Seth

Hunting groups are far worse than fishing groups. God forbird somebody shoot a buck that isn't 5.5+ years old. I swear those guys would be less angry if you slept with their wives/grilfriends.

Others have pretty well summed up my opinion. I'd try my best to keep it alive while jumping through the hoops to get it certified. If you CPR 100 or 1000 trophy class fish in your life time and end up killing the fish of a life time while getting it certified for a record, you have nothing to hang your head in shame about. Fish of that caliber are more than likely towards the end of their life cycle anyways.

Rod and reel fish or hunt during the day and then gig at night. Being able to gig after dark is the best thing about gigging as it leaves the rest of the daylight time open for other activities.

I guess I am lucky to be fairly close to the Gasconade and Meramec, but I couldn’t imagine not finding enough suckers for a meal. They are thicker than hair on a dogs back there. If you can see two foot or more, just go hang out in a riffle and stab away. Less chance of seeing game fish too. A stray channel cat or sauger/walleye might show up, but few if any bass.

I think this is the brand. Walmart carries them. If the water is off, I like the 3/4" size. When there is water running and I need to add a little more weight to get the pink power worm down, I will bump up to the 1" size.

@Bill Babler any reason why you don't use the round 3/4-1" round weighted floats? I always used the carrot floats in the past until Duane turned me on to those round weighted floats. I'm not sure I even own a carrot float now. The extra weight with the round weighted floats really helps with the casting distance if it's needed.

Possibly two line class world records broken on Taneycomo in less than two weeks!

If my internet research is right, that is the 4th largest brown ever caught!

I wonder what the largest trout @Bill Babler has had landed in his boat before today?

Those big fish sure are fickle. I have no doubt that the utmost care was taken to keep that fish alive by the parties involved too.

I'm assuming another triploid?

HOLY COW! On the pink power worm of all things!

Sounds like a good thing for the smaller gun shops.

He ain't used to having to wear fish down before landing them. When he hooks a big smallmouth, he's horsing it all the way to the boat and then yelling at me to hurry up and net it while it's still green. I always seem to hook my biggest bass on finesse tackle and I have to play them like I do my trout. I start giggling every time I watch this video and hear him let out a groan when the brown comes dashing by the boat the first time and I don't even try to net it. 😆

Took my bass fishing buddy down to fish this tournament. He's a greenhorn at trout fishing, but luck seems to follow him when he does go. This is the best tournament weight I've had by several pounds. His first trip to Taneycomo was this past February when he fished the Elfrink tournament with @Ryan Miloshewski. Frank was landed during that tournament. Gerry Dwiggins caught another mega brown this time. My buddy is going to start thinking these 20lbs+ browns are a dime a dozen! 😆

If you're after browns, it's usually best to be in tighter to cover. Rainbows can be anywhere. I've caught some nice rainbows all the way to Lilley's on jerkbaits out in the middle of the river when it has been overcast and the fish were up closer to the surface. Great way to cover lots of water since you can fish a jerkbait fast. Personally, I prefer to fish the shallow side more so than the bluff side between Fall Creek and on down just below Short Creek. The exception is when they are moving a BUNCH of water. This will push the fish up tight to the banks in the eddies after the water has been on for a bit. That's when I've had my best luck fishing the bluff side. With that said, my buddy caught a 20" brown in the early afternoon on a 70 degree and sunny day with zero generation a few years ago during our first Masters tournament about 6" off the bank so you really just never know.

The best jerkbait bite I've experienced in a while was the evening after the CAM tourney in April. @JestersHK and I went back out after the tourney when a storm was blowing in and the fish were all fired up. We never boated anything huge, but caught several up to 16 or 17" and had some absolute studs chase our lures and stocker bows all the way to boat. DJ had one brown pushing 10# try to eat a stocker he had hooked right at the boat as he was lifting it out of the water. This was all between Fall and Short Creek, not the trophy area. I did catch a pretty good rainbow on a jerkbait the next day before we left just below the Narrows. I think it was 19". Aside from that trip, the jerkbait deal just hasn't been there for me this year.

What size jerkbaits were you guys throwing? We couldn't get any action going on the jerkbait during the weekend of the Firemens tournament, but we were throwing 3" and bigger jerkbaits. Other people were throwing smaller versions and having some success though. It seemed like perfect jerkbait conditions too.

I like throwing jigs straight, but that power worm setup is a blast to fish. Not only does it produce a bunch of fish, there is just something fun about watching a float go under.

Yep. Typically a bell weight is used for the weight end, but split shot works as well. The only time I mess with a drift rig is when I'm drifting flies on bottom in the trophy area. When we're usuing crawlers or powerbait, we just stick a split shot two to three feet above the hook. I think main thing is to make sure there is several feet between the weight and the hook so it can float up off of the bottom.

It baffles me how many people we have seen that will fish with dough bait or power eggs and then release trout that just had a hook ripped out of their stomach while be squeezed to death with a dry towel. It happened last year when we were staying at a resort down there. The people didn't like to eat the trout so they threw them all back. Most went belly up as soon as they hit the water.

Only if you slow down! WOT and 6" of water doesn't even get me excited these days.

I've seen plenty of boats stuck and blowing mud on the point by the 64mm and on the big flat just above Rebel Harbor at the 60mm. If it weren't for me running a jet last year, I would have been one of them around the 63mm. Wasn't paying attention to my mapping and got over too far and my buddy started asking why the water in my jet wash was so brown. 😆 Oops!

No kidding! I ask this question all the time. Of all the illegal fish to gig, there are only a couple that may taste better than freshly killed sucker and a stinkin bass sure ain't one of them! I'd rank fresh deep fried suckers up there with anything that swims personally. They just require a little more prep work.