Seth

Didn't you fish a lot of tournaments back in the day? Seems hypocritical to complain about them now that you've decided to not fish them.....

Well as usual, this is the same weekend as the Missouri Disabled Sportsmen antlerless hunt so I won't be able to make it.

I'm looking forward to catching some more of those guys this winter on the Osage. It's a lot closer to the house too.

Sounds like the makings a good country western song.

All hooks do damage to a fishes mouth. Maybe we should just not allow fishing at all for the sake of the fish.

Yep, daytime was brutal outside of that last hour before dark. It was even a struggle for me to catch them on the pink powerworm. They'd nip it, but I couldn't seem to hook them. I could throw a jig and watch fish follow it back to the boat every cast, but I just could not get them to commit and actually bite it. We tried sculpins a couple mornings hoping for some browns and only managed two in two days. One was 12" and the other was 18". It was definitely one of the toughest trips I've had in a long time during daylight hours.

I beat on those fish pretty good straight lining a white jig and dragging a white bomber along the seam in that same area Saturday. It never produced anything over 16" for me though. On the other side from where you started, I did catch a 19" beefcake of a bow on a shad pattern flicker shad. It was the hardest fighting fish I caught all day. Even with 6# Trilene XL, it took me a bit to land it. I do regret not playing around with the fly rod more, but I threw that flicker shad for most of the afternoon hoping for a big bite. Ended up with 6 or 7 follows, one hook up and nothing landed over 20" for trout. The only 20" fish I caught was a walleye up near the cable across from the outlets. it was the first thing I landed on the flicker shad. Also got one white bass up there and had another chaser.

I'm really glad I decided to come down Saturday now. I had a feeling they wouldn't be on much longer. Had a half dozen 20"+ fish follow me, but only one hook up. Had a 20-21" brown on for a while and then pulled a newbie move and caught the lure instead of the fish with the net and he flopped off. Dragging the white bomber and casting a #7 flicker shad in shad pattern was the best thing I had going. Fish were deep. I did see some fish blowing up on something on the bluff bank below Lookout. I never actually saw cicadas hit the water where they were blowing up so they have just after shad. They were eating whatever it was with authority though!

I give him crap about it all the time. Don't sweat it.😉

I ended up cleaning all of them. He felt bad for not helping, but Lord knows he has cleaned plenty of my fish over the years.

He always has that look. Even a tournament winning brown doesn't get him to smile.....😁

Gosh I wanted to get down there so badly! I'd already promised to take dad up to LoZ to chase crappie and catfish prior to the flood gates being opened on Taneycomo though. We had a great day, but I was definitely Jonesing to be on Taney!

So a kid fishing out of a cheap aluminum boat that runs 35 mph that invested $2k into FFS is cheating the kid who is fishing out of a 70mph glitter boat that doesn't have FFS? The aluminum rig with FFS is FAR more affordable than the glitter boat setup.

Could say the same thing about kids stuck fishing in a little aluminum boat vs those that have access to a 20’ bass boat with 250hp outboard. The kids success also depends a lot on who they are fishing with too. I’ve helped in several youth tourneys and the kids that do well are always paired up with those of us that do well fishing ourselves. Somebody will be at a disadvantage for one of many reasons no matter what.

We used to catch them every so often on the Osage, but haven't in several years. I haven't heard of anybody catching any of the Meramec.

You might have 5-6k in graphs sitting on the bow of your boat but at least you weren't scoping! 😁 I leave my scoping setup at home quite a bit when I'm fun fishing. It's still fun to beat banks and catch fish. It's no different than throwing a top water all day when I know I could catch em better on a shakeyhead. Topwater is just more fun!

That was something that took me a while to learn. First you had to catch fish in a spot enough times to know it was a decent. After that, you always knew it held fish, but that they wouldn't always bite so you'd just have to keep checking it throughout the day and hope you hit it when they started biting. I feel like that is what seperates your more consistent tournament anglers from the rest of the pack. With FFS, you don't have to spend as much time learning which areas are holding fish, but you still have to know when to move on because they just ain't chewing at that moment. You can really tell when a guy is somewhat new to crappie fishing, but has good electronics. They will spend all day wasting their time on a inactive school because they can see the fish. If you're not catching those crappie every few cast then you need to go find new fish. They just can't comprehend this line of thinking when they already have a bunch of fish right in front of them.

Cherry. I think Livesay is telling the truth becuase everytime they videod him catching a fish, it looked like his front units were completely powered down. Not that it takes anything away from Hank. He's already a master with the jerkbait so FFS should only make him even better. He's proven he can win without it.

Well he can say what he wants but that is 100% a Livescope image between his legs......

That's very true. We did find a 34" brown floating on Taneycomo a few winters ago, but floating trout are pretty rare it seems. You see plenty of them laying on the bottom though.

I feel like the average size fish we catch on LoZ has gotten better as well. We rarely keep anything under 10" these days. Up until a few years ago, we always kept quite a few 9-9.5" fish to fill out our limits.

Do bass even float when they die? There was a big fish kill on the Osage last year and a lot of fish were seen floating, but no bass. The bass fishing was terrible after that so I'm assuming they took a big hit too though. With all the tourneys out of PB2, you'd think the banks would be lined with dead bass.

Every tourney anglers is going to be guilty of that if they cull fish though. The only way I can see one not being guilty of that is if they only catch a limit or less. If you've got your crap in order with your cull system, you shouldn't have to keep fish out of the water very long anyways.

I've seen a ton of spoonies in the 80-85 pound range and I thought they were huge. It's hard to fathom one that is twice the size of those!

I don't think there is a tournament guy alive that isn't going to keep the first five keepers he boats. All I can say is if I am after numbers of fish, I'm a lot better off to leave the Livescope at home. I'll catch far more fish without, but my average size is better with it.