Matt Fly

If I was heading to Guntersville next week, I would like a guide the second day there, giving me day or half day for myself to get basic layout of lake down and test my own skills. If the fish are bedding, I'm not worried about needing a guide. reading water temps will generally tell me where the spawn is at on the lake. Lots of boats in the back of creeks is another good indicator. Guntersville gets lots of press, so finding pieces of info from the net, our forum, old newspapers, and tournament results should already give me a few areas and pieces of the puzzle before I ever launch. Would be same way I approach a tournament on lake X. Not every body has the same knowledge or goals, nothing wrong with having a guide for 5 days or one. Different strokes for different folks. Here's to 2006 and a SHE-PIG for all. "ONE to REMEMBER"

BassKing Who needs a magazine, this Forum gives more info away freely than any other forum.

When I have hired guides before, its never been for numbers, its about learning something new, drop shotting, spooning winter time bass, seasonal patterns, colors, what areas are fertile, what areas are not fertile(not productive), boat lanes in and out of creeks, the ones I'm interested in.

Roland doesn't have to prove anything, he's been doing what most of us have dreamed about, fishing for a living. A long, long, long time. Just being named in the greatest angler debate is enough.

Its a re-run!!

Spring isn't a time I want to invest money on finding fish. Spring is by far the easiest time to find fish, and are in the skinnest water of the year. Basically the fish are in 10% of the water already if the spawn is on. To hire or not to hire would depend on your experience. Is water muddy were beds can't easily be seen? When your on a popular lake, the other boats are gonna tell you if your in a good area. Personally, if you can afford 300.00 a day, go for it. but I do like to test my level of map and lake reading.

I don't think you "stumped" any body with that question. I love washed out root systems on those stumps, old ones too.

Sam Rayburn is an excellent tournament lake where she is capable of spitting out 20 lbs sacks, She is also recovering from the LMBV that Fork and Toledo Bend suffered from in late 1999. She can give up lots of kickers. Results of the last two Big Bass Splash events paying top 10 spots every HOUR, it has taken an average fish of better than six pounds to make a check. Thats over 80 fish per day for 3 days which is over 240 fish in a 3 day period being 6+lbs. 114,000 acres, she's Big O'l Sam and deserves the reputation also.

jb, welcome to the forum, I brought up an older thread on Barometric Pressure. Much easier this way.

Thought I'd bring this one back. easier than writing it again.

Peter F, I like that, "better bring your A game".

I am proud of Lake Fork, but, one needs to ask if we are talking quanity or quality. If Quality is the issue, then California being the only state to produce more than one 20+lb bass would be leader. Georgia being the exception with the world record. Sheer numbers of Trophies, Texas and Florida deserve a big pat on the back. If you want both, numbers and trophies, Mexico is the place to go. With the restricted fishing season in Mexico on bass, and less pressure due to rigors of travel to get there, the warm winters, the Florida strains and the common 50-100 fish days with several pushing double digits, and teens, Mexico wins hands down. I haven't read current Mexico regulations, but for years, they have a closed season on bass, and I always thought the spawn was protected. But the number one reason bass get so big so fast is the 365 days a year growing season. I bet every body thought I would say Lake Fork hands down. Fork is good for numbers and size, (lst 5 trips to fork, nothing less than 2.12 lbs) I havent had over 50 fish in awhile on Fork, it can be done, still done, but the pressure it receives year around make it a better trophy lake overall. Could I duplicate 50 every day? certain times of the year and select occassions. Yes

I'd leave the roach type bait out, I've never heard of them and if you could post a picture, that would be cool. Most of my workers saw that and said "druugie" LOL. What is your current season? summer? obviously not winter! What kind of bass are they, anything special? Are you familar with the US species of bass? Some one should be able to tell us ifthey are Florida transplants or what? where did they originate. Try small grubs, baits that ressemble the 4" roach on 4lb/6lb line, with gin clear water, you may have to fish 40-60ft deep in summer. Remember in summer months, the best oxygen will "generally be deep" but do not know European lakes. Try split shots, dropshot, any light line finese style. Try some California forums, their waters will ressemble yours the most.

Mud is mud, no visibility. Mud is defined as zero visibility, where rattles, scents and big blades or wide wobbling cranks are use to trigger the strikes. A fish can't see six inches in muddy water, much less 2 inches.

Before we can help you, you need to give us more of the puzzle. Is that 80-90 degrees water temp or outside air? The 100ft depths, is that near the bank or middle of the lake? How big is this resorvoir? Where is this resorvoir located? California, Txor a rock pit. Any bait fish activity? If this is Cal, and deep off the banks, I'd guess no major vegitation or timber, canyon, deep types resovoirs. What have you tried that hasn't worked. And if you say a fluke and other baits, I'm gonna come back and say was that light line, T-rigged, split shot, drop shot, you starting to see how this works. The more you give us, the more we can give you. Have you been fishing a point, cove, main lake, or back of the creek?

