bferg

Bill Ortiz won that year , during practice all he did was pull cranks and even started day one pulling cranks but it wasn't to productive so he switched to 3 way crawler harness pulled right over tops of the flooded buck brush ....he said he didn't have any of his crawler harnesses in his boat he had to hand tie while out on the water and the decision paid off ... I fished that year as a co-angler that year and all my pros were pulling crankbaits....I drew Chase Parsons on day two and he was a fun guy to fish with .

Hit up Rocky Branch before work this AM in search of topwater Stripers. On the water at 5:45 and off at 7:45. Short but decent morning. Ended up a Striper shy of the Beaver Slam. Were in Cedar/Ford creek area and around the islands in RB. Saw a few surfacing fish through out the morning- enough to keep us throwing topwater. Only had one blow-up on a Whopper Plopper. Fish hit it 3 times with no hook up. Somehow if that thing gets within an inch of my pants it hooks me but a fish can swipe it 3 times unscathed! When the sun got high we started trolling some flicker shads around main lake points. Caught 2 bass, 1 white, an eye and a hybrid. Marked lots of fish all morning. If I was a bait guy I would probably spend some time around the islands in RB... Marked quite a few fish in there especially. Wish I would have had more time to chase them. Might try again tomorrow AM.

Ramp looked good- on my sonar. The water is halfway up the bathroom building that is at the top of the parking lot. We essentially launched off the road where it usually goes into the parking lot with no issues. There was one other trailer there. Parking will be an issue if more than a few people try to launch there.

Got on the water Friday at 6:00 PM. Caught 12 or so fish between then and dark- the best being a nice small jaws. Caught most of our fish pitching a jig or on a spinnerbait. Got into a few schooling fish in the front half of Viney. This morning we got on the water at 6:30 and spent an hour sitting on a dock waiting out another heavy rain and lighting storm. Spent the entire day pitching jigs and throwing spinner baits. Caught 15 or so- with a couple of keepers in the mix. Off the water at about 1:30. The bite really shut down after about 11:00 for some reason- it was cloudy with a good wind blowing. Almost all of our jig fish came pitching trees. Usually in 12-14 feet of water on the deep side of the trees. Had to pitch it right onto the wood to really get bit. Spinner bait fish came on wind swept points usually with some buck brush that was totally submerged. Again 12-14 feet of water. We got bit on all white and chartreuse and all white spinner baits but the best color was the War Eagle Mouse. We were pitching 5/16 oz PB&J Jewel Pro Spider Jig. We tried various color trailers (all Zoom Speed Crawls). Didn't seem to matter nearly as much as location location location. I wouldnt say we found a great pattern but we scratched out a good trip. We have minimal experience pitching a jig into that kind of cover so it was fun to figure it out. One bite we expected but could never get was dragging the jig through buck brush on the old bank line. We didn't catch anytbing that way- most our jig fish were tight to hard wood. Tight lines. sorry for the sideways photos!

Quillback: what are you doing on this side of the state line? I was counting on one of your Big M reports before I head over there Fri/Sat!

Perfect! I have a small Lowe Roughneck. All I need is small patch of grass/gravel/concrete that I can back into...

awesome fish and great report! Glad to hear about some top water action.

Forgive me if this is already posted somewhere but is the ramp at Big M open?

Heading over on the 19th-20th for an over night trip. I see Viney is closed currently- anyone have and over/under on when it might re-open? I am thinking we might need to make alternate arragements.

Thanks guys- I will just have to wait a while I guess.

Anyone been up near rocky branch in the last couple days? I'm thinking of running out to look for stripers one morning... is it chocolate milk?

This isn't about outsiders telling anyone what to do. These things don't get done without help from law enforcement and first responders. And law enforcement and first responders had their hands full with emergencies and plenty of non-professional idiots doing idiot things today. That's why this should have been postponed or shortened by a day. If literally a single first responder was tied up with this today it was too much.

Fixed it for you. Those jerseys ain't cheap!

Started coming down steady here in Bentonville again. It does seem like a lot of this has gone further north. I have some friends in McDonald county MO and it is a bad situation up there.

Amen on enforcement! Went to LOZ every single summer when I was a kid. I would never go to that lake today for fear of my personal safety. I fish Table Rock fairly regularly and fish Beaver often. In my 8 years living and fishing here I have been stopped a total of zero times- that includes fishing and wakeboarding- lots of days on the water. No excuse for a guy who is on the water as much as me never encountering law enforcement.

FLW posted this picture this AM. Most days I would trade places with a pro angler in a heartbeat... but this office is looking pretty good today.

I read an interview with him where he said he caught a bunch of post spawn smallies in one spot that were long but skinny then basically lucked into a couple of decent largemouth fishing his way back to weigh in. He seemed to have zero confidence that he actually had a pattern or ability to back it up today. Said he had one small mouth spot he caught all the fish from. Unless of course he was sandbagging but does that sound like something a professional fisherman would do?

Awesome report. That's some solid info and sounds like an a great day on the water!

I am not a tournament guy and I am not a fan of how many tournaments these lakes host. Mainly I can't stand everyone thinking they are KVD. But: a healthy fishing industry creates healthier fisheries. It generates more money and more people who care and have a voice. You might not like what MDC or AGF does today but can you imagine how bad it would be if there were not passionate fisherman engaged and caring about management? I wish the tournaments would do more to help increase spawn success and decrease mortality rates (which I understand are low already as a percentage but there are so many tournaments the absolute numbers become meaningful). Perhaps a catch and immediate release season only during the spawn or prohibiting tournaments when water temps reach a certain level in summer would be a balanced approach. The tournaments need to better leverage technology too... there is absolutely no reason people need to put fish in a livewell and slosh them around all day then go through the weigh in process to have a tournament. Internet access and smart phones provide a new way to do tournaments at little cost if anyone really wanted to.

Check out this picture from this article. Sounds like the entire upper lake is unfishable and loaded with debris already. Only gonna get worse. https://www.flwfishing.com/news/2017-04-27-storylines-pros-jammed-up-by-debris

http://beaver.uslakes.info/Level.asp this is showing 1124.13 as of 8:00PM

Weather Underground now showing 1.8 inches Friday and 4.6 inches Saturday. 6+ inches in 2 days is pretty epic...

I'm sure they will- this isn't their first rodeo. Lightening is the real threat but if that materializes they will just shut it down. The updated rain forecast for the weekend is over 4.5 inches between Friday/Saturday.

My main questions are: how can one set the hook without rocking the boat and why would you want to? Sucks about the reels though... hopefully the new set up is better.

Good luck to those guys. Looks like Friday and Saturday will be miserable in terms of weather. With the color moving down the lake and the quickly rising water it would take a pro to catch them this weekend. In my (limited) experience fishing gets brutal when the water comes up this quickly.