Seth

You better start running your traffic thorugh a VPN or proxy or else Phil is gonna h4xx0r your puter!

All things considered, that point going all the way through was the best thing to happen. You really have your hands full if the barb gets stuck under the skin fairly deep.

I wasn't even thinking about the next tournament. Glad I saw this though. Got my team updated with some small mouth hammers. I'm sure they will do horrible since I picked them.

Are you referring to the size of the fish or what?

I fished 10-2pm and ended up catching around 30. There are a lot of tiny 8-10" dinks to weed through to get the decent 13-14" fish. I did have one that was pushing 15". Half came from the first dead water hole and the other half came from the bathroom hole. There weren't any concentrations of fish anywhere below the bathroom hole so I didn't stop to fish any of it. A 1/32oz black marabou jig was the hot lure, but I only had one and broke it off after about 10 fish and resorted to a white trout magnet and green/white rubber leg jig. They were definitely preferring the darker stuff.

Maybe it was Gary Lubbes?

The ones I land usually have hooks stuck everywhere. If I had to guess, most have the front in the mouth and the rear ends up stuck in the body or elsewhere in the head. They can be a booger to get unhooked. It makes you wonder how anything bites those ploppers without getting stuck.

I've thrown the 130 plopper on a nearby lake that is full of dinks and it does seem to weed through a lot of the small fish and find some little better quality fish. There have been plenty of 8-10" eat it too though so who knows.

I didn't realize you had such artistic abilities in you Duane! Those jerkbaits are beautiful!

I found out last year what happens in that situation when I smoked one of the infamous rocks above Roaring Springs below the Sand Ford access. We continued running down river till it was deep enough to shut down and I had 6" of water in the bilge within minutes. All I could do was hammer down and run the few miles back to the ramp. Glad I had a 150 because it was starting to struggle to push the hull by the time we got back due to all the water weight. I've been wanting to fish the Meramec again, but I'm too nervous to try it in my rig with the water this low. It's been fishing a heck of a lot better than the Gasconade has been this year too.

I have had zero luck getting fish to bite again once they blow up on my baits this year. Most of the time they seem to come from nowhere and hit them near the boat so I don't really have any real estate to get them to bite again. The other day I had one about knock the bait in the boat. I'd given up on the cast and was ripping the bait in for another cast and a 15 incher came from out of nowhere in the riffle and chased the plopper all the way to boat. I killed the bait about 12" from the boat and that fish absolutely clobbered it. I've not checked the GoPro, but I'm hoping it picked it up well. Should be pretty cool footage.

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.