High school fishing

I was talking to a bass club president the other night about our high school fishing proposal and he told me about a school official he knows in Kansas that thought it would be a great idea but it would be a tough sell to the schools because of budgetary considerations.
I told him it should be the opposite. This program should be appealing to schools because it will be budget friendly to schools. In Illinois' program, most of the mentors for the schools were from the school district staff or unpaid volunteers from bass clubs. The Missouri State High School Activities Association has told us we could have the same volunteer mentor and boat captain setup as Illinois had in the first year of its fishing program.
As for other expenses, the kids will be required to have their own fishing gear (I'm sure we will be able to collected donated gear for the kids who don't have any) and boats will be provided by volunteers.
So in these tough economic times, this is one school activity that will be very affordable for the schools.

Blade bait bass

Yesterday was a rare treat for me. Since I live around the clearest section of Lake of the Ozarks, I rarely get a chance to fish a spinnerbait unless it's cloudy and windy. However the water down by the dam has been murky this fall and we decided to try some blade baits.
I threw a Hole Shot Tackle Company spinnerbait 3/8-ounce chartreuse with a gold willowleaf and Colorado tandem and my partner threw a chartreuse double wilowleaf War Eagle spinnerbait (www.wareaglelures.com). Keying on the front of docks inside of points and also along the black rocks just inside the points, we caught nine keepers. Too bad we weren't in a buddy tournament because our best five fish would have weighed around 21 pounds. My partner caught two fish that we hooked on a Berkley hand-held scale and they each weighed exactly 5 pounds.

There's No Place Like Home

After a week of cold, clouds and spitting snow in Pennsylvania during a writers' trip, it was great to come back home to a week of sunshine and 70-degree weather and some good old down-home Lake of the Ozarks fishing. My Dad and I caught several crappie for a couple of days and when the crappie action was a little slow yesterday, we switched to bass fishing. I started out with a crankbait but had little luck so I decided to try a buzz bait and the bass just blasted a white Cavitron buzzer in the backs of pockets where gizzard shad were hugging the rocks.
Looking forward to trying that again real soon.

Pennsylvania bass fishing

After my second straight soggy writers’ trip, I am contemplating starting a new business entitled Rainmaker, Inc.
Any lake or river area that needs rain or even just a couple of cloudy, windy days can hire me to set up a writers’ trip and when my group of writers arrive, so will the inclement weather.
The latest trip I took to Pennsylvania featured just about every form of foul weather imaginable, including rain, ice pellets, snow, gusting northerly winds and air temperatures ranging from the high 30s to middle 40s. Yet despite these miserable conditions we still managed to catch some quality Conneaut Lake largemouth and smallmouth bass for photos. The weather probably prevented us from seeing Conneaut at its best since this natural lake is noted for its trophy smallmouth. The lake contained several off-shore humps for smallmouth and lots of shallow weeds for largemouth. For more information about Conneaut and the other fishing opportunities in this area, call the Crawford County Convention and Visitors Bureau (800-332-2338) or visit the web site www.visitcrawford.org .
Three of our most productive lures on this trip included the Gene Larew Biffle Bug (www.genelarewlures.com) and the Sebile Lures Magic Swimmer Soft and Flatt Shad.
The Magic Swimmer Soft is a swim bait with a unique weight system that slides up and down the hook to alter the action of the lure. Positioning the weights near the hook tie makes the lure dive nose first and zigzags when twitched while placing the weights near the rear of the hook makes the lure flutter horizontally. I spent most of the first morning running the lure steadily with the weights near the head of the bait but had only one tap, so I switched the weights to the back of the hook and decided to twitch the bait a couple of times and then let it fall. My first cast with this retrieve produced a 13-inch largemouth and I had another fish boil at the lure while I twitched it through lily pads. That was the last action I had on the bait for that day, but others in our group also caught quality largemouth and smallmouth employing the same retrieve with their Magic Swimmer Soft.
This lure will definitely be making an appearance to Lake of the Ozarks bass the next time I get the chance to throw it.
For more tips of fall fishing, visit my website at www.jnoutdoors.com .

