Seth

I am meeting dad in a bit and heading down. I'll report how we do later on. May be fun with this wind.

Yes, it's for later on after we start getting fruit. Our peppers and tomatoes always produce some good sized veggies at first, but then they just get more and more stunted as the growing season goes on. I've never side dressed after they start producing fruit. All I've done is mixed in a few inches of compost to the top soil before planting. Everything I read says that heavy feeders like tomatoes require some side dressing once they start fruiting to continue producing good sized veggies.

I got a partner lned up so Unless something comes up last minutethen I will be there.

They are just a couple products that seemed to be recommended often when researching on how to side dress tomatoes. Both products have good ratings on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Tomato-tone-Organic-Fertilizer-YOUR-TOMATOES/dp/B0011UEKKE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431629897&sr=8-1&keywords=tomato+tone http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Earth-Organic-Vegetable-Fertilizer/dp/B000VZRV4C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431629961&sr=8-1&keywords=doctor+earth How do you determine when it "feels right" to side dress your tomatoes? The most common timer that I've come across is when the first fruit is around golf ball size. After that, some recommend once a month while others say you should do it every few weeks after that point all the way up until frost or until you are tired of messing with them.

Our first few peppers and tomatoes are always big and healthy, but the rest seem to stunt. Cucumbers, squash, okra and green beans don't seem to have any troubles though. Do you guys side dress your peppers and tomatoes to keep them producing bigger fruit? If so, what type of fertilizer do you use? I've seen the following two products recommended quite a few times while researching. Is one better than the other? Doctor Earth Home Grown 5-7-3 Espoma Tomato-tone 3-4-6

They can really test a guys patience when they are biting like that. If you can find feeding fish in swifter water, they usually hang on to the bait a bit better on days like that.

I haven't heard crap about fishing the Osage this year. I'd definitely let you know if I knew something.

Looks like there is a good chance of storms all weekend. Hopefully it holds off for a while on Saturday so the kiddos can have a good time.

Is the entry fee still $50 per boat for the Open Buddy tournament?

They stock it heavy and all throughout the day so you shouldn't have any problem catching fish later in the day. I'm not sure if they have all day concessions or not, but I believe the restaurant where you buy your tags is usually open till the early afternoon. Good luck to you and your grandson. Kids fishing are always a lot of fun.

RIP Wayne. May the fish be large and plentiful for you on the other side.

9 of the 11 still had eggs. The other two were males

The green house here at the school district I work for had a bunch of extra plants leftover from their sale. I went out and checked out what they had and they had some cherokee purple tomatoes left. I grabbed a flat along with a flat of brandywine and rutgers. Also grabbed some sweet yellow bell and some jalapenos. It has been pouring most of the day here so I hope things dry out soon enough to where I can get the ground garden area tilled up and ready to go. That is where I had planned on putting the tomatoes this year since I've had them in the raised beds for the past two years. I'd planned on tilling the ground garden area this week, but I just ran out of time. I've been outside working till dark every day this week getting the flower beds cleaned up, edged and mulched as well as cleaning all of the helicopters out of the guttering. My fiance helped with the weeding, mulching and mowed the yard as well. Last night, it started pouring on us right as we were dumping the last load of weeds and branches that we'd removed from the flower beds.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll see if I can find one of those.

I'd never heard of them either until this year. He said he got the seeds from Gurneys online. Here is a link with info on the big rainbow tomatoes. http://www.gurneys.com/product/big_rainbow_tomato/Tomatoes German Queens http://bonnieplants.com/product/german-queen-heirloom-tomato/ We pick up a few of the mortgage lifters and german queens later in May from Walmart. I know some don't care for Bonnie plants, but we've had decent luck growing for them. Big red heirlooms are our favorite so that is all we plant. I think we do a cherry this year too.

I got my raised beds worked up yesterday and will get some compost worked in the next few days unless it pours. Im hoping the rain holds off long enough for me to till up the regular garden area too. Dad had some extra tomatoes so he gave me a few along with some burpless cukes and zucchini seeds. The tomatoes are called big rainbows. Has anybody tried them before? We always do mortgage lifter, brandywine and german queens.

