Seth

Good to hear that it didn't hit ya'll very hard. That's the scary part is not knowing how it will hit you once you do actually get it. My fiance has been exposed so many times lately at work that it aint funny. She was feeling a bit down last week and tested herself twice but both came back negative. She's boosted and I'm just now able to get my booster but haven't done so. I've been around a lot of people lately and I just keep waiting for it to get me but so far so good.

We have a couple cats as well. The orange chonk is Fiona. The black one is Yadi (named after our favorite MLB catcher). He's outside more often than inside when it's warm out but he's been spending most of his time inside lately. He keeps our mouse numbers in check while Fiona lays around like the fat lard that she is and watches them go on by. Fiona showed up in our back yard in early 2014. Our dachshund at the time (Darla) treed her and we decided to keep her. Yadi is 12 or 13 now and has been with us since he was born.

Gunnar Scarlett They enjoy eating, napping and harassing our squirrels that eat all of the bird seed.

I am always reseraching things online for work, fishing, hunting, astronomy, disproving people with real stastistics, etc but I also waste a lot of time on TikTok and Facebook. Maybe I'm just really efficient at researching which leaves more time for TT/FB. 😁

Our roommates that won said that the jig bite sucked at the Boswell, but I told myself that I could make them eat it anyways. Boy was I wrong! 😁 We actually did catch more fish than most people we talked to even using the jigs, but we never caught any size. The two biggest they caught came on a jig though. It might have been the only two fish they caught on jigs all day though.

It will likely have to wait till the Elfrink. Dad comes down with me for RAW and he likes to come back Saturday after the tourney, but that is usually because of the super bowl. I'm going to try and convince him to come down Thursday and leave Sunday, but it will depend on his work schedule.

I didn't even bring a rod to throw them on, but I wish I had. Dragging jerkbaits produced several good fish for anglers.

True freaking story! 😭🥴

There are way too many fish in Taney to worry about sore lipping anything. Those areas get the crap beat out of them nonstop all the time anyways. There are no secrets. Hooking those big fish before a tourney isn't what I'm concerned with anyways but they are a happy bonus. My goal is to fish all of the areas I know and try to figure out which ones are producing the best average size. I started fishing these tourneys in 2017 and we've been in the money over 50% of the time and I attribute that to being able to put together solid limits. Last year was the first time we actually got kicker bites to go with along with our ability to catch a good solid limit and we finished 1st, 4th (out of 90 boats) and 1st. Conditions stayed the same for all three tourneys and we were able to pin point three areas that were holding solid fish but not nearly the same numbers as other areas of the lake and it paid off big. It was an all day grind, but we'd manage to put 8 of the right ones in the boat. Most of the people fishing around us would start running around like chickens with their heads cut off after a few hours of slow fishing. Once I figure out a spot has good fish while prefishing, I stop beating on them and fish other areas. The "spot within a spot" theory usually comes in to play for us on Taney. I may not be near as good at catching those big ones like you or several others I know but I typically make a pretty good showing on tourney day. I may have figured a little something out this past weekend to use in two weeks at the RAW tournament so we'll see how it goes. The fishing was so bad that I'm not positive it is even really something I can rely on as there really wasn't a lot to go off of due to the sheer lack of fish boated. Dad and I will have fun trying though!

We fished the Masters Saturday hoping to repeat last years performance and failed miserably. We boated 13 fish on tournament day for 5.5lbs which still put us in 10th place (if I counted correctly) out of around 50 boats. To say it was tough was an understatement. Many of us hadn't seen fishing that tough for as long as we could remember. Our room mate @Toby from MO and his son ended up getting the win and kept our crews placement streak alive. His Boswell partner Chris and his son stay with us as well and I believe they finished 7th with 6.5# but they only had 6 fish to weigh in. I think over the course of four days, we only managed to boat 42 trout. We usually can put that many in the boat in a single day with ease. We hit everything I knew between the Landing and Fall Creek and never could find any concentration of biting fish. You'd catch one here and there and that was about it. My partner did hook a few good ones the day before the tourney. Two that came off were easily over 20" and the one he did manage to land was a rainbow that was 20" on the dot. The other two that came off very visibly larger. The only two decent fish I caught were a rainbow in the 2# range on tourney day and a 19.25" brown just above Point Royale Sunday morning before we peeled out. Hopefully I'm a little bit more prepared for in two weeks when RAW rolls around because I was absolutely lost this past weekend! Thanks to Lilleys Crew for the great pictures as always! Definitely go check the rest of them out on Facebook if you have an account.

