Seth

I saw a report on Facebook saying that a new wave of fish has showed up. I would say start at point 15 and then work your way up river and focus on the river bends. Be sure to hit the outside bends of the channel and ease up on to the mud flat side. Hopefully you will find some. Good luck!

The little males were being caught last week up around Walnut Springs. Didn't hear or see any sows being caught though. Water temps were 48-52.

I should have also mentioned that I tend to get more longevity out of the 29/31 series batteries versus when I have went the 27 series route. The bigger series batteries don't get run down nearly as far as the 27's and I think that is also a big factor in how long your batteries will last.

Just get a Walmart Everstart 29dc battery and make sure you charge it up all the way as soon as you get back from a day on the water. I've been running my 24v Maxxum 70# thrust on a pair that I've had for over four years now and they are still working well. I"m going to replace them this spring before my bass club starts back up again though just to be safe as I could tell last year that they weren't quite as strong after a full day of tournament fishing on the rivers as they had been in previous seasons. The key is to charge them up right away and keep the water levels in check and they will serve you well. If somebody claims a battery is junk, they probably didn't know how to properly maintain it.

His brother Matt was right there as well. Having two brothers make the classic alone would be awesome, let alone have them fighting each other for that top spot on the last day!

Snagging gets better and better as April goes on. The fish being caught this early in the season are mainly local fish. Once the water gets in to the upper 50's, a lot of fish will start pushing up the James and keep going until they run out of water. Where they stack up depends on the water levels. If it's high enough, they will run clear to Springfield Dam and if it's low, they will stack up like cord wood in the Walnut Springs and McCords Bend areas. The number of big sows that you catch will also improve. Pressure is lower as well due to most people having the same mentality that you do. They snag hard right when season opens up and burn themselves out.

I know the catching wasn't worth a darn for Christie today, but watching him skip his bait in to those tight spots in around docks was fascinating. It's crazy that he couldn't get five keeper bites by pounding docks like that for an entire day.

True. I had my engine data pulled this past fall when I had it in for it's three year tune up and it had 203 hours as well as several faults related to temps and other random stuff. The engine has been running great though.

That is typical. The fish are stacked opening day and then they get hammered on and scatter really bad. We always hit it the first day for first dibs on all of the local fish and then hold off until April when they actually start running.

Casting across the flats with surf gear is our most productive method down there. Hard to troll for them on flats since they are shallow and you push them away from the boat as you drive near them. If you have side imaging, you can ride the ledge and see if they are up on the flats from a distance.

What year? I ran an 08 115 for four tears and now a 13 150 for four and both were and have been great.

I have more fun putting others on these big fish than catching the myself anymore. A lot of people I take haven't caught anything that weighs 1/4 of what a big spoonbill weighs. It's fun, but I would rather chase crappie, whites or trout this time of year. Come late May, it's pretty well nothing but river bass till mid October. I try to avoid fishing for bass outside of that time simply because I like to fish for too many other species.

Sitting at 1320 for this tournament right now. I don't think I have ever broke 1300 points in a tournament so hopefully none of my guys bomb out tomorrow.

Awesome! I have done really well up Flat Creek in the past, but I figured the water was a bit too cold for them to move up in there yet so I never even tried it. Guess I was wrong.

We boated nine fish between 12am-5am and then two more later that afternoon. Two of them had tags. Our numbers should have been more, but we had a terrible time with rolling fish and not burying the hooks in to them. Everything we caught was up around the Walnut Springs area. The 72 pounder was caught while three of us were fishing a big tree for crappie. One of the guys decided to make a few cast with the snagging rod and ended up hitting it. I've got it all on GoPro, which I am working on editing right now. I'll try to remember to post the video on here as well once I have it done and uploaded to YouTube.nThe difference in the number of fish I graphed before daylight and after we got back out there that afternoon was staggering. Boat traffic and daylight really scatter those fish in a hurry. We also did some crappie fishing Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. The only way we could get bit was fishing big wads of brush and trees in water 20-25' deep. The fish were about 10' down. Wednesday produced 8 keepers and Thursday produced 9 for us with plenty of shorts. This post has been promoted to an article

I recommend heading up river and fishing from the river bend below the Walnut Springs ramp on down to the next river bend. That are produced a lot fish the first two days. It also wasn't getting hit nearly as hard as water closer to Flat Creek.

We hit Taneycomo for a few hours before heading back home from our annual snagging trip to the James River. I ran all the way up to Fall Creek and drifted down below Short Creek. Jigs produced the most action by far, but I also caught a few on the pink trout worm or trout magnet under a float. Most were 10-12", but we did catch a couple that were flirting with that 1# mark. The best are was from the mouth of Short Creek down to where it drops off on the creek side. They were piled in there pretty heavy. A couple of the docks up closer to Fall Creek had a lot of fish just below them in the current seams as well. Not sure if jig color mattered much. I threw black/yellow and white/grey and my buddy threw sculpin/peach and they all produced.

Yep, that was me and thanks.

Opening day is crazy down there, but it wilL die down in a few weeks. We snag at night early in the season for this reason. We crappie fished Wednesday evening and thursday afternoon. Only way we caught them was by jigging around brush piles in 20’ of water between Flat Creek and Walnut Springs . Managed 8 keepers Thursday evening and 9 on friday. Caught quite a few shorts as well. They were down around 10’ deep for the most part.

That's why we always snag at night early in the season. There will be a few boats, but a lot of people aren't comfortable out there in the dark and get off the water.

With the weather forecast, I imagine it's going to be busy! All the fair weather guys will be out in full force.

We are coming down Wednesday through Friday and staying at Flat Creek. Plan on getting down Wednesday in time to do some graphing and a little bit of crappie fishing, chilling out and then be out there at midnight to start ripping. Probably going to spend the rest of time chasing whites and crappie. Taneycomo might on the list for Friday morning before we head back home.

It's actually closer to put in at the public access by Bridgeport and run up to point 15 than it is to run there from the Flat Creek access. I measured it on Google Earth this moring while trying to decide which one I want to put in at when we snag Thursday morning.