Surprised To Catch This Little Guy

[porter57]

i think i may have caught my first one there about 7 or 8 years ago in mincy,floating minnows under a bobber. wasnt real big but kept it anyway.

[Sam]

You guys are right they are good to eat,had no idea they were hear would like to find some , Pike in here too?

Nope, no pike that I know of. I caught a 3 lb. rainbow once down by Yokum Creek, and that was a surprise. From the trout's size and the distance from Powersite Dam, I'd guess it was a Taneycomo stocker that had been in B.S. for a long time.

The only other "weird" fish I've caught out of upper Bull Shoals are bowfins, and I could do without those.

[Fredrick]

I grew up catching yellow perch in northern wis lake minocqua as a kid. We let them go . It was like catching a blue gill here. What nut job stocked them here?

[Ham]

I caught my first yellow perch of the year on 1/3/11 above Big Creek on a jigging spoon. Little guy, too small to fry.

[Mike Worley]

Nope, no pike that I know of. I caught a 3 lb. rainbow once down by Yokum Creek, and that was a surprise. From the trout's size and the distance from Powersite Dam, I'd guess it was a Taneycomo stocker that had been in B.S. for a long time.

The only other "weird" fish I've caught out of upper Bull Shoals are bowfins, and I could do without those.

Nothing "weird" about catching rainbow trout in BSL. AGFC raise rainbow trout at the Pot Shoals net pens all winter. A couple of the larger boat docks & resorts raise rainbow trout in pens that AGFC stock with fingerlings and release them into the lake (BSLBD & Howard Creek resort) I caught several rainbow trout in the 3-5 LB class last spring trolling 800 Reef Runners pretty much all over the lake. Trout fishing had been popular in BSL (trolling & night fishing under lights) BSLBD even had a party boat type setup pontoon boat that made several nighttime trips a week to the caves in Jimmies creek. About 10 or 15 years ago AGFC released a large number of tagged rainbow trout into the lake to do a creel census, they got almost none of the tags returned. AGFC announced that they were not going stock rainbow trout into BSL anymore. The years that rainbow trout were stocked were the same years that BSL was producing lots of walleyes in the 10LB class (my personal largest walleye a 15LB was taken in 1990) I guess the walleyes didn't know where to send those tags. I have cleaned walleyes with several 4"-9" trout in them. One of the most popular places to fish for trout was the face of Bull Shoals Dam but 9/11 put a stop to boats getting close to the dam and the no trout stocking announcement by AGFC pretty much put a whammie on the trout fishing popularity in BSL. I think that if AGFC would just start stocking fingerling trout again we would see a lot more 10 LB+ walleyes caught again.

[taxidermist]

Yellow perch have made their way into White River. I have seen them in the water near Cane Island and as far down stream as Miller Hole at Cotter.