Seth

Took a buddy down to show him the ropes so he can start taking his family down in the future. I told him we'd be hitting the "stocker hoels" and going for numbers so he can get the hang of catching trout and that 75-100 fish for the day would be normal. We fished about 10 hours and only managed to boat 25-30 on sculpin colored jigs and the pink worm. They weren't on the black and orange head varieties like they had been for us. Lilleys down to Cooper Creek flats was the "best" areas for us. I think the fish were just a lot deeper than I anticipated and we focused on the shallower stuff most of the days out of stubbornness since it had been working so well for me all winter long. Not sure what the deal was with the moss, but it's been a while since I had seen it that bad. The first few hours of the morning were a bust because you coudln't hardly fish without getting your lure caked in moss each cast. It was definitely one of the toughest days I'd had in a while.

Shoot! I wish you would have posted this a couple days ago. I'd have traded you a 6' for your 6.5'. I've got a 6' and I prefer the 6.5' myself. Next time I'll be headed that way will probably be whenever Phil decides to hold the CAM tourney this spring. That's usually in April I recall correctly.

My buddy bought a TFO trout-panfish rod that looks like the Air Streams. It was about $30 more, but he says he prefers it over his Air Streams. I've not fished his TFO to compare it to the Air Streams, but it looks like the same rod to me. I figured they made them for BPS. The lengths and ratings are all very similar as well.

If you're still down tomorrow, keep and eye out for the black and orange Legend SS. I'm meeting a buddy in Ozark around 6:30am and then head down that way. He's never been trout fishing down there before and has been hounding me to take him and show him the ropes. We'll probably be spending most of the day below Fall Creek so he can try and learn the basic.

This right here. Rip the sides off the with the electric knife, but use the non-electric fillet knife for the finishing work. I can trim red meat and rib with a non-electric knife a lot better than I can with the electric one. Whites are good eating, but I prefer crappie over them simply because of the extra work that is involved with prepping the white filets for eating. I definitely wouldn't turn them down though if I get into a mess of them.

I mean, I'm pretty sure you could deep fry a dog turd rolled in Andy's and it'd be edible so creek chubs should be minor. 😁

Sounds like everything is coming from the same lake too. You can bet that place is going to get absolutely pounded to death now! https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/other-sports/2021/02/27/lake-oh-ivie-near-san-angelo-is-a-big-bass-hotspot-after-spectacular-february-catches/

The 16.4 mentioned in the article must be the one that the Milliken Fishing Youtube channel just posted. Their best 5 that day went almost 60#! A 16.4, two 12s and a bunch of 6-9 pounders. Josh Jones (the Garmin guy) has been posting a bunch of studs lately too. He posted one that was in the 15# range a few days ago. That brutal period of cold must have stacked those giant sows up like cord wood down in Texas!

I used the 90 yesterday to fix some spots where the carpet was coming up on my boat. I've also used the traditional contact cement that you paint on with good success too. The spray can is far more convenient though.

Last year I was the first spot out the money in several fishing tourneys as well as fantasy fishing. If I can tear it up in the real tourneys this year and bomb in fantasy, I'd be alright with that. 😁

Well looks like I'll be done paying attention to fantasy fishing early this year. Clunn zeroed on me last tourney and now Zaldain. My two tourneys combined don't equal to what I usually get for one. 😆

I have my hunting/fishing, trout stamp and spring turkey tags set for auto-renew as of now. I'm all about having one less thing to remember to do.

Worst tournament ever for me. Not a single angler made it past day 2 AND I had Clunn so got a goose egg for him. Currently sitting in at the 17.6th percentile. 😄

I guess so. Only lower unit turns, not the entire engine.

Is this is v12 600r motor I've been seeing pics of recently?

I don't think you guys have much to worry about. We've fished around and watched your nephews two years in a row now and even tried the same techniques and didn't even come close to what they caught. If it were that simple, we'd all be hauling in mega bags of trout like them. I'm gonna try to talk dad in to fishing the Lazy Valley tourney this year. He's wanting to come back down and fish sculpins again. He's already buying better equipment just for that purpose lol. It was a pleasure talking with you guys at the weigh in. Hopefully we'll get to do it again her in a few weeks.

It seems contradictory, but I feel way more at home with a jig rod in my hand than bait fishing. I had to fiddle around with my hook and weight setups before I actually started catching fish. Dad likes to rib me about it since I always gave him crap for being a "lowly bait fisherman". Good luck to you in the Elfrink as well. We always seem to struggle a little more in that Elfrink tourney that the Masters and RAW for whatever reason so we'll how it goes.

It's not the worst I've ever had a boat iced up. This was a few boats ago after we made it home from a Tablerock snagging trip one March.

Taney sucks. Can't even catch a cold down there these days. 😁

@hillbillyflyshackno need to feel bad for using bait when it's legal. Dad is a bait guy and will fish bait from the back while I toss a jig when we fish RAW and he typically catches our biggest fish of the day. There is no denying that live bait catches nice fish. All of our weigh fish came on black jigs and sculpins. Our biggest was a 3.05 rainbow and it came on a black jig. Our numbers were still way down compared to normal, but we grinded it out all day in a few areas and it paid off for us again with a fourth place finish. We didn't fish clean and a couple late day mishaps likely cost us the #2 spot though. We prefished a few hours on Friday with minnows and caught several nice fish between 1-2.5#. I don't think we ever boated a fish on a minnow Saturday though. Crawlers produced several fish for dad, but they were all 3/4# stockers. @Phil Lilley the Kunz teams are sculpin fishermen. They anchor up and "catfish" them. We watched them do it last year and bring in that 16# bag of fish so we tried it ourselves for a while this year and it produced several nice fish for us as well. They were fishing directly across lake from us early and we watched them land one of their two big bows. Lookin forward to the Elfrink in two weeks. I sure hope this weather breaks by then or it's going to be brutal out there! My boat is frozen up tight right now. Hatches are froze shut and it's covered in 1/2" of road slush. Too cold to do anything about it right now though.

You know it's a pig when it gets those two that excited! Awesome team work!

I'm usually not anywhere that requires me to wear a mask for very long so I just keep it in the pocket and throw it on as needed. Getting the vaccine shot doesn't sound appealing at this time so I'll keep wearing the mask and avoiding people for a while longer until we get to see how a larger portion of the population reacts to the vaccine.

and you've been addicted to catching bass ever since, right? 😁

I just sent my Paypal money @abkeenan

That is true. You started all this mess by knocking off my big walleye on the Norfork that day! Shame! I'm usually the guy netting all of my buddies nice trout instead of the other way around so I attribute to lack of practice for him. 😆