Rapalas Report

[bigredbirdfan]

The gentleman at our super large fishing store here in Springfield said fish are being caught on Rapalas. Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks

Chad

[Phil Lilley]

Yes- and jigs and cleos and power bait and... you get the idea.

You can always catch trout on rapalas. Browns esp. They have been catching rainbows with a floating rapala on a drift rig below the dam but I don't use them myself cause they're too expensive to lose.

I don't push them because you can do better with other lures for less money UNLESS you want to fish for browns and then I'd suggest stick baits.

[taxidermist]

I guess it depends on what you want to catch. Lots of small fish i.e. stocker rainbows or bigger fish that being browns.

I use a gold and black backed rap a lot and catcha lot of stocker rainbows and an occasional brown with them. then I go to the largest Husky Jerks the 13 series and catch bigger fish. Fewer fish bit bigger fish.

Here is a rainbow I harvested under high water conditions. I will be molding it for reproduction. Using a huge stick bait.

(no need to pm and and no need for the bitching fromthe c&r people) 30 inches and a 19 inch girth scales said 13 lbs 7 oz.

I did pack her in ice in a cooler immediatly. Just order $500.00 is silicone to mold her with, so that perfect reproductions can be made. not sparing any expenses on this once in a lifetime fish.

These lures are my favorites for big fish under high water conditions.

Nothing I posted is open for debate other than how to use the lures.

[tippet7]

If you are making a reproduction of the fish, are you going to eat it?

[taxidermist]

There is a difference in buying someones elses reprodcution and finishing it over me making a mold off this fish.

Many of the reproduction fish avaiblale to the public are out of molds that are worn out. Yea I can buy someones elses reproduction and spend hours repairing it and have to do the same over and over.

Or I can make a silicone mold from this fish and have control over the mold, control over the quailty of the reproduction s that will come from this mold.

So nope due to chemical exposure of the fish I will not eat itm no need to risk getting sick over some meat.

When I make a mold, I keep the first reproduciton from that mold as the original, it is never finished with paint. The reason is when the mold has had about 50 pulls made the mold starts breaking down and going bad, looses details and quailty of the additional reproductions becomes poor.

So I keep the first reproduction from each mold so in the future if I need to, I can can remake the mold. I will sell a few of the reprouctions to other taxidermist that we do an exhange program with. This keeps just anybody from getting a copy and copying the fish.

I try not to buy the cheap poorly done reproductions and theres a lot of them floating around!! Like skin mounts all taxidermy is not equal, nomatter if its fiberglass, deer mounts or birds.

I m using a tin based silicone to mold the fish, then will back the mold with a fiberglass mother mold. Silicone picks up all the details and still allows me to do a skinmount on the fish when the mold is finished.

John

[mAngler]

I guess it depends on what you want to catch. Lots of small fish i.e. stocker rainbows or bigger fish that being browns.

I use a gold and black backed rap a lot and catcha lot of stocker rainbows and an occasional brown with them. then I go to the largest Husky Jerks the 13 series and catch bigger fish. Fewer fish bit bigger fish.

Here is a rainbow I harvested under high water conditions. I will be molding it for reproduction. Using a huge stick bait.

(no need to pm and and no need for the bitching fromthe c&r people) 30 inches and a 19 inch girth scales said 13 lbs 7 oz.

I did pack her in ice in a cooler immediatly. Just order $500.00 is silicone to mold her with, so that perfect reproductions can be made. not sparing any expenses on this once in a lifetime fish.

These lures are my favorites for big fish under high water conditions.

Nothing I posted is open for debate other than how to use the lures.

Wow, what a nice rainbow. That is probably the biggest rainbow, with photographic proof, taken from Taney I have ever seen. I hope no one would ever give someone else grief over a fish harvested legally - though I know it happens. Also, the reproductions you make from the casts of this fish will ensure that other large trophies are returned to fight again.

Nice fish, and good luck with your business,

mAngler

[taxidermist]

We catch alot of rainbows on the baits I posted when we fish Taney. and depedning on What the water is doing on White River. If they are running a couple generators the bows really like the gold and black raps CD-5. for larger trout.

We can go up int he upper area and throw CD-3 and catch smaller bows.

That fish I caught not far from Lillys. but the high water the boat is super hard to handle.

Its one of those things we just have to deal with right now, we did launch in downtown but not on the launch ramp the road that day.

The key for fishing in the big water is to find a big eddy, tree, where the creeks enter Taney even up in the creeks or the inside of the bends. Even behind the bridge supports., the next area once they cut the gflood gates is the fish will move out and many times get infron of the same large objects, these become ambush points. I dont know but I think the water more readil is split by the objects and the trout dont have to work as hard to stay in it and they have a better ambush point to food sources.

If everything goes right we will fish Taney on Sunday. I t will be afternoon. I really prefer early am, to get on the lake before the sun comes up.

As for molding I could have made a fiberglass mold but th is fish is to awesome to allow the heat from Fiberglass to destroy the fish. Yea I could have molded it by now and pulled a couple replicas. but by going with the more expenseive silicone I get to do the skin mount too. The fish has awesome fins which is not normal for rainbows most times they have been beat up.

[twosets]

John

That is an awsome fish, congrats.

BigRed

How did you do?

Let us know.

George

[strangercreek]

It looks like the pics on this forum answer my question, but I'll ask anyway. Is it OK to use treblehooks in the upper Taney area?

I fished with a little cleo spoon this weekend and immediately stopped using treble hooks when I saw how severely I hooked the fish. No offense to anyone here, I was just wondering about the rules.

[zsmith62]

I fished with a little cleo spoon this weekend and immediately stopped using treble hooks when I saw how severely I hooked the fish.

Here's a solution I found for stickbaits in an old Field and Stream a couple of years ago that I've used on quite a few of my trout jerkbaits:

First, I take wire cutters to the front treble and snip off the rear hook, then I use pliers to smash down the remaining two barbs.

Then, I take off the rear treble completely, and replace it with a single point hook. On most of these baits, I go ahead and tie in a marabou tail before I put the hook on.

By smashing the barbs down and replacing the unnecessary hook points, I've found that you reduce foul hooking and damage to the fish itself, without losing any effectiveness. In fact, I think that the marabou tail adds a little more attraction