Will, got any dimensions on that basket? How far do you have to travel? Alone or some one else there? Do you have any of the following on hand? camera, seamstress tape, scale, and measuring board? I always have seamstress tape for measuring girth with a picture also, picture of fish on measuring boardand scale, different angles of fish. You can hang scale from tree and get pic. Battery operated aerators are cheap, like the ones we used for the minnow buckets. Adding ice will cool the water and adds oxygen for transporting. Be sure you have large enough transportation container, Too small of an area for a large fish can kill one fast. If none of the above can be had, use a stringer and stake out in deep water untill you have a scale brought out to the fish or appropiate transportation device.

If you catch a tagged fish, if possible, take a photo on both side, get length and girth measurement and weight if possible, copy tag number down, either post on TPW web site or call the 800 #, they will have the facts on this fish, and can use it to form growth studies and migration routes as where it was released and caught at. Released back or kept.

How can color be an issue in muddy water? Fish can't see anything, they depends on vibrations to feed. I have always found chartruese to work when the water starts to get colder, cools off in the fall. As winter rolls in, water clarity is at its clearest, and yellow tail and other bait fish seem to have more chartruese at this time of the year. Why does firetiger work best in fall and early spring and in general, not the rest of the year.

Most of the time, the draft of my boat will keep about 3" water in the livewell, I have put them in for a quick pic before releasing. I have wetted a plastic weigh-in bag and laid it down for a fast pic also. No way a fish should be in the bottom of the boat flopping around on metal or carpet waiting for a picture summer or winter.

Gaspergoo or commonly named "fresh water Drum" are not trash fish, and are very good clean fish to eat.

We need to ease up on Charlie Moore until we find out if he will accept LBH's challenge. We did use this Forum's name in the challenge, and to see us wanting his show cancelled might not help. Any shows are better than none!!!What do you want, more info-commercials?

The question was geared at smallmouth, and I have nothing on that species, but large mouth will go back to home waters. There is a thread on here I posted on Toledo Bend and the Chamber of Commerce on the La side. They give replicas for 10 lb + fish that are weighed at the Hwy 6 Many La Bridge, could be Tackle Town USA. The awards (replicas) are given out during the June Big Bass Splash. 2 of these fish were caught twice in the same year during this 4 month period. Any one familar with T-Bend, its 75 miles long, and the Many bridge is about 37 miles from the dam. Six mile creek is where the first one was caught, she was 11+, 6 miles from the dam, thus six mile creek, she was taken in an weighed and tagged and release at Hwy 6 bridge. She was caught 3 weeks later 1 mile from six mile creek, which is 32 miles, one mile from home and weighed over 12 at that time. Another one caught approx. 11miles up from dam, weighed and tagged, released and caught 1 month later in the same hole as originally caught or close. This shows that at least big fish have home waters and will travel to get there. 26 miles to get home.

