Seth

Can't miss my rig, it's the orange Lrgend SS. Were you guys still fishing when we ran back down to short creek? I only recall seeing one boat by the narrows and they were teeling in a fish.

I forgot to mention that I seen a big walleye swimming around KOA campground. I dropped my white jig in front of him, buthe didn't pay any attention.

Fishing was really good on sculpin orange and white jigs this morning in the trophy area. We landed around 50 fish. The two biggest were 17.5" and 19" rainbows with fat bellies and lots of color. This evening was much slower with the sun out, but did manage a few more. My aunt and step mom each caught a limit on oower bait just above short creek. I couldnt catch anything on a jig or trout magnet down there.

Where at? There is a guy here by us with an inboard tracker like yours. Please tell me that ain't you and I was too dumb to remember your face from March on the arock when I met you.

The trash wasn't too bad, but it was pretty muddy. I threw a pink trout magnet under a float for a while and only got a few bites and caught one. I ran up and fished just below Fall creek the last half hour of light and caught six on a 3/32oz white jig. Lots of bites, just hard to hook. My jig skills are a bit rusty. Water wasn't too bad up there. Could see several feet. It cut loose raining on the way back so I got soaked.

We went down by Monkey island and caught a few on power bait and white jigs. Lots of hits on the white jig, but missed a bunch. I couldn't hardly run it earlier today due to all the junk clogging up my jet. Most of the brush is on the north side of the river now though so you can run it and fish with out any trouble. I was wondering if it is like this all the way to the dam or if Fall creek is what has everything muddied up down this way?

I feel the same way. Tournaments are a lot of fun, but like you said, it puts a lot of nice fish in close proximity to public accesses. You know a few of those get caught by somebody drowning worms or minnows just trying to catch some fish to eat and hauled home. You also have guys who will "ramp camp" if there was a tournament recently at a nearby access. It's not very sporting in my opinion, but it's definitely effective. I'm not a lake fishermen, but I have heard of some pretty epic sacks of fish caught around PB2 following the big bass bash and other big tournaments. It's a shame that the guys that had the big smallmouth only had three fish total. They still got 6th and only had three fish!

36 boats entered and only 18 weighed in. 10 something took first and we had fourth with 7.53. Should of had 8.5-9 pounds, but I lost a solid 2.5 pound small mouth that would have replaced a 12 incher we had in the live well and put us in second. The muddy water made for some tough fishing. Most guys had 2-3 keepers. There were some good ones caught though. I believe big largemouth was 3.9 pounds and one of my buddies got big smallmouth with a 4.35 pounder! It was 21-22" if I had to guess and an absolute beauty of a fish!

Nice report. I've never fished a fluke on a jighead like that. May have to give it a whirl some day.

I'm hoping to make it up one day that weekend.

I got my order from swing oil baits today. Frank had some health issues slow down the processing of my order so he threw in several extra pieces to MORE than make up for it. he didn't have to do that at all but he went above and beyond to make me a VERY satisfied customer.

That is cool! I have caught quite a few largemouth doing something similar, usually on dock cables.

We had a good tournament. There were four bags over 9 pounds weighed. I had my best day ever on the water and caught a 10.36 pound bag of largemouth and got second place.. The weirdest thing was I couldn't catch a smallmouth to save my life! Normally, I tend to catch more brown than green bass. Most fish were pretty roughed up from spawning.

You're a natural!

I don't either, but I don't have sponsors paying me to fish. If I did, I'd add all sorts of flare to my fish catches!

Chigger craws, paca craws, Zoom critter craws and Zoom Speed Craws are what I carry for craw baits. They are all green pumpkin or watermelon colored.

Bass Pro Shops Pro Qualifier is a good reel for $100. They mark them down to $80 pretty often. If your gift card is only for Tacklewarehouse then the Pro Qualifiers aren't an option.

The other guys I talked to were slaying them in less than 3-8' of water. We should have been fishing even shallower I guess. One guy caught 21 Saturday including a 71 pound monster.

Does it still count if you fish it on a swivel jig?

No doubt about that! It could just about eat my biggest small mouth for a snack!

I have a buddy from Salem, MO that starts off a lot of his sentences with "Like I say". We like to keep count and joke about it later on. My fiance works with a nurse who is also from Salem and apparently she says that phrase a lot too.

Tough crowd! So for you doubters, what would be the proper procedure to take so that even you would believe a fish's weight? Obviously, weighing a fish and then later verifying that the scale is accurate in front of a camera isn't enough.

All in all, I seriously, like, suck at grammar and punctuation. But, for all intensive purposes, I have always been pretty good at spelling. I'm guilty of leaving out entire words when I type something. My fingers are outpacing my brain when I type I guess LOL.

That's one downfall about tournaments is that it puts a lot of nice fish in a small area easily accessible to bank anglers. I imagine a lot of the fish get taken home and cleaned. If there has been a tournament during the previous two weeks at ramps within 20 miles, the "ramp campers" in our club will run to those area's and sit there all day long. It's smart and usually puts them in the money, but most of the guys don't have patience to do it.

Oneshot, isn't your 70hp a prop? I don't recall you saying anything about having a jet in the past.