up taking several trips to keep everybody else happy. I don't care to eat them but always have a list of people begging for the stuff. I'm pretty much a guide that doesn't get paid at this point lol. Those that really like it seem to prefer it grilled or smoked.

Keystone Lake produces the biggest by far. I think it has produced the last five world records.Current record is 164 lbs. https://ftw.usatoday.com/2021/06/angler-shatters-paddlefish-world-record-by-landing-164-pound-beast

80lbs is my PB. Caught it on March 15, 2009 on the James River arm of Tablerock.

Agreed. It's just another testament to how resilient crappie (especially white crappie) are.

Multiple fish over 4# weighed in and the winners averaged over 3# per fish for the entire tournament.