smallmouthjoe

I would also put it in the five to six category. Great fish, I love that feeling when you first hook a big one, there's that still moment when you don't know if you set the hook on a fish or are hung up. I think I know where that pond is, I may have to do a ninja night fishing trip.

Could have been but I've never seen a fish that was that full. I thought she was going to explode. But your probably right it wouldn't make much sense to spawn right before winter unless there was abnormally high water temperatures all throughout the winter in that particular location.

Started out around 9:00 this morning fished from the actual dam down past the low water bridge. The water is up and slightly stained, as if I need to tell you that. Started the morning throwing a white SB around cover and came up with only two small LM with it. I then switched to a bumble bee norman crank and caught my largest fish of the day, a big and healthy spot that appeared to be full of eggs. I would guess she was around 16" and weighed around three. I noticed she had a crayfish down her gullet so after fishing the crank for a little while with no results I switched to a booyah pb&j 3/16 jig with a green pumpkin chigger on the back. That yielded my second biggest of the day which was a LM that was around 14" and a few smaller ones. Great morning I'm glad I had the chance to go. I was disappointed that I left all my topwaters at home there was quite a bit of surface action all morning. Take care.

I've done really well with the fast retrieve jerkbait method you have in your article, but for some reason when it comes to any twitch and pause method I can't get it to work. I may be too impatient.

I think I may hit it this Sunday. Thanks for the info.

Hey man, have you gotten in contact with anyone at Missouri State? A couple members of our AFS subunit are grad students who study mussels and I'm sure that they could help you if you wanted.

The last time I was on The Finley it looked like to me that a good potion of them had already transitioned into their winter haunts. They'll move to deeper slower water but can still be caught with very slow moving bottom bouncers. I've heard that they can be caught with suspending jerkbaits in the cold season but I have not had very much luck with them in the past. But I'm not a very good jerkbait fishermen.

How far did you go down and what species where they?

After two entire weeks of not fishing I finally had a chance to go this last weekend. No big trip just a trip to the Sac Trail to catch some small LM. I only fished for three hours but it was so relieving and therapeutic. For all of you that don't know about the Sac trail I will enlighten you being that the place has all but been blown out. Plus I'm sure its no secrete. When I first started going there about three years ago it was a great little local place to do some fishing. In the past I've caught fish that were close to 3 out of a stream that is smaller than the upper part of The Finley. The north-side sewage treatment plant dumps its effluent into it so there is algae growth and of course there is the recovery zone down from the plant where you can find no SM. But the largemouth that are there enjoy a somewhat good life living successfully off the pumped up base of the food pyramid. Or at-least they did. Lately it has been hard to find fish down there that are bigger than 12" and the number of fish I've been catching has dramatically decreased. When I first started going down there I saw no one, or I should say no fishermen. But as the years have gone on I keep seeing more and more people fishing down there, not so much actual fishermen but I see something worse, fishermen trash. Fishermen who don't care about the environment in which the fish they love to catch live, really upset me. I don't think that my ability to catch fish has degraded and I can't imagine that anyone would keep and eat a bass out of a stream that is directly down from a treatment plant, even though I don't think it would hurt if done occasionally. So where have all the fish gone? It could be that an increased amount of pressure has forced them to disperse to other areas of the river, but I don't think that is the case being that not all the places down are really all that accessible to people who don't want to bush whack. It could be that the increased pressure has made them unwilling to bite, but I've never come across pressured fish that wouldn't bite all the time, I've fished the river with every technique I could think of at different times of the day at different times of the year. The increased amount of flooding we've had in the Ozarks over the past couple of years could have had an effect on them, maybe but it doesn't seem to have effected fish from other streams. I could come up with a whole list of hypotheses, but the best one I can think of has to do with large non fish predator that has been enjoying the easy task of taking big fish out of a shallow, somewhat clear stream. Last year during the dead of winter I was down there fishing/practicing with my fly rod when I looked up into a tree that was up river a ways and saw one of the most beautiful creatures that exists on this continent, a mature Bald Eagle. Over the course of the winter I went back a number of times and was able to ID two individuals. I never was able to see one capture anything out of the stream so I can't say with certainty that this is the reason why the fish population has decreased but it could be a possible answer to why it has. If this is the reason I can't expect it to last too long because the Eagles will eventually reduce the number of fish so dramatically that it will be hard for them to feed themselves and they will move on. This last weekend I didn't see the Eagles I saw last year but I did see what was either a juvenile eagle or a female Harrier, I couldn't tell i didn't get that good a look at it. I don't know, I which I had time to really go out there and do more research but I'm busy staying inside reading about biology instead of actually doing it. At least not yet. What a great idea for a field project, "The Effect of Birds of Prey on Game-fish." It would involve my two favorite animals.

Good looking fish, thanks for posting. Only one SB fish is surprising, I've been thinking about heading down there soon for a SB bite.

I've been thinking about a trip to Pickwick next summer. I read an article in a magazine about how they catch giant SM dragging steep banks with jigs. That sounds about as good as it gets for me. Anyone been there?

Great post and pictures I may have to call up my dad and try to drag him out soon. Every time i ask him to go with me he tells me he's too fat and old to fish anymore. His doctor says he needs exercise and I can't think of a better way to get it than from wading around in a river. No excuses now.

This is usually what I do and most people are just glad you asked. It's better to ask than to get yelled at or worse.