The south doesn't need to add nutrients on most cases. But does need to provide a new source of cover once the new has worn off. Banks and shoreline erode the cover. New cover must be inplace for fry to survive. Droughts that kill vegitation because of 20' drop in water levels need new vegatation introduced for new oxygen supplies or newly heavy growth on the uncovered shorelines. This study comes from the "show me state" Mizzou and Iowa. In Missouri, reducing nutrient inputs is central to our efforts dealing with nonpoint source pollution. Though it seems counterintuitive, some lake managers in the U.S. intentionally put nutrients into lakes, a process known as lake fertilization. By fertilizing, lake managers hope to increase the harvest of sport fish that lake users spend so much time and money to catch. Fish yield and lake trophic state are highly correlated, meaning that greater nutrient concentrations in a lake equate to greater fish biomass. Adding nutrients to a lake will directly increase the amount of algae present, and the algae in turn provide food for zooplankton, many of which become food for fish (see the article Bottom UpTop Down). People love to catch big fish, but before you decide to pour your lawn fertilizers into the lake, read on. Lake fertilization is generally only recommended in a handful of U.S. states where soil fertility is very low and fishing pressure is high. In addition to fertilization, some U.S. lakes are so acidic that lime must be added to increase both the pH and the chemical availability of the phosphorus. In acidic water, any added phosphorus will quickly bind with sediments on the lake bottom. Typically, Missouri lakes aren't blessed with the problem of too little algae, and our abundance of limestone generally ensures that the pH is high and phosphorus is readily available to algae. Fertilization efforts are expensive and labor intensive. Fertilized lakes must be monitored frequently and fertilizer needs to be applied multiple times per growing season to provide a stable environment for fish populations. The heavy biological loads associated with fertilization require careful attention to dissolved oxygen concentrations. To avoid fish kills in cases of very high fertility, aeration may be required. Fertilization is really only a viable option for lakes where fishing is the primary use. Swimmers, divers and municipal water users would certainly be upset to find that considerable money was spent to turn their lake into a green algae soup! Considering a lake's existing uses is important for any management plan, and favoring one lake use (fishing) to the exclusion of another (swimming, water supply) may not be legal. The level of fish biomass that a lake can support is ultimately determined by the lake's fertility. The concentration of chlorophyll (the algal pigment measured by the LMVP), is one measure of lake fertility. In a study of Missouri and Iowa lakes, Jones and Hoyer (1982) showed the concentration of chlorophyll explained about 83% of the variation in fish harvest. A 2004 study of Iowa lakes by Egertson and Downing shows that Catch Per Unit Effort (measured as weight of fish caught in a net each night) increases as chlorophyll concentration increases. However, with the increase in algae, the species of the fish captured shifts from traditional sport fish to benthivorous (i.e. bottom feeding see page 5) species like the common carp and the black bullhead. So, a lake with more algae can support more fish than a lake with less algae, but those fish may not be the desired species. Ironically, in some Northwest U.S. waters, human activities have resulted in too few nutrients. Salmon fry hatch in fresh waters and grow as they move downstream to the sea. After a few years, the salmon have grown large by feeding in the ocean, and they return to freshwater to spawn and die. Historically, most of those salmon bodies would rot in the stream or lake, depositing nutrients in the process. As human fishing pressure has increased, more and more nutrients are taken out of the water as fish meat, leaving inadequate nutrients in the stream to support the flora and fauna upon which the salmon depend. For this reason, fertilization programs have begun in some northwestern lakes.

I choose a northern state to show the difference in growing seasons and fertility. From the Mn DNR Many anglers still believe that northern lakes-cool, deep, clear, clean-are the ones packed with fish. But actually, it's southwestern lakes that contain and produce the most fish per acre. A northern Minnesota lake simply can't produce as much fish as a similar sized southwestern lake, any more than an acre of land in St. Louis County can grow as much corn as an acre in Le Sueur County. A northern Minnesota lake such as Vermillion in St. Louis County produces about 8 pounds of game fish per acre, while a southern Minnesota lake such as Tetonka in Le Sueur County produces about 40 pounds of game fish per acre. Why the difference? Because lake fertility is one of the most important factors limiting the number and size of fish in a lake. The more fertile the lake-up to a limit-the more fish per acre it can produce. That's because fertile lakes support more plant life, and plant life supports the entire food chain. Minnesota's lakes range from the relatively infertile oligotrophic ("scantily nourished") Northern Minnesota lakes, which have steep, rocky shores and contain few nutrients, and are so deep that the sun can penetrate only a small amount of water, to the extremely fertile eutrophic ("richly nourished") southwestern Minnesota lakes, which are surrounded by rich farmland and are so shallow that sunlight can reach -and thus stimulate plant growth in-a relatively large percentage of the water mass. Between two regions are the central Minnesota lakes, called mesotrophic ("moderately nourished"). One qualifier: Lakes can actually have too many nutrients and grow too fertile to support game fish. That's because the same plants that provide food and oxygen to the lake also consume oxygen when they die and decompose. Every few winters, thick ice and snow on shallow lakes block adequate sunlight from reaching plants, which then die. As the vegetation decomposes, it uses up dissolved oxygen needed by fish to survive. When fish die in large numbers in late winter from lack of oxygen, it is called winterkill. This commonly occurs on overly fertile southwestern lakes and ponds.

How does a lake maintain fertility with three years of drought, and these are man made lakes and resorvoirs. Only one natural lake in the state of Tx. Caddo lake, it was formed by an earthquake. RoLo, The lakes you mention are not man made, I do know that as a lake ages, it loses fertility if nothing is there to replace the old existing structure. As droughts go, so does the tributaries that feed them. Most lakes don't suffer droughts, but do serve as public water resorvoirs, and demand on metro areas specially in summer when water usage is required more. Due to no rains, and water consumption up, alot of exposed banks in N/NE Tx right now. Populations are not going to decrease, but increase more every year. The growing need for more water sheds is in demand in states and metro areas where massive populations exist. Check your rain fall totals for the last 50 yrs, Mother nature has given us the normal amounts every year, some less, some more, it hasn't changed very much, what has changed is the population explosion and the need for more water.