Fishing with Lindy pros

One of these times I am going on a writers' trip where (1) the lighting is perfect for photos, (2) plenty of big fish are available for photos, (3) I collect a bunch of story ideas and (4) I catch a lot of fish.
Well, on my latest trip with Lindy Fishing Tackle (www.lindyfishingtackle.com) I did gather a bunch of great story ideas from Lake Eufaula (OK) guides Todd Huckabee and Barry Morrow and we did have some nice crappie for photos. But the sun popped out for about 10 minutes in two days and that was in the middle of the afternoon when the light is usually too harsh for photos.
I did catch a few crappie on Lindy Fuzz-E-Grub Jigs and got a chance to try out the Lindy X-Change Fishing Jig System. This neat concept allows you to change the weight of your jighead by pulling off one head and snapping on another. That will be especially helpful for all of us with diminishing eyesight or when it's bitter cold and our fingers are too numb to tie a knot.
I have to give Todd and Barry a lot of credit for putting us on fish considering the conditions we encountered. The lake was high and muddy--at least what I consider muddy--and the weather was cloudy, misty and windy. It also rained all night Wednesday and the lake rose 10 inches. Despite all of this, the guys still caught some nice 1 1/4- to 1 1/2-pound crappie while vertical jiggging brush piles and spider blocks (pvc scraps attached to a concrete block) 8 to 12 feet deep.
For more stories on catching bass and crappie in the fall, visit my web site at www.jnoutdoors.com .

Crappie Condos Part 2

It sure is great to be able to catch fish on a nice day for a change. It seems like whenever my Dad and I get together for a day of fishing the wind is blowing 50 mph or we get caught out in a rainstorm or its damp and cold. When we do go out on a nice day, the fish seem to take a siesta.
But yesterday on Lake of the Ozarks we caught 14 keeper crappie and several smaller fish pitching 3-inch Bobby Garland Slay Slayers into the wells of condo docks and along the sides of wave breakers. The fish were suspended about 10 to 20 feet deep over depths of 50 to 60 feet.
If you want to read more tips on how to catch bass and crappie in the fall, check out the articles section on my website, www.jnoutdoors.com.

Crappie condos

I recently wrote an article about how big baits attract big crappie but I found out yesterday that little crappie will also bite mega-sized lures. While fishing with my neighbor on my home waters of Lake of the Ozarks, we tried for some crappie inside the wells of condominium docks and found that crappie of all sizes liked a blue-white 3-inch Bobby Garland Slab Slay'R (www.genelarewlures.com) attached to a 1/8-ounce jighead. I caught lots of keeper crappie in the spring on the 2-inch version but this was the second time I had tried the 3-inch model and both times I have caught small fish and keepers.
We pitched into the wells and counted the jigs down to 10 to 20 and usually got strikes when the lure was falling. The fish were suspended in the wells over depths of 40 to 55 feet. I hoped by using the bigger lure we would discourage the little fellows and catch keepers only, but we caught only 8 keepers and probably about 40 short fish.
I might have to amend that article about catching big fish on big baits after this latest trip.
To read another article on techiques for catching suspended crappie in the fall, visit my website at www.jnoutdoors.com and click on the articles section.

Carol's first trout trip

Welcome to my first venture into blogging.

Since I rarely get to write about my personal fishing trips in my articles, this is my chance to brag or whine about my fishing trips. I also will give some comments on some of the products I used during the trips.

Last weekend, my wife Carol and I attended a Missouri Outdoors Communicators conference at Branson and after the conference, we decided to spend an extra day at Lilley's Landing (http://www.lilleyslanding.com/) and rent one of their boats to try some trout fishing at Lake Taneycomo. Since it was Carol's first trout fishing trip, I set her up with a drift rig and nightcrawlers and she caught a limit of rainbows. She was able to bait her own hook since we tried a new device, Uncle Jack's Worm Slicer and Line Puller (http://www.unclejackswormslicer.com/), that made it easy to slice the worms into smaller pieces without all the mess.

I managed to catch a limit of trout on a 1/32 ounce olive green jig and also caught four or five more Carolina-rigging a fluoroscent orange Berkley Gulp trout worm.

The next day I went to the dam and forced myself to fish with a fly rod while Carol went shopping. I did manage to catch one rainbow, had a brown trout break off and had another brown jump off. When Carol got back to pick me up, I asked her to give me 45 minutes with my spinning rod and proceeded to catch three rainbows and had four other strikes before my time ran out. Maybe next time I will start with my strengths and finish with the fly rod.