Fish/float Thurs Or Fri

[bigredbirdfan]

Haven't floated Niangua since 1995 and think I will go this week. Any advice on types baits to use for spinning gear. I've got baby brush hogs in pumpkin and soft plastic brown worms with pink tails on my gear now. Would like to limit what I lug out there to a minimum. Certain times of day better fishing? Hopeful that most partying fools won't be out there on a thurs. Any help is much appreicate. FYI maggards won't shuttle your boat up bc of insurance stuff, but you can drop your boat at bennett with you partner and take your car down to them and they will shuttle you up for $10. which is a good deal.

[Goggle-Eyed]

The Baby brush hogs are perfect. I am guessing the brown/pink worms will do well. I have never used that color combination on the niangua. I usually just stick to "green Pumpkin" or Watermelon Seed and do okay. I use a lot of crawdad soft plastics and always dye the the pinchers chartruese... I have never had alot of luck on topwater on the niangua, nothing like the gasconade anyway.

Joe

[eric1978]

I always like to start with faster stuff to cover more water and show more fish the bait...spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, flukes, Sammies. If they don't want that stuff I'll slow down and work the bottom with plastics and jigs, but in summer that's rarely necessary. If I had to recommend one bait I'd say pick up a few bags of 4" flukes in colors like white, chartreuse, wht/cht, AR shiner, or pearl. Tough to beat a fluke this time of year.

[Scooper]

Haven't floated Niangua since 1995 and think I will go this week. Any advice on types baits to use for spinning gear. I've got baby brush hogs in pumpkin and soft plastic brown worms with pink tails on my gear now. Would like to limit what I lug out there to a minimum. Certain times of day better fishing? Hopeful that most partying fools won't be out there on a thurs. Any help is much appreicate. FYI maggards won't shuttle your boat up bc of insurance stuff, but you can drop your boat at bennett with you partner and take your car down to them and they will shuttle you up for $10. which is a good deal.

Thursday shouldn't be too bad, but you will run into some canoe/rubber raft traffic this time of the year. Most will just paddle through. The drunken fool partiers usually stick to the weekends. The Niangua is pretty low right now in looking at the online river gauges. We fished from Bennett to NRO on a Tuesday June 15 and it was pretty low then. I don't think that watershed has any appreciable rain since then.

[oneshot]

Nope no rain and river is very low plus just went into town and all kinds of traffic headed this way.

oneshot

[Goggle-Eyed]

Well did you make a float, if yes what area and did it go well? I am going to try and fish Lead Mine and above this weekend just curious how it was!

[bigredbirdfan]

Yes I went last thurday and floated Bennett to Maggard takeout. This was a good float. I thought it was busy for a thursday but who knows. Lots of church groups and they were loud. At least they weren't drunk. Anyway. The best was when I was working a mud bank with a plastic worm and the kid's group leader decided to see who could skip rocks the furthest. Needless to say I was happy to leave with all of my teeth and the fishing was ruined at that spot. I did pu a nice smallie there. Other than that fish all others where caught on crawdad crankbaits. Not one on brushogs or flukes. I think my flukes were to big for that water and I couldn't get them to swim deep enough. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing with flukes but if I try them again I will put a small split shot in front of it kinda carolina rig like. Hope this helps somebody.

[Scooper]

Yes I went last thurday and floated Bennett to Maggard takeout. This was a good float. I thought it was busy for a thursday but who knows. Lots of church groups and they were loud. At least they weren't drunk. Anyway. The best was when I was working a mud bank with a plastic worm and the kid's group leader decided to see who could skip rocks the furthest. Needless to say I was happy to leave with all of my teeth and the fishing was ruined at that spot. I did pu a nice smallie there. Other than that fish all others where caught on crawdad crankbaits. Not one on brushogs or flukes. I think my flukes were to big for that water and I couldn't get them to swim deep enough. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing with flukes but if I try them again I will put a small split shot in front of it kinda carolina rig like. Hope this helps somebody.

Thanks for your report. Your summer Thursday experience is what we've experienced as well. Church and scout groups float on weekdays to avoid the weekend drunks. Did you catch any trout or were they all smallmouth?

[Goggle-Eyed]

Thanks for your report. Your summer Thursday experience is what we've experienced as well. Church and scout groups float on weekdays to avoid the weekend drunks. Did you catch any trout or were they all smallmouth?

I fished from about a mile above Blue Springs down to Lead Mine yesterday. Had a decent day river was up an inch or two from recent rain. It was "less than clear", not really murky just not clear... Anyway, we fished from about 10:30am to 6:30pm. Not a great numbers day we caught between 20 - 25 fish between two of us. The highlight of the trip was a 19" smallie caught on a firetiger wiggle wart. I am a soft plastics guy and finally gave up and started throwing a crank bait after my partner caught that one... Caught a few goggle eyes also. Most all smallies came out of deeper water near the riffles. The big one was caught at 2pm at the bottom of a riffle about 6-8' of water. Next biggest fish was mine at 15"... Other than those two a few 12-13.5" and the rest were 10-12" fish.

Joe