LarrySTL

Renting crankbaits was true at least in some places, and at least for a short while. In the early 70's there were some pretty good size draw tournaments out of Cape Fair on TR and 100 + boats wasn't unheard of. One summer, and it had to be '72, ' 73 or '74 because I was living in Columbia Mo, there was one of those night tournaments ln a weekend when the lake was way way high ( I'm thinking that was '73). A lot of folks were catching good fish in the flooded timber on 45 degree banks by running big shallow cranks through the branches in the hour before dark and the hour after dawn. People were renting imitation Big O's with a $ 20 deposit and I think it was $ 10 rent for one day/night. I was going to rent one, but I was a broke college kid and didnt have the extra money. I was in the tournament and I drew a guy with a 135 on a no-name stick steering boat; they started 100 + boats just downstream from CF dock with a literal shotgun start. The Water Patrol stopped the shotgun starts after that tournament. FYI one of the Tulsa guys won fishing 20 + feet deep on a worm on that big channel swing just inside the mouth of Aunts Creek. I suspect, just as we saw with the Umbrella recently, the rentals lasted only a short time until everybody and their dog got their own version of a Big O onto the market, and there have always been a large number of lure makers/inventors/tinkerers around TR. Also the rental baits I saw were poor plastic knockoffs, and it wasnt long til Cordell bought the Big O and started mass producing it.

LarrySTL, on 30 Aug 2013 - 22:05, said: Lake lure, the old large cigar-brown metal lipped Bomber; I still know the catalog number, # 623. And here's the real scarey part. Back when I used to fish TR a couple times a month, that lure was priced at 69 cents in what was the first BPS store, in a part of one of the Brown Derby Liquor stores. A guy that owned a resort at TR was always having me get a few dozen of them, and once two gross of them, for him on my way thru Springfield headed to TR.

I would worry about any kind of bag impairing gill movement, etc on the fish. Or oxygen circulation if it was some type of plastic or similar bag. The shower curtain ring idea ( the metal clips, not the prettier plastic circles) should work, as would the metal clips from the old metal stringers in the garage. Tie a short piece of colored rope to each clip, one color for each person, or spend about $ 10 and buy a culling clip system from BPS, Cabelas or whoever. Having a foot or so of rope on each clip also makes it a ton easier to get the fish out if your livewell isnt set up so that you can easily empty it. I am not positive but my memory is that Mo requires some visible system to tell whose fish are whose, but I *think* Mo doesn't require two livewells. As others said, you probably ought to check with MDC.

Lake lure, the old large cigar-brown metal lipped Bomber; I still know the catalog number, # 623.

Thanks everybody, and yes I had a blast and will be doing it again. I'm not discouraged but this was my first time ever trying to fish solo in a canoe, my first time solo in a canoe in flowing water and I think only my 3rd time in a canoe in the past 25 or so years. So yes there is a learning curve ahead for me. Corey, everybody at HVR was great. I hadn't realized how big it is both in terms of physical size and number of canoes, rafts, etc. Very impressive. One question about your reference to more technical canoeing on the courtois. Do you mean that as in more complicated/difficult to paddle, and, if so wouldn't that be harder rather than easier for a beginner ? Thanks all !

I've done it, but yes it was ugly and took me quite a bit of time. When I was done, the unit worked, but it had a noticable amount of interference. Unless I was in the middle of nowhere and needed it fixed *now* and was good at tidy electrical work on small parts, I'd buy a new transducer cable. Your mileage may vary.

OMG... OMG

Mitch, yes, and throughout the day I was remembering your canoe trip from last year and thinking how out of place I would have felt with two or three real good canoe guys. I can tell there's going to be a whole new learning curve for this part of things.

OK, its a short report. Because of the time issue I floated Harpers Slab to HV Resort. The water was super clear at least by my standards. One place seemed deeper and I lowered a worm down and measured.....8 feet and I could see the individual rocks on the bottom very clearly. I caught a few small SM mostly on small plastic in root wads in the spots with the most current. Those spots also showed me that my canoeing skills or lack of them, limited me to casting, or keeping the canoe out of trouble, but not doing both at once. I was out of the canoe wading the places I caught fish. This is gonna take some practice. I saw about 5 or 6 other canoes til I got back to HVR. Most of them were just floating not fishing. None of them were jerks in any way. I didnt have any accidental swimming. I had two different LM about 3 lbs follow a white buzz bait, accellerate, and turn away, saw about a 17" SM casually swimming slowly around in the middle of the stream in about 3 feet of water ignoring everything I threw, and a couple fish hit a fluke well but not well enough to get hooked. Thanks for the suggestions !