Those are the types of people that give other anglers a bad rap. I'd have just went around and went on to the next docks. There are more docks with brush around them on that lake than a person could fish in a lifetime.

I've never tried warts for crappie. Bandit 300'a are usually on the end of our lines when trolling. One guy I know just uses carolina rigged shad raps and catches them.

I was fishing out of Pa He Tsi near Osage Beach (just around the point from PB2) the other day. It has plenty of light since the bathroom is at the top just across from the ramp so they keep the area lit up pretty decent.

I fished 6-9pm. Caught a few after dark, but mainly during the last few hours of daylight. They never did really turn on and bite like crazy during "power hour" right before dark like the past few trips I made.

9 of the 11 that I cleaned Saturday night were females with eggs. The two that didn't have eggs were barely legal males with there dark spawning colors.

I fished between PB2 and the Glaize bridge Saturday. Fish were not on the banks anywhere. I did catch fish shooting docks in 14-20' of water. Also picked up a few on bluff banks with sunken cedars and on the edge of docks with a lot of sunken brush. They wanted blue/white and blue/silver colored baits the best. If you can't shoot docks, look up videos on youtube and start practicing because it made all the difference the other day. The other two anglers in the boat barely caught anything because they couldn't shoot docks.

I tagged out with another jake this morning from the same farm. The other day a tom stayed just over the ridge gobbling his butt off all morning before the jake I killed came in. Dad said he does that everyday so I snuck in there to where I thought he was roosting well before daylight this morning. It was almost six before I heard him gobble and he was right behind me. I shimmied around the tree to face his direction. A few minutes later he gobbled again and pitched down right in front of me about 40 yards away. My terrible luck continued though and he landed behind the only little patch of brush in this whole section of woods and never offered a shot before moving away. As this was happening, some jakes were roosted close by directly over my right shoulder. They pitched down and were feeding their way towards the gobbler. After a few minutes, I saw some black blobs in the corner of my right eye about 10 yards away. They were so close that I figured they would bust me any moment, but they didn't and kept feeding past me. Once the rear bird go about 20 yards past me, I swung the gun to the right to try and get a shot. Two in the back spotted me and started moving quickly and putting, but the front two birds didn't. They just stretched their necks out to see what had the other two all wound up so I picked one out and fed him some lead shot to the face at 35 yards. I must have angered some turkey gods between last season and this one because I just could not get a shot on a long beard this year. There were four of them that I had in range and they were always behind brush where I couldn't get a shot. I've had that happen plenty of times in the past, but NEVER four freakin times! Nothing wanted to work in worth a darn this year either. We didn't kill a single bird on a decoy set. We had to get in the woods and get after them. Oh well, I hunted hard, learned more about these silly birds, had a lot of fun and I still get to eat several meals of fried wild turkey breast between now and next year.

Thanks and good luck to the rest of you still out chasing thunder chickens.

Fished 6-9pm and ended up with 11 keepers and several throwbacks. There were three of us fishing but I was the only one that caught any keepers. Made me feel bad, but I guess that is a perk of running the trolling motor is that I get to hit the good stuff first. Biggest was 13"and 9 of 11 were sows. Caught a few shooting docks, a few vertically jigging brush piles on the outside of docks in 14-20' of water and a few near brush along bluff walls. A few of my favorite spots where trees hang off the bank in to the water a ways didn't produce anything. Thought for sure there would be some males shallow, but was only able to catch two dinks near the bank. We also caught a mixed bag of fish on top of the crappie. The bluff wall gave up a few nice largemouth between 2-3#, a 3# channel cat, a pair of 10# buffalo that accidentally got snagged in the back and head and several bluegill. When we went to docks, we caught several kentuckies and largemouths off the end of the docks. Blue/white and blue/silver were the best colors. Tried red/white, pink/white and white/chartreuse but they definitely seemed to go for the blue the most.