WookieeJedi

There were not many posts about the area at Ozarkanglers, but they did have some very good embellished maps of it. It looks like a good place for this time of year.

No stripers on a lake like that? That's practically sinful. I just always assumed they were in there. I'm headed over to Ozarkanglers right now.

^This^ When I first started out, I was a one-trick pony. That trick was jigs, and it is still a good trick, but there's always more to learn. Start out with your bottom-bouncing soft plastics and teach yourself what a strike feels like and work on timing your hookset. That will get you a long way. From there, I would learn to use that lipless crankbait (rat-l-trap), because there are a thousand ways to catch fish with it and it works all year long, just like the soft plastics. Learn that jerkbait, too. The BPS gold/red head in your box there is a good place to start. I have one like that and a gold/orange that is a good producer.

The best advice I ever got about bed fishing is to keep the smaller male fish in the well while you keep tossing to the bedded female. With that hyperactive buck gone, eventually, she will get angry enough to strike. I'm not going to tell you how long I tried doing it wrong, but it was longer than it should have been. You think I would have figured that out after catching the same fish over and over a few times.

Just so ya know, Catt, I'm getting a big map of the Bend tomorrow and then I'm going to go thru this thread like I'm looking for Blackbeard's treasure. Quite a piece of work, sir!

I have seen that a couple of times chasing stripers. Big school of baitfish, big school of stripers, and no way to distinguish the two from each other. Those were some pretty good days, once I got my hands to quit shaking and close my mouth. Never have I hit a jackpot on largemouth like that. I do believe I may have wept out loud.

It's not dirty, it's shopped out. Can't have us jacking his spots...

I like Bistineau, even if you don't kill 'em in there, it is nice to fish up in the cypress trees and enjoy a good day outside. You might try Cypress Lake up north of Bossier. There's a few good spots in that lake, almost all of it offshore structure. I haven't been there for a while, but my PB came out of that lake. Might be worth a shot. Also, there's an oxbow lake over in S'port off E. Kings that used to be pretty good. I used to whack 'em pretty good in there, but rarely saw another bass fisherman. No monsters, but beaucoup fish.

Where are you primarily fishing? I'm pretty familiar with the area, and can maybe give better advice if I know where you are going. I can tell you this, particularly about this year: the weather has spread out the spawning pattern over a longer period, meaning fish aren't all doing the same thing at the same time. That makes a pattern harder to discern. The summer pattern on my home lake (Claiborne) was all set to get started on the last spawn cycle, then we got some cool weather that messed up the shad spawn and postponed their migration to deeper water. The lake was also down over the winter, and rose 7 feet during the bass spawning cycle. For me, that meant more scattered fish in a lake where fish tend to scatter anyway. You can catch fish, but you sometimes have to work harder to get them.

Epic Slaunch!

Thanks, fellas. I'll be sure to check out Pete Wimmers before I go. It's also good to know there's some decent bass fishing right there.

There was a time when I just had one spinning rig for bass fishing, now I have four and use them as much as my baitcasters. Braided line, FC line, and a huge improvement in spinning gear has made a big difference for us and opened up techniques that old spinning reels and monofilament used to prohibit. I still remember stringing up my spinning rig with 20# Gorilla Braid for the first time. That was a real game-changer.

I know the trout ponds of which you speak, they are about 8 miles up the road from the lodge. Dogwood Creek is now part of the Dogwood Canyon facility, They want a lot of $$$ just to walk into that place. We stop at a place or two in AR on the way up and fish for trout, I will probably have 20 fish to clean when we get there. This trip will be my first time to try out the lake. This will be my third trip up there this year, and I have yet to bass fish there. Gotta fix that.

I'm going to be up at Big Cedar in the next couple of weeks, and if anyone has some pointers for fishing the area around the Lodge, it would be appreciated. I will be using their kayaks, so I won't have my fishfinder. I also will be paddling with my kids, so we aren't going to go much more than 6 miles from the lodge. I usually make a day trip or two into AR since I maintain a license there, but this time I want to give Table Rock a try. Any general info you might have about water temp, fish patterns, etc. will help too. And if stripers are doing anything around there, I'm all ears. Thanks.

