Kathy E.

Thanks, Bill. All of it is very much appreciated!!

I want to cry. Fished all day yesterday and between us we caught ONE SMALL BASS!! Water temp was 57- 58-degrees, water was pretty off-colored, maybe the next step up from being muddy. Went all the way to Linn Creek cove and fished all around the coves just opposite and to the east of it. GREAT coves, big fish coves, but NOTHING!! We did everything and still nothing. BUT we were coming off of a significant cold front, too. Even the crappie are being tight-mouthed. Our daughter was supposed to come for crappie today, which is why we went bass fishing yesterday, but she reneged. So, we SHOULD have gone bass fishing today because two days since the cold front AND another strong front moving in this evening. BUT we didn't. So we will just have to try our luck again after this front has passed. Thanks for everyone's help. By the next time we go it should be the spawn. By the way, LOTS of fishermen out but it doesn't look like anyone was catching anything. Weird thing was that yesterday all the boats that looked like their anglers MIGHT have known what they were doing -- wrapped boats, power pole outfitted -- were fishing main lake points. I don't know what THAT means but with temps up to 57 and 58 I would have thought that most bass would be moving back into the coves by now.

Great. I have both those colors. Good deal. Thanks, again!!

I have LOTS of Chompers AND lots of Warts. This is sort of what I was doing with the Wart this past week. We are heading out tomorrow. I will give this a try. What color chomper would you suggest? I doubt we had enough rain to muddy the water so the color should be excellent, just partially stained and clearing near the shoreline. Thanks, Mike. Kathy

Water temp was 57.8 to 58.6, which should have been getting into ideal territory. NO signs of bedding activity yet. All hell is getting ready to bust loose, though. Maybe I should have tried a jig and pig but I did not.

Okay, so we tried crappie on Wednesday but there were a bunch of people on our community dock -- only two of whom belonged there -- and they had cleaned out the crappie. We went out in the boat but had no luck. But we went out yesterday and I did catch a short bass on the orange Wiggle Wart. I would cast it all the way to shore where it would snag on leaves under the water 30% of the time. I mean, the fishing was sloooow BUT I did have THREE other strikes, even though I caught none of them. I was retrieving fairly slow most of the time although I would alternate with a retrieve, stop, retrieve. Unfortunately, I cannot remember precisely what I was doing when I got the strikes. By the way, all of the strikes took place midway from shore to our boat. BUT I also tried fishing the depth of water where the strikes were coming -- about 10 to 12-feet -- but got no strikes in that area. It is like they were following the bait out from the shore or close to it. Water is clearing up nicely. It is still stained but better than it was the last time I reported in. I think we will try to go out again on Monday or Tuesday. I'd been hoping to go out over the weekend but the weather is looking sort of 'iffy.' Thank you for your report, slothman. I had tied on a spinnerbait but I didn't use it. I did use the Ned rig with no luck; I used a black lizard Carolina-rigged with no luck; and the WiggleWart seemed to do the best even though it was just one fish. My husband never had a single bite but then he was using a FireTiger Wiggle Wart and maybe that made the difference. Oh, two of my bites AND the one fish were off of or near secondary points; the other bite was about halfway down a gravel bank off of a main lake point that was NOT on the channel side. The wind, which was fierce yesterday, sort of dictated where we were fishing. Our trolling motor is simply no good at handling the wind and my husband will NOT buy another one. Go figger, right? No matter where we went, we were in the wind as it was shifting around pretty good. Another factor probably against us was that the prevailing winds yesterday here where we fish were from the east and southeast. Sometimes wind direction doesn't seem to matter; yesterday, perhaps, it did. Not many anglers out yesterday so I think the bite is slow or fairly non-existent. The ones that I did see, including two with dual power poles (which means they are serious) were concentrating solely on secondary points, if that helps anyone.

