jeb

Good. Hopefully making room to drain some out of Beaver. We're plumb full here!

Very nice! I just dropped my boat off at the Skeeter factory in Texas today for some warranty work, so won't be able to take advantage of the info, unfortunately.

It was ROUGH out there today. I like to fish on the windy shores, but man! First time I'd really done any "big water" fishing like that with the new Skeeter. It was actually better being sideways to the whitecaps than front on. I'd take a little splash of water over the front when head on into it. Not a huge deal, but the deck got a little wet. It was worth it, though. Caught a couple more smallies.

Wow, had a great day yesterday with my neighbor. Sunrise to sunset deal. Started off kind of slow, but finally got into them early afternoon. Caught 7 legals, lots of shorts. 2 of the legals were nice smallmouths and one bucket mouth went close to 3lbs. Mostly caught on 5/16oz bass jigs with craw trailers up in the Rocky to Clifty areas. Water is very clear up there. Water is more stained in the hwy 12 bridge area, and somewhere in between in the Prarire Creek area. Oh, commented about the "why do carp jump" thing to my neighbor. He said they're just looking around. Had a good chuckle over that one.

Caught 11 bass yesterday. Mostly on c-rigs and bass jigs, and mostly 20'+. Water is really clear down in Van Hollow area and Clifty. But it had more color than I'd seen in a while in Sunset/Prairie Creek cove. Must have been that little 1/2" of rain we got the other day. Also fished down in the hatchery area, and the water is also still pretty brown down there. So a pretty good day. Saw some big old carp jumping quite a bit in the morning, too. Can't figure out why they'd be jumping, but they were. Wife claimed today to do some hiking, so obviously not fishing today (yet ). We had a nice hike already, so maybe sneak out for the evening bite.

Thanks. I'll be spending the next 4 days on Beaver trying to figure out where the big black bass are hiding. Maybe I'll wander down that way.

Went fishing down towards Horseshoe Bend yesterday. The water really changes color once you go under the Hwy 12 bridge! I had not been down that way for quite a while, so was surprised to see how muddy it was. We hadn't had any rain for 2 weeks! Caught a few dinks, lost a legal or two. Then I ran up into Ventris and caught a few more. But nothing huge. Much clearer water up there. Sure be nice if the water would go down 5-10 feet.

Yes, 2 of the Walleyes were keepers. Decent fighters, too. I lived in MN for 35 years and walleye is king up there. But I was never a big walleye hunter, would go for bass and northern. The walleyes were just not good fighters up north, for some reason. Like dragging a branch to the surface. But they really tussle down here. I have no idea why that would be, though. Avoca Cove is through the Praririe Creek Marina no wake zone (which is too darn long, IMO!). Once you get through, there are 2 big coves basically straight ahead. The one on the left is Sunset Bay or Prairire Creek cove (depending on who you ask) and the one on the right is Avoca Hollow. Here's a lake map link: COE Lake Map

About the same deal here. But Beaver Lake is like 10' over normal pool, so that kind of throws everything off. Caught a few yesterday on jigs and c-rigs, but nothing big.

All the new Humminbird Side Imaging units allow you very easily do screen captures like that. The picture is a bit grainy compared to the actual screen, though. All you have to do is push the button to "mark" the GPS location and it takes a snapshot of the screen at the place you mark. Makes it really nice when you come home and sort through the GPS spots to keep or delete to be able to see what you were looking at at the time. Went back out yesterday afternoon to the same area and found some active feeding schools of bass in the same area. Jigging spoon and white Zoom flukes on C-rigs seem to be working, but it was pretty windy.

That's really not bad at all! I'm an admin on a forum that just went over 100k members, and I'd guess 5% or less are what you'd think of as active users.

Got this screen capture last night just before dark. I was marking all kind of huge bait balls and shad were surfacing all over the place at the mouth of the Avoca Cove. Then I ran onto this active group of fish and caught a few. Mostly walleyes, and a few Kentuckys. Jigging spoon right over the top of them seemed to work.