Those Sexy spoons are 10 bucks a pop. They must really be special. I use Kastmasters as an all-purpose spoon. They work well as a jigging spoon and cast a mile if you need to reach breaking fish. The Silver Minnow is tough to beat for shallow persentations. Little Cleo can be a killer too..

Those dying shad are a prime target for bass. Sometimes I go out and find themoclines (fall and early summer) where the water temp changes drastically. Bass, and stripers especially if they are around, will gang up and chase the shad into the thermocline. When the shad hit it, it stuns them or makes them a little goofy. Easy pickings.

You bet I had a Mustad hook. I registered back when that offer started. I'm not sure if I would have even tried to catch that fish otherwise.

I got a couple of shallow crankbaits out of a bin at BPS that turned out to be murder. One white with black back, and the other gold with a brown back. They were $1 each.

What kind of popper are you using? Some are made to fish more slowly, like the pop-r, while others like the chug bug are meant to fish faster, and use a dog-walk motion. If you are using the first kind, make sure you have some kind of dressing on the rear hook, I rarely catch anything on one with a bare rear hook. If you are using the second type, try to keep the lure walking until the fish takes it under. They usually want those to keep moving. You can slow down the cadence if they are missing or not striking. I like to toss a tube, slug, or senko in on a fish when they just come out to look.

The rod that gets the most use is a 2-piece BPS ProComp with an old Shimano B-100 reel. The reel is as smooth as it was when it was new in 198?, and the rod has just the standard short pistol-grip. It is the kind of setup that does nothing really well, but it can do just about everything. The 2-piece construction makes it easy to pack or keep in the truck.

I always start with something like a jig, and get a feel for the bottom, and the other stuff under the surface and go from there. If you hear or see an abundance of frogs, go with the frogs. That'a a lot of protein for a pond fish, and very hard to resist.

Too early in the fight to call it. Rage got popped in the mouth a couple of times, but it's a long way til October.

My order arrived two days ago. The umbrella rig head is nearly identical to the Mann's brand, the wire is one size lighter, and the middle arm is the same length as the other 4. The swivels are a little better quality than on the Mann's version. I think they will do just fine. I also ordered two jerkbaits and two crankbaits from them, just to see what their quality is like. The MD 35 is a little light for it's size, and other than the finish, it looks cheap, which it was at $1.20. The MD34 ($1.69) looks to be made a little better, and the holographic finish on both lures look really good, especially considering the price. The C55 ($1.69) crankbait also has a nice finish, and good weight; I got the X6 color (like sexy shad), and the colors are right on, just like you would expect from that color pattern. The C81 ($.99) crank is somewhere between a shad rap and a fat-free shad in shape, it also has good weight, and the color X1 (TN shad) is what you would expect, no weird color variations, but it was missing a snap ring on the lip. The hooks that came on them are not fantastic, but they did turn out to be quite sharp. I'm going to leave them on during the field-test phase and see how they do. The real test of these lures will be in the fishing, and I don't know yet if they run straight or not; but lures this cheap shipped for free were worth a try. I'll post results.

We used to call it Delacroix Influenza. Lots of sick notes signed by Dr. Bullred.

The larger trees will have a root system that forms a canopy under the water where a bass can hide to ambush prey. The bigger the trunk, the bigger the canopy, and isolated trees will have the most defined roots. You can throw anything at the tree and drag it off the roots, and lots of times it will get mugged on the first drop. A senko is perfect due to the slow fall. I have used T-rigged plastics and jigs on cypress too. You can also try a bluegill imitation like the Jackall Giron by pulling it alongside the roots. Try a weedless soft plastic on the tree first, so you know where those roots stop, you can get hung up pretty easily.