Thank you, Basfis and slothman. We are planning to fish on both Wednesday and Thursday this week. I wish we could go out today and tomorrow but my husband has to finish up a job he started in our boat. I had been planning to use the Ned rig, as Bill Babler suggested, but now I will try the craw-colored Wiggle Wart first on gravel banks (maybe wait until the sun warms them a bit though) and also try the spinnerbait. What color spinner bait worked best? What blades and weight? Also, where were you fishing it? Was the water stained or muddy where you were fishing? Our water is clearing by the day but with rain predicted for tonight, one won't really know what it will look like tomorrow or the next day. Thanks for all the great tips. I will let everyone know how we do over this next week.

Friend went out today and fished the Gravois where the water was very muddy. The water color mid-Lake is stained so that you can see a lure being brought in one or two feet under the water as it nears the boat. My friend caught two, neither one a keeper. She caught one on a Carolina rig and the other on a spinnerbait. Hubby and I will be going out again on Wednesday and possibly Thursday as we prepare to weather another month of (ugh!) social distancing. I am a loner, ordinarily, and I must admit I MISS SEEING PEOPLE!!

I dip the crappie fillets in the buttermilk, then roll in seasoned flour and then into the Fry Daddy set at its highest possible heat setting. YUM!

Hi, Bill! We were fishing around the 24 to 25 mm. I will have to try the ned. Had a couple of weak bites but may have been shad which were out in droves. I think we will be crappie fishing off the dock this weekend. I will let you know how we do. I bought buttermilk already so we are set!! LOL! Our friend snagged a huge spoonbill last weekend. His photos are awesome. Thanks for the tips. Good luck to you, too. Stay safe.

Hubby and I were out 'social distancing' on the Lake yesterday and, boy, was the Lake crowded. Go-fasts, cruisers, and LOTS of bass boats. Even some pesky waverunners -- isn't it too early for those knotheads?? LOL! Anyway, we found 55-degree stained water near the backs of coves but caught NOTHING during our four hours of fishing. What's more, no one with whom we spoke from boat lengths away had caught anything either, unless they were lying to us. (No, LIE??) (LOL!) We were in a spot where we could see guys trying LOTS of different things but never saw anyone pull in a fish. We tried Rogues, pointers, Megabasses, jig and pigs, Carolina-rigged worm, spinnerbaits, Wigglewarts, did everything we could think of and got two halfhearted strikes in 4 hours -- probably from big shad. We will be heading out again in the next couple of days because we arrived back in Missouri from Florida last Friday and we still have another 8 days of serious social distancing to complete. And I'll bet we will have many more after those 8 days are up, too.

Great fish! Way to go!

Everyone, you MUST join CFM right now! And those of you who are able to have GOT TO MAKE A DONATION! Right now, they are the only fighting force that is arrayed on our side against the MO Legislature. And their new director, Brandon Butler, wants to go after the legislators with (metaphorically speaking, of course,) both barrels blazing. But he needs OUR HELP TO DO SO. Please do what you can.

Hidden away in the bill, as well, is a part that would deny legal redress to anyone injured by polluters or those who contaminate our waters and other natural resources, or at least that is what it seems to do. I cannot help but think of the West Lake Landfill, in Bridgeton (near St. Louis), where a smoldering, sub-surface fire is creeping steadily closer to the buried radioactive waste. Boy, I'll bet those landfill operators donate even more money to the legislators than the deer farmers do. With all that the legislators are trying to do to MDC, our free-flowing streams, our whitetail deer, and the strings that they are attempting to pull in favor of the state's polluters I'll bet our parents and grandparents -- the ones who worked so hard for conservation in Missouri, and who helped to make our wonderful state what it is today, are turning over in their graves. (That is, if they are dead; many of us, unfortunately, are still alive to see them try to ruin the most-conservation-minded state in the country). We have to do what we can to make these folks sit up and take notice. Did you know that MDC received over 28,000 letters, phone calls, and postcards in FAVOR of their new deer farm regulations during the last battle with our so-called legislators? If every person who cares enough to send a letter or postcard or make a phone call is truly equal to 1,000 who are too lazy to do so (according to marketing principles), then that tells me that close to 3 million Missourians are AGAINST the legislature on the deer farm issue alone. How many MORE would be against something that would restrict stream access AND reward polluters??? Just think of how many people enjoy our free-flowing streams? It boggles one's mind to think that the General Assembly can think that they can pull this one off. Oh, wait! They ALMOST -- but for one vote -- got captive deer reclassified as livestock, so no telling WHAT they can do, if push comes to shove. I shudder to think of it.