I have done well at times with copper blades both at night or daytime, and I keep hearing that Great Lakes folks use chartruese blades burned at top speed for SM. I have done OK on a black painted blade at night, and sometimes done very well on florescent orange or flor red with some black in it in water that is normally clear but at the time was solid mud. All this was on lakes. For a few years almost all I used was a tri-color white/chartruese/blue skirt with whatever blade(s) were on the one I grabbed from my box, and I seemed to do about as well on that as the years before, or after, when I tried to figure out The Right Colors.

Done....Huzzah Valley..thanks all !

Hi guys I unexpectedly have Friday off. I'd like to go float fishing but would have to rent a canoe and I dont know if that would put me in ridiculous crowd...or not. Also I have a must thing Friday evening so if I went, I'd have to be back in StL no later than about 5:30 to get cleaned up and get to that, so figure a max of about 75-100 miles range from St L. Possible Plan B..get way upstream somewhere and wade Friday or Saturday. Or do I just wait til after Labor Day and schedule a day in the middle of the week ? Thoughts, comments, non sarcastic suggestions, ? Thanks Larry

I wonder if the Dolphin or the Ziggy would work best along the shoulders of I-44 ?

Thanks Paul ...and Scott too !

For years on LOZ, when it was late spring or early fall ( I wasn't on LOZ daytime in the summers) women in "goof boats", women on private boat docks, and women in general heard lots of cries of "show us your t**s" and a lot of them were perfectly happy to oblige. I am not talking about party cove, but about pretty much anywhere else from the Nianguas to the dam, and up the Glaize and the Gravois. It wasnt dozens of times a day, but to get flashed ( or sometimes a very lengthy flash) once or twice in a day was not unusual. I never saw it take place in any type of threatening manner. I suspect most people who were fishing the lower half of LOZ in warmer weather 15 or more years ago would tell you something similar.

I don't know if this thread is gonna cost me money for a dolphin and a realis...or if its going to save me money because I already have exactly the Dawg bait in the same color thats hanging in the mouth of that 18 incher. Nice fish guys !!

Here's what we can do. I'll get an extra bag of the electric blue ZMan worms. You find us a good spot. If the tweakers are there, we open up the bag of worms, drop a couple of em on the ground, tell the tweakers the worms are great if they shred em up, roll em and smoke em. Trying to shred one of those worms ought to keep em busy enough to keep them off your truck and my car for at least a full day. If they do manage to smoke one, we might find we have put both crack and meth out of business.

I'll take the Mo parts of Bull Shoals. For a 5, yes Table Rock, but maybe its gets too much pressure from really good bass fishermen for a fish to make it to 7 + lbs. Bull to me is similar water, trout to snack on, enormous depths and vastly less excellent quality fishing pressure on bass.

If he had said "most of the problems are caused by people getting drunk which often leads to obnoxious and rowdy" I'd agree. Beyond that yes it feels like a rant and to me feels pretty hypocritical of him.

I dont much like Walmart, but I have been to the Brentwood one many times, including quite a few times at night. The only thing I dont like about it is that its often crowded and that way too often they seem out of whatever I am shopping for. Just FYI and admittedly off topic, I got curious and looked up crime stats. The easiest time frame I found was 2001 - 2011. Brentwood had three murders in that timeframe and a crime rate somewhat high for St L County, but mostly comprised of burglaries and "thefts". The overall crime rate is about 60 % of the national average. http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Brentwood-Missouri.html Murders by burb in that timeline. Brentwood 3, Ladue 1, Chesterfield 4, Webster Groves 1, Kirkwood 8 ( tho 6 of those were the Cookie Thornton shooting inside Kirkwood City hall). Not sure why I am what feels like defending either Walmart or Brentwood, but maybe is a toxic effect of the ZMan worm I was briefly chewing on.

Wow, great fish !!

Al, I'm sure you're right but I didn't think of that before I had one end of the worm in my mouth and was gnawing on it. If I die soon from something weird you'll all know why. Most of my focus was on hoping the expensive e new dental bridge was tougher than Zman.

On the hijacked topic of tearing up plastic lures, has anybody tried the ZMan plastic worms, craws etc ? They are a little more expensive than the usual name brands but not much. Fish seem to hold onto them very well, and you just about cant tear one of them up. Like routinely 5 to 10 bass on one worm, and the first time you try to bite one of them to shorten it, you will find yourself giving up and getting your knife out. They dont feel hard, but they just wont rip. BTW if you try em, store them away from all other plastics as they will eat plastic hard baits and other brands of plastic worms.

Yeah, the typical needle and syringe that an insulin dependent diabetic uses is also the most popular among IV addicts, probably because they are inexpensive and pretty hassle-free to buy. However, most diabetics I know are pretty careful about storage and disposal of their needles, both before and after they are used.

He was a totally great song writer, including Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" and lots of other stuff.