Seth

My buddy was up there today and his report matched yours. Not a ton of fish but most were good sized blacks. They kept 23 with most going 11-13". That's really nice for LoZ.

Sounds like a meme. "I wrecked my boat today. Thanks Obama!"

I was envying you guys knowing you were out there fishing while I was at work. Other than the wind, today was absolutely gorgeous! My buddy and I are hitting the. osage in the am. Hopefully I will have something decent to report for you Hog Wally.

Haters gonna hate. Palaniuk has held his own in the Elites. He has two, should be three, wins and a second and fourth in the classics in his first four years. Not bad for a young gun. You can't deny that he ain't earned his spot up there with the pro's. I hope he takes home the W. I'm sure Snowden and Clunn will be in the top 20, but not win. The hometown guys rarely seem to win.

I was thinking the same thing. It sounds like they hit the one on the shallow side but i am not 100% on that.

Were you closer to the mouth? My buddies were near the Flat Creek bridge on Saturday and they said they never caught anything decent all day but caught the snot out of the little males.

Heard it was on fire near Osceola and Roscoe.

Guess I need to just pucker up and hit the Meramec one of these days. Only gonna learn it by being on it anyways. I run a 70# Maxxum and usually troll in to the current on the Gasconade while fishing. It pulls in all but the fastest riffles I have been in so far.

Figures....the only whites biting on those Flats Saturday was a bunch of dinky males. Nice job getting on the sows.

There is a guy in our bass club that runs a tiller rig with an extended front deck. It's a pretty nice setup and is all a guy really needs for fishing the rivers. I'd love to have a rig like that in the same size that you are getting for the Meramec. I'm to afraid of tearing my boat up to take it on that river. That's one reason I wish I still had my old 1648 with the 50/35 just for the Meramec. I didn't lose sleep hitting stuff in that thing. It was pretty beat up already from the previous owner running the Meramec with it. Plus if I did get it stuck, I could shove it back in the water by myself. My Legend is way too heavy for me to move on my own if it's get's out of the water much at all. Be sure to post some pics of that thing when you get it.

Smalliebigs......that should be a sweet rig for the Meramec! I have only been on center console rigs that had 72" wide transoms and I felt like I didn't have much room between the console and the gunnels. A 52" wide transom will be tight! Should nice to run though since the weight will be perfectly even unlike side console hulls.

Same here on my IPad Air and IOS 7.1.

We had just talked to those guys before they left the dock while we were cleaning crappie.They were back shortly after and we figured they had forgot something till the guy running towards the hotel said they hit a pillar and one guy had a gash on his head. One of my buddies is a county cop and he made the call to 911. We hung around till the first responders showed up and then headed back to our room. The Skiles guy who was driving said he has been coming down there since the late 80's and made that run hundreds of time but just lost his bearings on where he was for whatever reason. He is also the guy holding up the state record paddlefish on bridge ports we page. The owner at Flat Creek came down and we talked to him for a bit. He said that the corps won't do anything about those pillars and that there have been several accidents involving them.

That post was made July 30, 2013.

Dandy!

It wasn't much of one. Fished 12am-4am and only caught three. Slowest opener ever for us. We didn't bother going out last night or this morning due to exhaustion and the weather.

I went Friday. Water was gin clear and the fish were good sized stockers. The bridge and pond holes were the best areas for me.

Nice to finally meet you Doty. We ran over to Peach Orchard after talking to you and caught several shorts off of some brush in 20' of water. We also caught a few just dragging our jigs behind the boat and letting the wind push us. We ran back and finished the day the last few hours of the day along the main river bluff banks of point 15. That is where we should have stayed all day I guess because we caught mostly keepers there. Too little too late though. We ended up with 12 keepers total. The Flat Creek side of point 15 didn't produce much for us for crappie but did offer up several scrappy Kentuckies about 12" long. My buddies boat stayed up on the flats around the bridge and caught a bunch of little male whites. Not a single sow was caught that I know of. We never caught any whites all day, just crappie, bass and bluegill.

Good report! Do you rig your beaver baits on a jighead or trig them? I've tried both, but not sure which I prefer. Right now, I think I like the shakey head for rock and trig for pitching around wood. I want to get some swivel jigs like the biffle hardhead and try swimming them fast along the bottom this summer when it warms up. Haven't seen anybody doing much of that yet.

Awesome fish!

It's only after it gets cool. I think gar is delicious, you just gotta eat it warm.

I've had pickled grass carp that was really good. It wasn't something I could eat a lot of, but it was a good snack. In the past we would pressure cooked asian carp fillets with seasoning salt and lemon pepper and make fish patties out of them. Those were awesome! We vacuum sealed two patties to a package and froze them. They were great for a quick meal. Just open the package, throw in a skillet with a little olive oil till it's crispy. Throw on a piece of bread, a slice of cheese and little tartar sauce and enjoy!

Free lining a minnow through a bunch of gar on light tackle is a blast. You have to use a small section of heavy mono leader though or their teeth will cut right through light line since they usually swallow the hook. A 4-5' long nose can put up a heck of a fight. It's cool to watch them stalk a Zara Spook down and nail it. It's sort of like poor man's muskie fishing.

My guess would be the fish was hanging in deep water and they just took a crack shot at it and grazed it. Speaking of spear fishing and bass, here is a video of Eric Young from Off the Hook: Extreme Catches spear fishing for smallmouth on some tailwater in Montreal. http://on.aol.com/video/off-the-hook--extreme-catches--free-dive-spearfishing-under-solid-ice-517842098

Can you guys really tell the difference in fish catching ability between the pill heads and round heads? I've used the PJ's and my own hand tied round head jigs and couldn't tell that the fish preferred one over the other as long as the colors were the same.