Table Rock Lake Fishing Report August 16Th. 2012

[Bill Babler]

No guide trip today, so thought I would go fishing. Becky has control of the guests at the lodge as she only has 3 couples in so after I made coffee and sat the table I was out of there by 5:30,

Launched at Viney Creek, to clear skys and a mill pond as far as wind was concerned, just pool table flat water.

Today I was going to get two walleye for supper as orders had been passed down, if that was possible. Told her I thought It was and preceeded to try and accomplish my mission.

Water was a bit greener than it has been and the surface temps had dropped a degree to about 82, something. First location there was a boat on so I motored up to a flat and fish were in the entire water column. On top and everywhere inbetween.

Spoon was my only bullet today and really don't need anything else. I'm gong to guess about 40 bass to the boat today running on the small side with 6 keepers, which included a very nice jig fish off a dock. 4 walleye with 2 keepers, and I lost another good one just out of net range, proably a 6 Pounder. Would have turned her loose anyway as I had my two.

Beck reported the dam area to be extremely hard this morning with all his guide fish on Crawlers in 26 to 35 ft. and scattered, with one here and one there.

Good Luck

[Quillback]

No rain up there? We were thinking about TR this morning, but Weather.com had an 80% chance of rain for Kimberling City. Looks like they were wrong again (no surprise). We fished Beaver, we didn't do as well as you, but OK with a couple of dozen 10-14" spots on drop shotting finesse worms, with big fish being a 2 lb. LM. We couldn't get anything on spoons. Table Rock and Beaver are so close together, but fish different.

[Phil Lilley]

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[techo]

Put in at Aunt's and headed toward Cape Fair. We were mostly running gas through the Skeeter to get rid of the ancient stuff. We caught nothing! Had a great time though and would rather fish and catch nothing than not fish and catch nothing. Never tried the spoon....shaky head, Texas rigged worm and of course the Eakins jig for fun! Saw two Lunds out there. They seem to be getting more popular!

[sholder02]

Great pictures lilley! When you are jigging that spoon through the schools, are you really ripping it up (5'-6') off the bottom or just bouncing it a little off the bottom.

[Phil Lilley]

Those are Babler's images he asked me to post for him. He should be on shortly to explain what they are.

[Bill Babler]

I need some help on getting photo's on off my iphone. Some are perfect and some are to big. I guess I could send them to my email and reduce the size of something. Help required.

Those are pictures from this morning on the Rock.

First pic is of a take from the bottom in 22' of water. You can see me moving the fish from the school that was on the bottom. It was a nice K. That is a pretty good picture of a typical Kentucky catch from the bottom on a jigging spoon. Just the indication should show you how I was fishing it. I was jerking it up 8 ot 9 ft. or the approximate length of the rod, from a resting position on the bottom. I always fall my spoon on a simi-tight line. I know Phil and some of you fall on a slack line, but I prefer to follow it down. If you will notice, I pulled that fish out of a group of 3. Two others remained on the bottom, and there was one other just in front of them.

Now look at the GPS side and you will see I was fishing on a flat top just off a coutour line to deeper water. I was working my way out to the point you can see on the GPS Map.

Next is Walleye pic's. I accidently cut another boater off on this point and I am sorry. He was coming from the inside and I pulled up from around the bluff. Never saw him till I flopped in the trolling motor. He was throwing topwater at schooling fish. "Big Mistake." Did not see him get a bite in a half hour. I boated 2 keeper eye's and about a dozen K's under the chasers, off the bottom in 27'.

The next image is of a school of White's I brought off the bottom. See the heavy lines that are along the bottom under the frenzie. I had one on and when it came up the bottom exploded into an almost mushroom cloud. Just caught the one and they vanished. All from those two little lines. I am guessing 20 Plus Whites in that pod.

I will tell you now, the last pic is of the Real Image Spoons I use. I don't think there is a spoon anywhere that will touch it. One is dressed with a Owner Rostertail and the other a Death Trap. Pearl.

Good Luck

[Chris King]

Bill, awesome stuff. Can you explain your settings on your HDS unit? It doesn't appear your sensitivity is very high, but you can obviously see everything very well. I have an HDS7 on my bow with the universal sonar in my Minn Kota. I can bump my sensitivity up to 80%, bring up my ping speed, and see my dropshot/spoon if I'm sitting still. If I move at all, I guess my bait gets outside the code and I lose it. I have never seen results like you have up above. I'm just curious of your sensitivity, colorline and settings if you don't mind sharing. I'm sure the U/S limits me some but I've tried it on the stern as well under my LSS transducer and still have never got as good as you have it there. Thanks again.

[Bill Babler]

How old is your transducer? The ones I had on my Minkota usually lasted about 6 months. You also must remember you cannot run both units at once. The bottom graph photo is somewhat blured as there was a guy within about 100 yrds. and I was reading his unit. I will have to look at it and see where I currently have it. If you have to turn up that sensitivity higher than about 80%, it usually means the unit is getting weak. I believe that one is set at 72-78 percent.

[Chris King]

It was new in February...It was a complete guess at 80% (I like even numbers). I'll give it a try at 72-78% and see how that looks. Does your colorline % match the sensitivity? I keep my back unit on, but that ducer is on 800khz so I didn't think it would interfere. I run the front at 200khz but need to experiment with 83khz.

Googling colorline setting now...thank you very much for the info.