Seth

I saw that name yesterday and thought it sounded familiar. As soon as I realized who it was, I figured that his fish was caught on a giant swim bait and it was. Could you imagine throwing a 6oz bait all weekend?! That would wear a guy out!

So was anybody else as lost fishing this weekend as I was? Holy cow did I suck it up! I caught a 3.15 kentucky on a whopper plopper about 20 minutes in on Saturday and thought it was going to be a decent day. I broke off one good later in the day and that was it! Sunday I caught a few small keepers and a couple shorts and then called it quits when the heavy rain set in during the early afternoon. The guys in our group that did best fished brush piles. The big one I broke off came off a random brush pile I came across on the graph while fishing around a dock. I guess I need to suck it up and go mark a bunch of brush piles for in the future since it seems like it's more of a summer Big Bass Bash than a fall version anymore with our weather patterns.

I wouldn't mind eating a mess of those!

Good luck! I am done getting beat to death in that area during the Bash. Last year there were monster cruisers everywhere and I was truly scared trying to get from the Gravois to Alhonna to weigh in a fish. I'll be hanging out somewhere on the Nianguas.

I had planned on staying there even before I knew you guys were also going to be there. I didn't want to say anything though to keep all the TackleHD groupies from bothering you. It's going to be a fun weekend!

Who else is joining the fray and fishing the madness? A group of buddies and I have a condo at Red Oak so it should be a good time regardless of how the fishing goes.

It's always a good time down there. I'm glad I at least caught a brown this trip (two to be exact, but both were tiny). I need to save my big brown mojo for the winter tournaments anyways.

Friday 9-28 Dad, his buddy, my brother and I fished from Fall Creek down to just above Lilley's Friday evening and boated quite a few fish. Dad and his buddy used rainbow and yellow powerbait on bottom and my brother and I threw jigs and the pink power worm. Everything worked as long as you were in the middle of the river. I can usually pull fish off of the shallow flats near the bank, but it was dead. Started throwing out towards the middle and it was game on. My brother threw an orange head sculpin/peach jig and I threw a green head sculpin/ginger and both worked well. I've already posted it in a separate thread, but I was lucky enough to hook a 19.75" rainbow that weighed right at 3# off the shallow gravel just below Short Creek on the 1/16oz sculpin/ginger jig. We kept four limits of decent sized fish, but we had to really work to get the nicer fish. There are a lot of little runts between Fall and Short Creek. Most of the better fish that we kept came down closer to Lilleys. The big one was released alive and well for the next angler to enjoy. Saturday 9-30 My brother and I got up early and ventured up to the Narrows about an hour before daylight to throw some Duane Doty jerkbaits. We never had any action until the sun started to come up and then we started to pick up a few. I focused on throwing to the bluff bank and my brother was fishing out in the middle and he was doing much better than me on rainbows. Nothing big, just stockers up to 14". We each managed one little brown around 12". It was pretty well like that all the way up to Lookout. Every once in a while I would pick up a jig and make a few casts and catch some rainbows, but then would go back to the jerkbait in hopes of enticing a big brown, but it never happened. They were being stingy. The number of fish rising up by Lookout that morning was incredible. Even more incredible was the fact that I couldn't hardly get them to bite! I did manage to catch a few on an orange head/olive micro jig. The bite by Lookout was better throwing towards the bluff bank and keeping the jig down deep near the bottom instead of up high. Once you got down away from Lookout, it was the complete opposite. We went back out that evening around 6:00 and fished till dark just above Lilleys. The fishing wasn't as good as the day before, but we still caught probably 25 fish between the four of us. Mom and dad fished powerbait and night crawlers in the back of the boat out deeper and my brother and I threw jigs and the pink worm towards the shallow flat on the same side as Lilley's dock. Unlike the evening before, the flat seemed to bet the better producer instead of the deeper water toward the middle. There were a lot of small fish up on the shallower flat too though and we had to weed through quite a few of them. We ended up keeping 12 more trout with all but a couple being in that 13-15" range before we ran out of light.

Not much going on for us this morning on the jerkbaits. We fished from 6-11am and caught two browns around 12” and several rainbows up to 15”. If I don’t get back out this evening, I will try again in the morning and see if I can dredge up a good brown.

Just on browns. I’ve caught several rainbows over that mark.

I’m up and drinking coffee now and fixing to start making the trek to the Narrows in the dark here in a bit.

I kept seeing schools of nice fish today between Fall and Short Creek and I am pretty sure they were big gizzard shad. Any ody else seeing those? Are those left overa from the floods?

Caught it by Short Creek on a 1/16oz sculpin/ginger jig and 2 lbs line. Fell just shy of the 20” mark and 1oz shy of 3 lbs. I’ll be putting the Doty jerkbaits to work on the browns tomorrow.

Darn.... I will be on my way to Colorado to shoot an elk during that time. 😞

The crave case will be on me for sure!

I'll be up on Lake of the Ozarks with 4000 other idiots trying to catch that lucky $100,000 bass that weekend.

I'm with you 100% as this would be amazing for the bass that get moved around on the river tournaments that I fish. The question is how would you enforce this at lower levels though? Small bass tournaments aren't going to have a marshal to weigh fish and verify the authenticity of what that angler says they caught. I know the kayak crowd uses length, Hog Trough measuring boards and pictures to keep score, but I doubt everybody will want to go by length. Even if you took a picture of a scale, it wouldn't be hard to "add" weight to a fish and snap a picture.

Seeing all the nice browns being posted on Facebook really has me itching to get down there this weekend! I've got to play guide and put some people on some rainbows so we have some fish to eat for Saturday evening, but otherwise I intend to chase browns the entire time. My 20" curse needs to end this weekend!

I was all over the board this season. At one point I think I was ranked as high a #2 or 3, then dropped down to around 15th and then back up to finish at #6. What a roller coaster! Last year was much more consistent for me where as this year I had two really high scoring tournaments to help out with a bunch that were pee poor!

I thought the BFL entry fees were only $250 for boater and $125 for non-boater? That's pretty standard for reservoir tournaments, right? You jump up to the Costa's etc then the price to play definitely increases.

It may have been cold, but we still caught a few.

Nothing like having to shovel snow out of the boat in April to go catch trout.

That's how I feel and I'm heading down next Friday. Those brownies better be hungry because I haven't caught one in FOREVER!