New To Beaver And The Forum...

[W. Heisenberg]

Hey guys,

This is my first post on the forum, but I've been reading through your advice recently as my dad and I planned a trip to Beaver to do some striper fishing.

I grew up striper fishing with him on Lake Lanier in Georgia, and we've stuck to bass fishing Table Rock since we moved to Nixa, MO about fifteen years ago. Anyway, we made the trip down today with my uncle to see if we could catch a striper or two. We brought our cast nets and looked for shad in Monte Ne as per the advice from Stump Bumper, but didn't have any luck finding them today. Fortunately, we bought some shiners for insurance, and fared pretty well fishing the rocky bluffs across from the Horseshoe Bend access.

Just wanted to say thank you guys for posting the advice, it helped us immensely with fishing Beaver for the first time. I look forward to getting more tips from you all in the future.

Eric

[Stump bumper]

Nice fish, the one in the middle looks to be a really nice hybrid. Sorry you didn't get on the shad, I haven't been on the lake since the water has been down due to boat issue's so I haven't been able to keep up with the shad migration.

Did you fish near the top with ballons or were you fishing deeper?

[Hogfan]

Nice job! Thanks for sharing your pics.

[Quillback]

Very nice!

[jeb]

Great to see you're still fishing with the family. That's awesome. And congrats on a good day of fishing!

[J-Doc]

Awesome to know you fish with your Dad still. My Dad is not a fisherman and my son has little if any intrest.

One day, I am going to go fishing with someone that knows what they are doing for stripersand I'm going to give it a try. Looks like it could be a lot of fun.

[Bass Ivy]

Im just about rigged up for stripers. Ive been wanting to fish stripers for years and just havent done it. Ive been bass lately on the Beav and seeing some big balls of shad and stripers on the graph and Im just about ready to give it a try. Im building me some inline planer boards. Ive got one done and 3 more to go before I go out and test them out.

As far as catching shad on Beaver all I can say is its not very easy. That is one reason Ive never gotten into the striper thing before is because shad is the go to bait and they are hard to come by. Ive heard in the winter they are easier to catch if you know how. Which I dont. So Im planning on using Brood Minnows I guess.

Looks like you did pretty good on your trip out I hope I can do that well my first time trying. LOL

Mostly where I seen the shad and stripers on the graph was in the first left hand bend as you first go into the mouth of War Eagle. A couple weeks ago they were there. Then the next time I went they were gone from that area.

[W. Heisenberg]

Hey guys,

Thank you for the replies. We're hoping to get back down to Beaver next weekend, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Stump Bumper, we had the most luck fishing at about 30ft. We were following a suspended school of baifish around and dropping our shiners just below them. We're really hoping to run into some shad next time, because I'm confident that if we had shad, we would have limited that day.

Yeah, I'm thankful to have an old man who is such a good fisherman; there's a lot to learn from that guy. He had me catching stripers that size when I was five years old in Georgia, so it was definitely a blast getting to catch them with him again.

Bass Ivy, it took us all day to find the baitfish and stripers. We were actually getting ready to give up when we floated over the pile of baitfish. We caught those three fish in the same hour.

[rps]

Many people, including some guides, actually net their shad for Beaver in the upper end of TR.

As of Friday, the shad were in loose balls at 5 to 10 feet strewn along the channel edge of the flats in front of Holiday Island. Just inside the creek coves also sported shad balls.

[Bass Ivy]

They say in the winter if you have a real heavy cast net with a big radius, that you can find shad on your graph and throw out your net over them and catch them like that. Ive read also that guys would add on to their throw net rope to make it long enough to reach down 30 feet or even deeper. They say you need a heavy net and a big one. Ive never tried it, Ive just read about it.