Lots of Striper Boats from Prarie Creek down to Rocky Branch on Sunday, too. No idea if they were catching much, but they were all grouped up in some areas, so you'd think some fish were there. Didn't look like a lot of fun to me, 5-6 folks sitting around in a boat waiting for something to happen, but to each their own. I did pretty well on black bass. Caught 9 in 3-4 hours, but only 3 legals. C-rigs on steep drops into 50-60 feet for the most part.

I agree. November is supposedly the wettest month around here. Doesn't sound like a good time to have Beaver way over full.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help. I'll have to pick up some black spinnerbaits, it seems. I did notice when I was fishing two evenings ago that the fish really did get much more active about the time the sun hit the tree tops. You could see the increased activity on the 'bird and the sudden start in surface activity. There was zero surface stuff up to that point. And I did boat two decent bass in fairly short order at that point. Struck me as a little odd with water temps cooling off so much.

Only 1.5" in the rain gauge in the last 24 hours here at Prairie Creek here on Beaver Lake. So probably not a lot of pressure on the downstream lakes from Beaver on this one. But it'd sure be nice if they dropped Beaver 5+' sometime soon!

I've lived by Beaver Lake for 4 years now. I fished it a little bit now and again with my old boat that I'd brought down from MN with me. Caught a few fish here and there, but didn't really get motivated to fish seriously until this year when we got a new Skeeter. I fished a lot up north for bass years ago, but that's an entirely different game on the mostly much shallower and much more stained water. My big bait up north was spinnerbaits, mostly chartreuse ones, fishing visible structure in shallow water. Pounding the banks, as it were. So new skills down here were a must, which I've been learning. The spinnerbait is something I pretty much never tie on anymore! I'm much more confident with jig (rubber skirted and finesse type) and Carolina rigs. Anyway, I see a lot of guys fishing at night, just launching at like around sunset. Lots of tournys start then, too. I figured it was mostly a "dog days" thing, or to avoid pleasure boat traffic. But they're still doing it. There was a tourny just ending last Saturday about an hour before sunrise when we were putting the boat in, for example. Very little pleasure boat traffic this time of year, and water temps are about 60. No dog days this time of year. So the question is, is night fishing done at this time of year because the bite is better, or more of that's just when they like to run tournys? Is there a certain water temp you look for to give up on night fishing, or starting up again in the spring? Also, do you use the same baits you do in the day, like jigs and carolina rigs? I'd think night would be more of a topwater, buzzbait, crankbaits, noisy bait kind of thing rather than bottom bumping? I'm an early to bed, early to rise type, so fishing at night does not excite me much. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing out! Thanks

There was a big raft in front of Ventris Hollow on the main lake, and another basically in front of Rocky Branch marina. We were fishing down some of the arms just to the dam side of Rocky Branch marina and had ducks whistling by several times.

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I don't hunt ducks, but was kind of wondering about that, too. We sure saw a lot of ducks out there last weekend. Big rafts of them on the main lake.

Jeez, another inch of rain in the gauge today, and it's still raining! Monsoon season, I guess.

Caught some Kentucky's out of cedar tree tops down Rocky Branch way on Saturday. That was the only place I'd say we got into some active feeding fish. But we didn't try our deep water spots. Water is still way up. Saw temps in the 60-61.5 range.

Since I fish Beaver, I hope you're right! It'd be nice to see our water level start dropping some, too.

Yep, I know the fish-n-fool won one of the knot wars. Not sure what all knots F&S tried, but the SD was the top knot in their test, FWIW. I'll probably still tie the fish-n-fool when I have the time and I'm not hanging out in the wind. But the SD with the "twirl" method (my term) is super fast/easy to tie, and seems very strong.

I was out yesterday from about 9-5 in the Rocky Branch area. Caught 3 nice LM/KY on jigs, and a few small ones. Water looked normal color-wise, but it was up several feet.