Spooners On The James

[Jason Essary]

Just wanted to start a topic for the spoonbillers on the James. Anyone getting ready for a midnight start?

Any and all catches help us all, so lets hear all the stories and see all the pics.

[Seth]

We started at midnight. It was lights out snagging too. Two boats with three people in each boat all limited out. I boated five fish, three short and two keepers. My two keepers were both pigs. One was a 70 pounder that was 48" from eye to the tail fork and had a 35" girth. The other was an 80 pounder that was 50" from the eye to the fork and had a 40" girth. This is my new personal best spoonbill. I didn't get a picture, but I caught one spoonbill that probably wasn't a foot long counting the bill and all. That's the smallest spoonbill I've ever seen.

From what I could tell, everybody was catching fish. There were tons of boats all up the down river. You could hear fish beating around in boats and splashing from people having them hooked everywhere. We were worried it would be slow snagging due to the cooler water but it was definitely the opposite.

Here's my pics. The night time pic is of the 70 pounder and the daytime pic is of the 80 pounder.

[Jason Essary]

We started at midnight. It was lights out snagging too. Two boats with three people in each boat all limited out. I boated five fish, three short and two keepers. My two keepers were both pigs. One was a 70 pounder that was 48" from eye to the tail fork and had a 35" girth. The other was an 80 pounder that was 50" from the eye to the fork and had a 40" girth. This is my new personal best spoonbill. I didn't get a picture, but I caught one spoonbill that probably wasn't a foot long counting the bill and all. That's the smallest spoonbill I've ever seen.

From what I could tell, everybody was catching fish. There were tons of boats all up the down river. You could hear fish beating around in boats and splashing from people having them hooked everywhere. We were worried it would be slow snagging due to the cooler water but it was definitely the opposite.

Here's my pics. The night time pic is of the 70 pounder and the daytime pic is of the 80 pounder.

great fish seth, i cant make it till tuesday. where were u fishin?

[Seth]

great fish seth, i cant make it till tuesday. where were u fishin?

We did the best at the mouth of a cove about a mile up from Flat Creek. We seen fish on boats everywhere from the mouth of Flat Creek on up past Walnut Springs. The fish are all over the place up there. A couple guys said that people were snagging them up at the Lake Springfield Dam also.

[jb fishin]

Anyone snag on Loz or Truman? I went to Truman yesterday and had decent success around tally bend. Wanted to know if anyone else had any luck on those lakes. I will be snaggin on table rock on friday so keep the updates coming. From what seth describes, it sounds like table rock was the place to be.

[Seth]

Had some guys around home snag the Niangua part of LoZ and came up empty. Said it was slow for everybody around there.

Snagging on the James usually slows down after opening night, but picks back up again in April. This will be the first time I've snagged before April after opening night in a while. We are going to try it again on March 28.