LarrySTL

They look great ! Add me to the "I'd love to buy some" list.

Sending thoughts and prayers.

Very available would be great !!

I agree with the fluke or sluggo, but if there is a fair amount of weed cover or pads, or if you just want to get huge adrenaline rushes, throw a weedless frog some. Yes you'll want heavier line, quite probably braid, but you can work it fairly briskly and the strikes are usually explosive.

Way to go, and Happy Birthday !!

Dang, I am beyond jealous, nice fish Scott !! As I sit here jealously trying to figure out where it might be not to horribly crowded Saturday.. hmmmmm........

Yeah, the first time with a Z after years of biting regular plastic baits to adjust the length, I didnt have a knife with me, and it took quite a put of chewing and tugging to gnaw it into two pieces, and it tasted truly awful.

I too am using, and highly recommend, Dave's jig heads ( and BTW Dave I will be in touch to restock ) and pretty much everything else that has been said here. I had been using 8 lb line for most stuff in streams and having some results. 6 worries me and I was pretty resistant to trying it. When I finally did it was on a very clear, fairly shallow stream. I fished it for an hour with normal lures, switched to the Ned on 8 and caught a few small bass, switched to 6 lb and the Ned and caught quite a few small to medium bass several of them in water that hadnt produced an hour or two before. Not exactly a large sample size and certainly not a scientific test, but it made me a believer. 1/16 works better for me than 1/8th except in heavier current, and 6 generally gets me a lot more pickups than 8. Ditto also on the "reel when it feels mushy and then do "kinda a sweep" set", the blue LocTite, and the Z baits. Cut the Z's in half, do not bite them in half or you will be gnawing for some time and spitting for even longer than that afterwards.

On 2/12/2016 at 6:39 PM, Jerry Rapp said: stuff your wife and dog into the trunk of your car for a couple of hours, and then open it and see who is happy to see you! and mjk86 said: Thank you for saying this....I've been chuckling all morning. Now, for the grand prize, when you come home from fishing, whats the difference between your wife and your dog ? ( yes, this is a divorced guy telling this one.....)

Okay, here tis....please repeat after me "MizzourEEEEE" not MizzourAH". There are certain things that are just plain unacceptable and MizzourAHH is one of them !! So btw, lets go fishing !!

No pics, no scale, no nuttin..for whatever that is or isn't worth. Two different fish, one a drum from LOZ on a mainlake point around the mouth of the Gravois on bass tackle and a medium depth crankbait ( I think it was an old Bagley DB II, but memory fades) I would guess it at about 12 lbs. The other was a buffalo from a generic looking cove on Pomme on a Deep Wee R. My biggest anywhere was a regular old carp flipping a 1/2 oz jig and some kind of craw trailer to a shallow stump row on Carlyle ( yes the black bass capital of the universe), and hooked ) a carp that had to be 20 + lbs. On about 30 feet of 25 lb old Stren and a flipping stick. That was exciting.

Ummm.....but if the marble is round, how does it have a point ? The really sad thing about this thread, at least to me, is that I was just reading my way through it, page after page, until on about page 10 or so I saw a post about the Royals having a better record than the Cardinals....and even I realized it it's its' not baseball season yet. Thats when I look at the date of the Royals - Birds post....2011. Oopsie. I probly wasn't gonna fix the whole marble in those 15 minutes anyhow.

Great pics, and fascinating to read about how the pics are taken. Thanks both of you guys !

A couple more late suggestions. Keep hunting til you find one of the older rogues with the shallow lip; they made them tho they were never popular. There is also a standard size rogue with a lip smaller than the one most people use for the early spring jerkbaiting thats very popular where you are. Plan C, get a get a file or a dremel and an old crummy rogue you dont care about and start in on the bill til you know how much of it to remove to get a specific depth. I know guys who have four or five different depths of rogues that are modified way.

Congrats !!

BilletHead thank you for doing that. I can see on the women's faces how much they enjoy it and how much it can mean to them.

OK, I'll get in on this too. Although I don't know if this color would make any sense on a senko, I loved it for a full size tube and in standard worms. BPS used to have it in their house brand tubes and it was called All American or something like that. Start with a "color" that is clear with the tiniest hint of either smoke or white to it, one that you have to stare at for a moment to decide whether it is literally clear. Add liberal amounts of small size flake in fire engine red, a fairly bright blue, and white. In clear water it was both amazingly easy to see, and attractive to the fish. Larew copy catted it into his 6" and 8" worms and those were very good in clear water too, but after his death the OK folks discontinued that color and I havent seen it in BPS's color charts for many years.

OMG what a fish. Congrats !

Newport, '65 ! SB I am glad you put the info out here but please consider giving my credit card a rest and putting out info about some $ 4 baits. I haven't recovered from the bill for the Dolphins, the ZnZ's, and the gunfish. Haven't done custom paint jobs though, or perhaps that's part of the problem ! Al, I am glad its not just me who has trouble getting the Sammy's to walk right. I can get em to glide, or to bob, but that nice spook 1-2-3-4 at about 45 degree pivots or slow it down marginally and let it swing wider, is something I haven't been able to consistently get. And I am too freakin cheap to take a dremel to a $ 17 hunk of plastic, though the thought sure had occurred. The 85s look incredible to me in a tackle box or even in my hand ( don't *anybody* say it !) but yeah, they do not want to walk. Lately if I am not getting strikes ( or not getting them hooked) I have been switching lures ( and size, color, sounds, etc) every 15 or 20 minutes and so far its amazing me how often last weeks red hot WTD is just dead a week later. A week ago I found a bunch of fish that would annihilate a gunfish 95 in that outrageous bright purple / yellow Table Rock color pattern. Strange. And now I gotta get some $ 20 baits...... ARGHHHH

"He said results from a smallmouth bass study at five streams with heavy fishing pressure demonstrated that a longer length limit predicted a noticeable increase in the number of fish greater than 15 inches" Wow, who'da thunk it ? I like the idea of the one SM limit in the 15" areas and the possibility of expanding the size of some of those areas. But..... sheeesh Part of that but is that I have been looking online at maybe fishing someplace in or near Virginia in about September since I will be close to DC for a few days then. There seem to be some great streams/rivers in Virginia. When I looked for more information one of the first things I noticed is that very large parts of their famous SM streams and rivers have regs of a 20 " minimum and a one fish limit. I generally have believed that MDC is well intentioned on all this, and I know they to some extent have to appease a lot of constituents, but the more this issue drags around in MO, the more I remember that sometimes the obvious answer is correct.

Beautiful fish, way to go !!

Wow, 61 years ago !! Thanks BilletHead

Color me insanely jealous of the folks mentioned in the article whose world is so freaking wonderful that they have the time, energy, and inclination to get riled up about a relatively small pile of rocks.

How can any of you guys PASS, for crying out loud ? After all that money we just paid Gurley and they are only here one more year anyway, and you are gonna throw the ball ? That's as crazy as the guns,gun nuts, anti-gun nuts, etc thread.

I saw one alive and seemingly well in the Ohio River a few miles upstream from Golconda IL about 25 years ago. For those who have not had the joy of becoming acquainted with Golconda, think "first pool upstream from Paducah"