8-1-20 Walleye and more Walleye

[Bill Babler]

Started out of the Knob at 5:30 and I was not the first boat on the water.  It is a total disaster up there at the ramp that is pretty much caved in from the wake boats.  Shoreline damage at Shell Knob is without a doubt the worst on the lake.  It is totally full of wake boats and now I am seeing lots of 35' plus type boats, cruser style.

Headed up steam to the mouth of the Kings and fished 3 pts. that are very good to me usually.  Mostly with a 2.8 inch Keitech and a drop shot either crawler or Yamamoto cut tail.  Three small K's about 14 inch the first hour and all three had multiple hook holes, so they are being investigated.

I brought 60 cleaned and washed crawlers and used about 1/2 of them on really nice blue gills.  18' to 26' on gravel.  Clients wanted to keep them so we had a dozen big gills in the tank at that point and I knew I was in trouble as far as the bait supple.

Next hour and a 1/2 we used up the rest of the worms and kept another bunch of gills and caught a dozen small bass and 4 small 12" walleye.

We had an hour and a half to go and I told them we had to make a bait run so I pulled into Big M. and bought 3 more boxes of crawlers.  With that 3 boxes of crawlers we caught 19 more walleye and at least 20 bass and a really nice flat head.  

Here is the rest of the story.

Pulled out of Big M. and headed back toward the Knob.  One particular runnout not be named was calling my name so I pulled in on it.  Quill has fished in probably more than me, I see him there most times I'm up the river.  It was still cloudy and there was a slight wake boat chop blowing in on the point. I hit it to shallow, I thought.  I came onto the point at 12ft. and my graph just blacked me out.  The water color in the White is really about as dingy as you will see it in August.  Looks more James River green.  By the time I got shut down and the Garmin dropped I was in 18' and the Livescope looked like a shotgun had hit the screen.  The 2D was totally full on the other graph.  

I rigged all three clients before I let anyone drop cause i knew I would never get them all in the water any other way and all three dropped.  First drop 2 keeper walleye and a nice 12 lb. flat head.  Talk about a zoo and fire drill, I had one on my hands.  I had 3 fish on the floor of the PHX and rewormed them and they dropped all at once again.  The guy the back had kept the worm on as the Walter had not got it off the hook.  All dropped.    

I scrambled to throw the fish in the well and all three were hooked up again.  All thee had nice keeper K's on.  I chunked them back and rewormed 2 clients as the guy in the back had again not lost his worm and as far as worms go it looked pretty good.   Back they went and again in a manner of speaking all hooked up.  Mind you we are in about 17' of water.  3 keeper walleye and none even remotely needed measuring.

The guy in the back again did not lose his crawler and at this point i'm telling you that is a record.  Back down they all went and again the guy in the back caught another keeper walleye and the two in the front caught keeper K's  He did lose his crawler this time, but what a run.

This went on till the 36 crawlers were gone and their trip was over.  On this location we had 19 walleye with 15 keepers and none of the keeps need to be measured.  I let them keep 9 walleye for the 3 of them and looking  back I probably should have just let them keep a couple each.  None the less they were thrilled.

28 gills, 9 walleye and the kitty went to the dinner table.  Yesterday they loaded the boat with quality rainbows on our trip to Taney so i'm sure my luck is at least ran out for the next week or so.

23 total walleye on a 4hr. trip is by far the most I have ever seen or even heard of on the Rock.  15 keepers is by far them most I have heard of.   RPS may know someone that has done better, but it was unreal.  Bill Beck and 2 clients caught 12 keepers off Viney about 10 yrs. ago spooning in the Fall, and that was the best I knew about until today.

My best day ever was with Buster Loving on Bull Shoals, we had Brent Frazee of the KC Star and we kept 12 that weighed 57 pounds at the pothole.  All on Buster's custom painted and custom billed jerkbaits.  That was for sure a day 20 years ago.

On to the wake boats.  They were all over us all day except for the walleye runnout at the end.  It is totally terrible.  It was close to impossible to load my boat at Shell Knob ramp with the rollers coming in.  There is a trick however.  I only had 1 ft. of the trailer in the water.  That's right, 1 ft.  Back in wet your bunks and nose the boat on the trailer.  Next big breaker that comes in ride it to the winch and you got her done.

Most likely a day on the Rock I will never forget.

Good Luck

 

[Quillback]

Congrats on a great trip!  That really is an amazing number of walleye on Table Rock, or any lake that you don't need a float plane to get to.  

[dan hufferd]

Wow!!!

[Walleyedmike]

Best report I've ever read on TR, Bill!

WM

[bferg]

What a day Bill!  Great report.  Those clients got spoiled today!.  

[Zulu]

The wake boats suck. I got hammered at the bend near point 23 last weekend. Looked north toward the kings and quickly decided to go back where I came from.

[rps]

23 walleyes of any size is phenomenal for a day. I have never had such a day. I had a 10 fish day several years ago, but most all were dinks.

I an impressed you sensed the need to go shallow. Sometimes that just happens. When you hit it right, it makes your chest puff up. And rightly so.

Unless I am mistaken it should be getting close to spoon feeding at the thermocline time. But do not give up the shallow fish to go there!

As for the number of keepers going home, no sweat. Those three have the only walleye they will have for the year.

 

[Bill Babler]

9 hours ago, rps said:

23 walleyes of any size is phenomenal for a day. I have never had such a day. I had a 10 fish day several years ago, but most all were dinks.

I an impressed you sensed the need to go shallow. Sometimes that just happens. When you hit it right, it makes your chest puff up. And rightly so.

Unless I am mistaken it should be getting close to spoon feeding at the thermocline time. But do not give up the shallow fish to go there!

As for the number of keepers going home, no sweat. Those three have the only walleye they will have for the year.

o

Simply blind luck on the shallow deal.  I just cut the corner to close and ended up in that shallow water.  I have said it a thousand times on here, always better to be lucky than good.  The first two hours of the trip I stunk it up until I got lucky.

I'd bet 50 bucks the fish are totally gone from that location this morning.  I just lit on them by accident.  Largest concentration of walleye I have seen in Missouri not counting the pothole

[vernon]

Wowzer!

 

[top_dollar]

We have also caught more walleye the last few years.  In 40 years we haven't caught walleye, but the last few years were catching several.  Oddly we also used to catch an occasional rainbow trout, but now we never do.  

Gotta love heading back for more crawlers.  We typically go through about 2 dozen per person per morning.