Seth

It was a lot better for me than it had been, but I also threw finesse stuff the entire day. My buddy threw his typical buzzbait and jig and only caught two little short fish all day long. I had 14 keeper bites and only boated 7 plus several shorts. Still having issues with fish coming unbuttoned even with lures that I rarely ever lose fish on.

I've been from Boiling Spring down to Morelands with the gauge in the 1.50 range recently and didn't have any problems. Fished from Bell Chutes down to Morelands Saturday and never had any problems running anywhere down through there. The two shoals below Jerome are the trickiest areas that I've been through this year, but you can still get through. It's just shallow gravel so the worse thing you will do is suck up a few rocks.

I've started using them recently as well. I like the 130 for largemouth and the 90 for smallies. The only problem with the 90 and smallies is that I miss so many fish. They will knock the bait out of the water and ever get hooked up. I swapped the stock hooks out for #4 KVD triple grips and still have issues. Those hooks will get stuck in the rubber mat of my truck bed for crying out loud so I don't see how those fish hit those lures and not get pinned.

Seth is my first name. Avatar is me with my biggest smallmouth to date, a 20.5" from the Gasconade.

You are the only guy I know who gets disappointed when they catch a 20” smallmouth. 🤣

After talking to Duane, it sounds like this one was the "smaller" one of the two. This one was huge, but not as big as the other one he was telling me about.

Catching numbers of trout never seems to be the issue. It's finding those nice ones! To add fuel to the fire, I was talking to a guy back at the dock and he said they were out in a boat and only caught one trout. He showed me a picture and it looked like a 4# rainbow! Go figure!

The grey overlay makes the fish stand out a lot better.

Monday Evening I drifted from the cable down to Lookout Island in the last 45 minutes of daylight and boated 9 rainbows on white and orange head sculpin/peach jigs. Biggest was a chunky 16.5 incher. Tuesday 12-2pm - Trophy Area Boated up to the cable and drifted down to Lookout and boated 19 rainbows. Most came on an 1/8oz sculpin/ginger jig. I think I caught one drifting an olive micro under a float and a few on a white jig as well. Most fish were caught in the deep eddy hole just above Lookout. Had a couple 16-16.5 inchers again, but nothing real big. Tuesday 3-4:15pm - Bluff Bank from Lilley's down below Cooper My fiance wanted to head back to the room and start getting ready for dinner and our show so I dropped her off and made a few drifts along the bluff bank across from Lilleys' on down below Cooper Creek. I threw 1/8oz sculpin/ginger, orange head sculpin/peach and white jigs along the bluff bank and boated another 14. Most were 11-12". I think I may have caught two that were 13-14". Before I left, I made one drift using olive, ginger and pink micros just to see which they wanted the most. Olive and pink each caught one and the ginger landed two. We got back around 10:30 from our show and I decided to head down to the dock and mess around for a bit with the pink power worm. I ended up landing three little rainbows. As I was fishing, I looked down and saw a giant brown that had to be pushing 20# come out from under the dock and just slowly swim by right in front of me. I've got a video of it, but I'll have to upload it when I get to work tomorrow and have faster internet. Be sure to turn up your screen brightness and you can see the fish fairly well. Here is a screenshot from the footage. Keep in mind that this fish is 4-5' deep. It's definitely the largest trout that I've ever personally watched swimming in Taneycomo.

Sorry about that. Yesterday was a busy day. I came over this morning to chit chat and you ain’t even workin! I didn’t think @Phil Lilley ever gave you a day off. 😁

I stand corrected. 😊

We have been drifting from Riverlake down to just below Cooper Creek along the bluff and catching fish nearly the whole way We’ve had to weed through a lot more small fish for the 13” and better fish compared to when we were down in mid June. The Landing area near Bdubs and Famous Daves is full of little ones willing to eat a jig too. Most of the fish are coming on the power worm, but I have tossed a sculpin/peach jig and done well. The jig seems to produce a bit better quality. If you are on Facebook, go check out the Chartered Waters page and watch the video of the giant brown he filmed today. He thinks it is north of 25#. We are hear till Wednesday so should have some more reports to add.

That must have been the one my buddy was talking about. He said he watched an almost 9# rainbow get released the other day from Likleys dock.

This low water makes for some fun running. It wasn't too difficult to get from Bell Chute to Boiling Spring last weekend.

We haven't gotten anything here and we are only 1.5 hours east of LoZ. We sure could use a drink!

Do people really have that much trouble keeping fish alive? I've got a decent sized livewell that pumps fresh water in for 30 seconds every few minutes. Once a fish goes in to it, I flip that on and let it run. The surface water temps have been near 90 the past few weeks and the fish are feisty as all get out when I take them out of the livewell for weigh in. None of the fish I am catching are deep fish so maybe that has something to do with it. I'm catching them in water that's the same temp as what they are going in to.

I'd also give the reel another shot. I've always had good luck with Pfluegers in the Trion and President line. Another reel to check out would be the Daiwa RG-AB. It's in the same price range as the President $60. I've not tried it yet, but a buddy has and he said he likes it better than the Plueger President.

This is the first time I've heard about these cover issues on Etecs. Google does come up with a lot of reports and posts about the issue happening though. I ran an 08 115 from 2010-2014 and then bought a 2013 150 in 2014 and have well over 200 hours on it. The cowlings have a lot of scuffs and scratches from limbs, lures and whatever else, but nothing has cracked yet. The issues do seem to be mostly occurring on the Etecs of 90hp or less. The 75hp model comes up a lot with those cracked cowling issues.

Troutt's puts tons of perforated floors in boats. Pretty well every Blazer they sell will have one. I hear you on the Meramec stuff. I'd love to have a small beater boat just for that place. My first boat was a 1648 with a 50/35 jet and I so wish I had kept it for using on the Meramec and for gigging. Last year I tore my boat up down below Stanton when I hit a rock at Roaring Spring and had to get a whole new hull. I'd love to go back and fish the Meramec again, but I'm still nervous about doing it at summer pool.

Branson in January and February are my favorite. With that said, I was surprised how much busier the area gets between us coming down for the January tournaments and the Elfrink in late February.

A 1756 with a 90 is probably overloading it. I'd want a 150 on that thing at least for the extra oomph. I'm running an 1860 Legend SS with a 150 right now and I don't have any issues with those riffles. I doubt I could say the same thing if I was running anything less though. Those Weldcrafts are built a lot sturdier than your typical Blazer.

If you want an Etec on a Blazer, I think you will have to head south. Trouts can set you up a great rig with a 60/40 Mercury though. You can't go wrong either way IMO.

I've always enjoyed going down there, but since I started getting in to the winter tournaments that @Phil Lilley hosts, I've REALLY fell in love with going down there. I've got a few buddies that have started going down as well. Hopefully I can convince them to start doing the trout tournaments too. Be a blast to have enough of us together to make renting a big room out worth it.

Sounds like we will be down for a few days during the week later this month. Bringing Cari this time so I won't be hitting it quite as hard, but hopefully we can catch a few fish and get another video out of it anyways.

The fight that those fish had in them was unreal! That one fish I caught just did not want to give up!