Blue tongue is not transmissible from whitetail to whitetail. It is NOT transmissible from cattle to deer or from deer to cattle. It is carried by a midge that gets into the deer's nose and lays its eggs there and which then proceed to release a virus that then raises havoc in the deer's system. Here is one scientific journal's description: A deer must be bitten by a midge carrying the virus to become infected. The disease is not transmitted directly from one deer to another but must go through the insect vector. And then there is this: Cattle SELDOM EXHIBIT signs of EHD, and even when they do the symptoms are mild. So, your game farm friend may have lost cattle to a disease but odds are great that it wasn't EHD. If you are that misinformed about EHD, no wonder you believe everything you are being told by the captive deer folks about testing requirements, etc. Do some research, at least, before you post things that are so obviously incorrect. The EHD epidemic had nothing to do with the relaxation of testing. If the captive folks 'go out of their way to install barriers,' as you state, they would be installing double fencing and damming their water sources so that nothing could reach outside the pen. They would be inspecting their fences so that nothing could escape; in fact, deer escape high-fenced ranches with regularity. That game farmers don't and won't double-fence their properties speaks volumes about these folks. In fact, the mere suggestion, by the Conservation department, that they start to double-fence their properties -- and this was back in the early 1990s -- sent the game farmers into a tailspin. They don't care if their animals infect the wild deer; more than once I and others have heard them bragging about how, if that happens, then the only place hunters will be able to go to hunt guaranteed non-diseased whitetails will be a game farm. Because when OUR deer are all infected, THEN the game farmers will sterilize their soil, double-fence their holdings, and repopulate with truly non-diseased deer, if they are able to find any at the rate they are going of infecting our wild herds. Whitetail deer, whether in a pen or in the wild, are wild animals. The are NOT livestock. What other 'livestock' do you know of that cannot bear to be handled, and which will die at a high rate of 'capture myopathy' whether they have been in a pen for 5 years or were just trapped? Plus, as long as disease can be transmitted from these penned whitetails TO WILD WHITETAILS, which are owned BY EVERY MISSOURIAN AND EVERY AMERICAN, not just a select few, then the governing agency of the animals which would suffer the most harm and which would result in the most harm to the general public, namely, the Missouri Dept. of Conservation, should be in charge. This is an issue that should be of major concern to any North American who enjoys watching, hunting, photographing or eating non-diseased wild whitetails. There is no point in arguing with you any further. You obviously have no idea of the seriousness of the situation, nor do you even bother to check your so-called 'facts' before posting them here. And you obviously do not care whether or not future generations will have non-diseased whitetails to hunt or to otherwise enjoy. EHD kills some whitetails, not all. CWD kills every whitetail, with no exceptions. Whitetails can build up a resistance to EHD, since it is a virus, so that future generations may not be as susceptible to the biting midge that causes it; CWD has no way of stimulating a whitetail's immune system because it is a TSE -- transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. There is no cure and researchers are no closer to discovering one than they were 50 years ago. The disease-causing prions can be transferred into the soil and into the food supply. No one yet knows what that means for the humans who will be eating the prions contained in our bread, tomatoes, and other ag crops. How many will it take to cause vCJD -- the always fatal new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans? No one knows, but the roulette wheel of chance is spinning. That is one risk that I and millions of other thinking people feel would rather do without. And the best way to do that is to try our best to keep CWD contained, which will never happen as long as game farmers are allowed carte blanche to operate in the same reckless manner they have been all along. Common sense measures should prevail.