Seth

Lots of fluids and cover up my body in sun protective clothing. Keeping that sun off of my has made a world of difference in how I feel after fishing in the heat for 8 hours on tournament days.

I was told he won a lot more than that after incentives kicked in.

Clifford Pirch sure made a come back! He only weighed 7 something on day 1 and then had almost 20 the next three days! Now I know what they mean by "you can't win it on the first day, but you can lose it".

If that rod is a buggy whip, you are going to lose a lot of fish on a countdown unless you really pepper them on the hookset. You need a fairly decent backbone for that type of stuff. I throw my smaller countdowns on a medium light spinning rod at Taneycomo. Edit: @Johnsfolly nailed it. I was just typing my reply as he posted his.

I could have picked anybody else besides Hank cherry and probably be up over 1000. My others picks actually weren’t too bad this time.

Doing OK aside from my E class pick. Hank Cherry is third from last and killing me!

Most of the break offs were on the hookset due to my line being old. OnE fish that buated off was due to it being nice and then burying itself in moss. He was stuck for a while and I finally just pulled till the line gave. Later on I saw him chillin in the riffle with my lure in its mouth. I had another rod with fresher line and didnt have the break off issues. My own fault for being cheap and trying to stretch out the life of 2# line that was over a year old.

I think most of mine are 1/80th with #10 hooks. Definitely not the smallest micro out there, but much smaller than your typical marabou jig that you would typically fish straight. I'm fishing them on a 6' Falcon Ultralight, Pflueger President 6920 and 2# Pline. That 2# is key as it allows me to actually cast the micro 25-30'. Most of the fish I am targetting aren't too far out and in big schools. Stand up stream enough so that you can swing that jig around in to their faces and shake it as long as possible before it's out of the strike zone. You're pretty well force feeding them, but eventually one of them won't be able to resist. I've caught plenty of them using just a plain jig head in the same size. You have to react fast on the hook set fishing like that. They can spit that jig faster than you would believe.

Just make sure you guys don't pick Jacob Wheeler. I'm sure he will have one of his few bad tournaments since I'm going with him again.....

Sir, in this day and age we relay our retorts via memes. Therefore, proper etiquette requires you to reply with something such as this.

I know what I'm throwing at the CAM tourney next year!

Dad and I were bored and headed down around 3pm. We started out near the steps on the upper end of the park as there were a lot of fish laying there. I started with a gold head olive micro jig that I could just barely reach the fish with on 2# test and caught several in short order. Dad was using a white micro and an orange powerbait trout worm and caught a few. A white trout magnet produced a few for me there as well. We then moved down below the second cleaning station. An orange trout worm/ 1/32oz green/white rubber leg jig and a white trout magnet produced several more fish for me. Dad tried velveeta cheese beneath a float, but they weren't showing much interest. It seemed like they wanted something moving. My fish count ended up being 14, but should have been around 20 if I hadn't broken several off. Dad ended up catching 5 or 6. Water was fairly clear with a slight green tint to it. If you go down, I'd be sure to have some micro jigs on hand. They have produced the most bites for me by far during my last two outings. I'm not sure color matters much as long as it's small and you shake it in front of their face long enough.

From 3rd to 15th..... This pretty well sums up fantasy season so far.

I figured Wheeler would show up again since I skipped him this tourney after burning me last time. I believe I only have two in the top 50 so far.

I didn't even bother reading the pundit reports this time. Maybe I'll screw up and make better picks this time in doing so.

I may have sprayed a cow on the bank the first time I put my first Legend SS in the river. I've matured a lot since then though. Also, you have full permission to make fun of my buddy for his girlish laugh.

I was there a few weeks ago and didn't have near that many problems with kayakers. They were around, but they were far from clogging up the river. It'd take 50 kayakers to pull that off on most areas of Taneycomo due to how wide it is and I doubt I saw that many kayakers during my four day stay. I'm on the Gasconade all the time so maybe I am just used to running in to groups of floaters on much smaller bodies of water and don't think much of it anymore.

Sounds very similar to my experience with throwing a white RC STX when I was down there a few weeks ago. I committed about six hours across a couple days early and when the water first cranked up to it and I think I had five or six follows and three confirmed strikes from browns. Of the three strikes, I broke one off on the hookset because it absolutely murdered thet lure and I just jerked way too hard. Another smacked it, but never got hooked up and the other was on long enough to jump twice and tail walk before coming unbuttoned. Everything looked to be in that 18-22" range. Nothing humongous. There were a few aggressive stocker bows in between to keep my head in the game and at east let me reel something in.

The smallmouth management actually area runs down the Jerome bridge that sits just above Little Piney. Fishing is better around Riddle and gets tougher the farther down you go do to the extra fishing pressure. The gauge at Jerome was reading 2.00 this past weekend so it's going to start getting really skinny in some areas. You can also put in at Boiling Springs for $5. The next access down from there is Bell Chutes, which is about 20 miles down river from Boiling Spring since the Jerome access has never been re-opened.

I did really well with a jig the evening before in the Lookout eddy when the water was running. The current really pushes those fish in to that area and the boat will stay put fairly well without much work on the trolling motor.

I think my crappie videos are the most boring of any that I've made, but they seem to get the most views. It's crazy!

Both. There were a lot of fish midging on the shallow gravel point at the upper end of the rip rap bank closet to the narrow channel in a few feet of water, but there were also some big hoards of stockers hanging out between the two rip rap banks. When the wind got to blowing hard enough to put a good chop on the surface, it didn't seem to matter where you threw and you got bit. The takes were also much more aggressive when the wind was blowing versus when things were calm.

I can't say I have ever found one on a trout, but have seen them attached to smallmouth and suckers a lot in the cooler months.

Footage is from the weekend before last. I caught 20 rainbows in a couple hours that morning using a 1/100 gold head olive micro jig that I tied up below a float on the fly rod. Never caught anything big, but had lots of action that morning. This was the first time in a few years that I had actually used the fly rod so my flyrodsmanship was a bit rusty. Dad was in the back of the boat using an orange head brown body micro on a spinning rod and holding his own as well.