Throw in temps in the 30s and you'll really have the water to yourself. That's about as miserable as it gets.

https://www.tacklehd.com/collections/hd-stealth-jighead I'm not sure what sizes you need, but these range 3/16 to 5/8oz.

1 unit if I'm just out having fun or 4+ units of sustained flow. High flows are tougher to fish, but it makes the fish super predictable and we tend to catch more big fish during those times. My LEAST favorite is when it ramps up to 4 units for a few hours and then back down. Running it up to 2 units is fine and helps the bite IMO but I struggle for atleast an hour or two while the fish get acclimated to the heavy influx of water. The line trash is usually extra bad during that time from all the moss getting kicked up.

It would put a big smile on my face to have high water during some of these trout tourneys! That's my favorite time to fish Taneycomo.

I saw a pile of deer (26 to be exact) and turkeys (hard telling but they were everywhere) in a cut bean field this evening. Nothing ever got closer than 45 yards so no arrows were let loose. That was the most critters I've seen in one sit all season long. This is the side I was hoping the deer would walk through as it would give me an easy sub 30 yard shot. Earlier in the season there would be deer coming up this path every evening. The deer had other plans though and kept coming out across the field to the west and then heading south and staying just out of my comfort range for shooting. The wind was coming out of the north east so once they got to a certain area, they would catch my wind and bolt. Ahh the joys of bow hunting!

I may bow hunt Saturday if the ground is white since it's the last day of 21-22 archery season. Otherwise I'll probably be tying jigs to prepare for our trip to Taneycomo the following weekend. Who knows though. I may get bored and go try to catch some smallies somewhere. Haven't caught any during the winter in a while.

Stagger your warm weather plantings. We've had tomatoes get zapped while out of town on a fishing trip in late May by frost and had to replant. Tomatoes were later than most but produced well. We just wait till June for that stuff anymore. I'm not one of "gotta have maters by July 4th" kind of people.

Unless it's October and the browns are running. All the headlights make you think you're up on the Strip at times. 😁

We mainly caught whites with a few hybrids up to 5# mixed in. I need to go try it further down river and see if I can find some bigger ones. If I could consistently catch hybrids, I'd be pressed to fish for anything else. My PB is only 7# but I've seen some boated that were in that 10-11# range. A couple buddies caught some up to 15#, but that's been many years ago.

I'm fine with not catching a 20" brown next week as long as my name is at the top of the leader board again on Saturday. 😁

You'd think it would happen by sheer accident at some point. The fact that it has happened to darn near everybody that has ever fished Taneycomo out of my boat is just ridiculous at this point.

1) Win RAW tourney on Taneycomo 2) Break 20" mark on brown trout 3) Get top 3 in my bass club 4) Catch a 20+ pound flathead or blue cat 5) Take more youth fishing 6) Put father in law on some good catching trips regardless of species

I know I already posted this, but I actually accomplished it twice since ended up winning the Elfrink tournament as well. Dad and I also took 4th out of 90 boats in the RAW tournament. Our bass fishing went well too and we ended up taking 3rd overall in our club and won more $$$ by a decent margin compared to any prior year. I guess the two main goals I have for this year are to win the RAW tourament with dad and boat a 20"+ brown trout. I'd also like to get my father in law out for some decent "catching" trips this year. Another one would be to take some more kids fishing. Last year I did my first youth tourney with a couple kiddos from the baseball team I help a buddy coach and I had an absolute blast doing that.

I didn't go this weekend, but finished the year strong with plenty of crappie, white/hybrid bass and walleye. Me, dad, brother and a buddy went New Years even since it was so nice and piled up the whites/hybrids. Brother had two walleye, a short sauger and biggest hybrid of the day.

A lot of my grass is still green and I saw a fresh dandelion the other day. It’s crazy!