Seth

The amount of waste on these fish is crazy! I got over a 5 gallon bucket worth of skin, fat and mud streak out of all of these fish. As far as eating, they are OK, but I definitely prefer other fish like crappie and white bass. Since I crappie fish quite a bit, I usually just give away all of my paddlefish. I've got a list of folks who go bonkers over the stuff. I am going to keep a fillet and try boiling it in a cajun crab boil and see how it turns out. My current favorite way to cook it is to dip 1" strips in melted butter than has a bunch of cajun seasoning in it and then immediately throwing it on a hot charcoal grill for 3 minutes on each side. That was delicious!

Took a buddy, the father in law and one of his buddies up to LoZ for a day of snagging. It was around 7:45am when we arrived at Wigwam to an already fairly packed parking lot. It took us a bit to get things figured out, but we ended up all limiting out with six small males and two sows (a 47 and 54 pounder). We caught them at the 60mm and 53mm. They were tight to the bottom early on when it was cloudy and then started suspending later in the day when the sun popped out. This post has been promoted to an article

Thinly scored suckers fried at 350 for 6 minutes in the ticket. Most fish i only fry 4-5 minutes.

Me, dad and two buddies went down around 10 am and stood around like ding dongs in the rain for a few hours. The water is up several feet and up over all of the walk ways, but not muddy yet. Visibility was still around a foot. Fishing was slower than I thought it would be. Six or seven fish was all I managed, but one was a 19" rainbow that had came up out of the river. It's fins were in perfect shape and the flesh was very pink instead of the chalk white like your typical stocker. I caught most of my fish on a 1/16oz black and yellow marabou jig. The others caught all of their fish on an orange powerbait trout worm drifted along the bottom. Most bites came in the swiftest part of the riffles just before they dumped. You had to use a pretty good sized split shot to get the bait down or you didn't get bit.

If they think that is bad, they should go to an actual trout park in Missouri!

If this keeps up until CAM, we could be in for some REALLY fun fishing! I love fishing when the gates are open!

Big fish tournaments are a crap shoot anyways. You could have 20 boats fishing the same pattern in the same area and one person lucks in to a giant while everybody else just catches dinks. That's fishing for you. When you can bring in a limit of quality fish, then you're on to something, but that doesn't mean a thing in a big fish tournament. Take LoZ for instance. You can go out and catch five four pounders and stand a good chance at winning a check in nearly every regular tournament. However, that may not win you anything in the Big Bass Bash. How many times have you seen somebody weigh in a giant bass with nothing to go with it? They obviously weren't on a good pattern to catch a quality limit, but a loan big fish can pop up anywhere.

People don't get that. I've told people exactly how I caught my fish and where plenty of times. By the time they got out on the water to try and replicate it, the conditions have changed and that bite isn't happening. Some even have the nerve to come back and complain about you giving them bad information. I just record my trips and post the videos online so people can see I'm not lying. Some people just don't have the ability to fish the conditions and change things up. That skills just comes with time on the water and learning to feel things out as the day goes on.

@fishinwrench is the ethanol in fuel actually bad for the engines themselves or just the fact that it can eat away at hoses? Is this still the case on modern hoses or have they been built to with stand ethanol now? I have never ran any type of additive in my fuels and strictly run e10 87 octane with no issues, but my boat also gets used nearly every weekend and ran quite a bit so it sees fresh fuel nearly every trip out.

Flat Creek resort access is another one

I saw a report on Facebook saying that a new wave of fish has showed up. I would say start at point 15 and then work your way up river and focus on the river bends. Be sure to hit the outside bends of the channel and ease up on to the mud flat side. Hopefully you will find some. Good luck!

The little males were being caught last week up around Walnut Springs. Didn't hear or see any sows being caught though. Water temps were 48-52.

I should have also mentioned that I tend to get more longevity out of the 29/31 series batteries versus when I have went the 27 series route. The bigger series batteries don't get run down nearly as far as the 27's and I think that is also a big factor in how long your batteries will last.

Just get a Walmart Everstart 29dc battery and make sure you charge it up all the way as soon as you get back from a day on the water. I've been running my 24v Maxxum 70# thrust on a pair that I've had for over four years now and they are still working well. I"m going to replace them this spring before my bass club starts back up again though just to be safe as I could tell last year that they weren't quite as strong after a full day of tournament fishing on the rivers as they had been in previous seasons. The key is to charge them up right away and keep the water levels in check and they will serve you well. If somebody claims a battery is junk, they probably didn't know how to properly maintain it.

His brother Matt was right there as well. Having two brothers make the classic alone would be awesome, let alone have them fighting each other for that top spot on the last day!

Snagging gets better and better as April goes on. The fish being caught this early in the season are mainly local fish. Once the water gets in to the upper 50's, a lot of fish will start pushing up the James and keep going until they run out of water. Where they stack up depends on the water levels. If it's high enough, they will run clear to Springfield Dam and if it's low, they will stack up like cord wood in the Walnut Springs and McCords Bend areas. The number of big sows that you catch will also improve. Pressure is lower as well due to most people having the same mentality that you do. They snag hard right when season opens up and burn themselves out.

I know the catching wasn't worth a darn for Christie today, but watching him skip his bait in to those tight spots in around docks was fascinating. It's crazy that he couldn't get five keeper bites by pounding docks like that for an entire day.

True. I had my engine data pulled this past fall when I had it in for it's three year tune up and it had 203 hours as well as several faults related to temps and other random stuff. The engine has been running great though.

That is typical. The fish are stacked opening day and then they get hammered on and scatter really bad. We always hit it the first day for first dibs on all of the local fish and then hold off until April when they actually start running.

Casting across the flats with surf gear is our most productive method down there. Hard to troll for them on flats since they are shallow and you push them away from the boat as you drive near them. If you have side imaging, you can ride the ledge and see if they are up on the flats from a distance.

What year? I ran an 08 115 for four tears and now a 13 150 for four and both were and have been great.

I have more fun putting others on these big fish than catching the myself anymore. A lot of people I take haven't caught anything that weighs 1/4 of what a big spoonbill weighs. It's fun, but I would rather chase crappie, whites or trout this time of year. Come late May, it's pretty well nothing but river bass till mid October. I try to avoid fishing for bass outside of that time simply because I like to fish for too many other species.

Sitting at 1320 for this tournament right now. I don't think I have ever broke 1300 points in a tournament so hopefully none of my guys bomb out tomorrow.