My number is small but I am pretty young still, even though I feel like I'm older. I've been fishing the Aunts Creek Arm of Table Rock since I was four or five. It is the place where I caught my first fish, my first bass, my first trophy, my first fish on a fly rod and my first bass on a flyrod. It's been about twenty years now but next year maybe my last. I've fished The Finley for about 15 years and The James for about 15 years.

Pretty stream and great pics, they really made me wish I had time to go out for a day. Thanks, keep them coming.

That's a good looking jig.

I think I need to buy a bicycle. Then I could afford any canoe I wanted and just make my girl drop me off with it. I'll run it by her.

Thanks I'll look in to them. It would be great to make an upgrade but i don't know if I can afford a payment that's significantly higher. I'll see what I can find. I think I'm going to go look around on Saturday. Will dealership tell you if they have any program vehicles?

You should listen to this guy about catching smallies on the fly he knows his stuff.

It went great for about fifty yards of the river. At least that was all I had access to. The guy I asked said it was ok for me to fish his section of the stream but If I went pass his property I would be arrested and prosecuted. Not so much in those words but that's the drift I got. I think the only reason he let me fish his land was because I graduated and played ball with his son at Ozark. But he had a nice section and there were some nice fish below that waterfall. Thanks for the spot Buck. Absolutely beautiful down there.

Man i have those thing gauged all the way out. I work up such a sweat hauling them around that I have to take off my shirt to cool down. Even if it's 20 outside. I'm kidding of course, I don't have my nipples pierced. But I do have some tattoos. They don't make me look dangerous or anything, I have a hummingbird and a original Rapala Floater tattoo. I think the problem I have with land owners is my inability to ask permission. I've been asking permission a lot more these days and have found that most people are willing to let you on their land. i don't think people are selfish, I just think you have to let them know that you know they are the boss and if they don't want you there then you have to leave.

American Family is who I have my car insurance through and they have been great. Really on top of getting my claim taken care of. I thought it would be at least a week or more before I would get anyone out in the boonies of christian county to look at it. It took less than 12 hours. What's a Program Vehicle?

Well, I just received news that my truck is officially dead. The insurance guy pronounced her dead at 3:00 pm October 26, 2009. What a great little truck, it was perfect for me. Good gas mileage, just enough room, manual transmission, and of course it allowed me to haul my kayak or tandem around with me to all the great streams in southern Missouri and north Arkansas. All trucks that I have for the rest of my life will be compared to this one. It's kind of unfair, especially for the next one I get. But I want another Ranger. I think they probably are the best American made small truck there is. The s-10 is a good truck as well, my dad had one and beat the hell out of it and it started everyday and took him to where he wanted to go. But I never really liked the look of them, they look to me a little dumpy and depressed. I haven't really looked into newer trucks, mainly because I don't think I can afford them, but I will shop around and see what I can find. A Colorado is an option or maybe a newer ranger. I"m hopeing that there are a lot of deals out there, it seems to me that there might be a surplus of car and trucks out there that dealers are looking at getting rid of. I asked the insurance company about replacing my waders and my rod that was broken during the crash but apparently my policy doesn't cover personal items that where destroyed in the crash. Oh well, if that all I lose in this then I'll consider my self lucky. The insurance guy said that he was surprised that i was able to walk away from it with nothing more than a bump on the head and a sore shoulder. And I do feel very lucky. I just wished it had happened after I went fishing. It's now been more than a week without catching a fish and the way things are going I'll be lucky if I can in the next couple of weeks.

I just got off the phone with my insurance adjuster and he giving me enough to pay off my truck and giving me enough for a good down payment on a new one. I used to hate you insurance, but now I love you.

It's funny how even you think you couldn't possibly deal with anymore crap something comes along and throws fifty pounds of it on your shoulders. I totaled my beloved truck yesterday because apparently I'm a wreck-less, irresponsible and selfish child. No one has told me this, it's just my own feelings on the whole mess. This is the story as detailed as I can remeber at this time. I was going fishing like I do every Sunday. It has become my way to detox from the modern world and allows me to keep my sanity in an insane culture. With all the recent rain I knew there were only a handful of small streams that I would be able to fish, Bull or Beaver Creek were pretty much my only options. I could've gone to Table Rock and fished Aunts Creek from my kayak, but the fishing on Table Rock has been tough as of late and I really wanted to fish a stream, I always prefer stream fishing anyway. Well i decided to go to Beaver Creek because I had just recently discovered some really good accesses and I wanted to explore them a bit more. Plus those fish on Bull have been hassled enough by me in the last couple of months. I woke up later than I usually do on Sunday, around 7:00. But the last couple weeks of school have been hell and I have been sacrificing sleep for my gpa so I needed the two extra hours of sleep. I got up made some eggs gathered my things and was out the door by 8:00. I was in a rush the whole way down there which is why I probably ended up wrecking my truck. Anyway, i was headed down 125, which is one of most treacherous highways in southern Missouri, I was just south of Chadwick rounding a curve when I lost control and slid off an embankment. Flipped my truck over and it landed on the cab with me dangling from my seat belt. I had to crawl out of the passenger side window and climb up the 15" embankment where I was fortunate enough to find someone was driving by and was willing to help. I didn't have phone service out there so I would have been completely screwed if there wasn't someone there to help. Thank you annomuos stranger, with out you the whole thing would have been a lot worse than it really was. The lesson I learned from this is don't be in a rush to get some place because if you are in a hurry you might not make it there at all. So now I have to deal with insurance companies and banks and car salesmen. I really wish I had just decided to sleep all day, oh well, this can't keep me down.