Zach Matthews
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Mark and Randy –
What’s your cost guesstimate on what it would take to run up the cabinet in the first picture?
Zach
Curt –
Two options, three if you don’t mind breaking the law just a touch:
(1) Quarry Park below Norfork Dam. Take Hwy. 5 south of Mountain Home to Salesville, turn left and the road practically dead-ends at the Dam. Good fishing right behind the tent, especially at night by the mouth of Dry Run Creek.
(2) White River State Park below Bull Shoals Dam. A little further from Mountain Home and a little bigger water. This area also has great fishing and we may just be getting into the brown trout pre-spawn, although realistically that’s another few weeks away. The river in this area is gravelly and fairly stark, and only wadeable at low water.
(3) Rim Shoals. Technically there’s no camping here but I’ve slept in my car and gotten away with it. The advantage here is wade-out fishing onto Rim Shoals itself.
BIG CAVEAT: I am not sure what minimum flow will do to wading conditions. I would plan to bring a pontoon boat or other type of boat if you’re going to Rim so you can drag it well upstream, paddle across, then repeat on the other side. The back side of Rim Shoals Island is the best place to look for pre-spawn browns, most likely to be clustering up in the deep slots (I doubt they will be shallow yet but if they are it will be right at dawn, then they’ll move off as angler and boat traffic hits at day time).
I’d call Steve Dally at the Ozark Fly Fisher and ask for the most recent scoop before you go.
Zach
God those are awesome, Corey. And that water color is intense. Is that one of the actual tunas in the bottom shot? I didn’t think they had false albacore/bonita on the Pacific side.
Zach
Completely outstanding. How’d you get the shot of the mahi – you diving in or just hanging over the side with a dome on the body?
Thanks for posting Corey. Super slick.
Zach
Mike –
Sage reels are primarily imported and re-badged (thus the nice price). Historically they’ve favored stacked washers for their drag systems, which are plenty strong enough for any trout application but would be undergunned for stripers or many saltwater fish.
For more about reel drag construction, check this out:
HTH,
ZachBrian –
I’ve done this a few times in Arkansas lakes too. You anchor them up, oftentimes just by hanging them off the side of your boat, especially if you’re on a pontoon type craft. The reason for the buoy is that we want to be in control of at least one “dock light” while we search around the lake for more. This is kind of a fall/winter fishing method but Henry Cowen here in Georgia has been very successful getting his clients on stripers this way.
Jay Malyon and I have certainly seen big stripers crashing bait up on the lights, but we have also been freaking shot at and we’ve frozen our nuts off just looking for lights that are turned on.
So the idea would be to anchor up the buoy, with the lights suspended at say 7-8′ and 15′, with a dome light on top mounted on a post to keep the rig from being run over. Then we’d leave it for a while to attract bait. I suppose it might get stolen but I think the odds of someone coming along and stealing our whole rig are pretty low. There aren’t that many people out at night and I can’t imagine many thieves are among them.
After giving it a few hours we’d come back at say 3-4AM and troll in quietly, keeping our distance and fly-casting to the light to try to pull a big fish off it.
I have pretty strong confidence this will work because I’ve seen just how much of a bait tornado one of these lights can pull in.
Zach
That’s awesome, Travis. That boat really looks great and I am impressed with your ability to consistently catch muskie.
Zach
Bass Pro Shops sells green submersible lights that are about 24″ long, Brian. Jay had a couple and I bought a couple more. The first time we went my trolling motor battery was still going strong after at least 6 hours; we weren’t catching fish and the full moon was rising so we bagged it. I would expect to get at least a night’s worth of juice with just two lights on a deep cycle trolling motor battery.
The lights also have a little fusebox just before the gator clips. And Gary this would definitely fit in the canoe. I bought inflatable rubber inner tubes that are pretty darn durable but not all that huge. They’re supposed to be 6″ around but they deform without a tire to sit in, so I left them a little smaller. The last time we rigged this with a regular human being pool float circle and it held the battery up just fine; it’s not all that much weight. With a milk crate I can just zip tie everything together; I have a flashlight with a dome attachment as a safety light that I’ll tie on there too.
Zach
Need to get my milk crate (I decided it would be lighter and also drain water in the event of a boat wake wave) but I’ll post pics when it’s done.
Zach
Got my basil pesto put up. Also got to use my softboxes! I overdid the salt a hair (but thankfully just a hair) so if I can just remember not to salt the pasta I use this with I ought to be ok.
Zach
Super awesome Mike! Are you burning a laundry hamper there? Did you eat any of those Kings? I’d be curious to know how the freshwater lake versions taste.
Zach
That is helpful, Douglas – I wondered about that. My flashes are Nikon SB-600s — they have a fresnel-type screen that can be dropped down to spread the light to 14mm (at least that is what the body says). I take it it would be a good idea to use this screen?
Zach
If I could get her to sit that still when I am paying attention to her I would have used her for a model instead of me!
Arright so this is kind of fruity, I know, but I only had myself to use as a model. I was pretty happy.
I’m looking forward to doing a product spread soon.
Zach
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Cool shots, Brad – thanks for sharing. For some reason I was thinking the Driftless area was known for brook trout–is that not true?
Zach
These worked very well. I just need to find my fabric and some flat black gaffer’s tape to finish them up. (I am still going to paint the insides white).
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Very interesting, Bret, and very professionally handled. I was reading a “tutorial” the other day when looking into ideas for making my boxes, and I noticed that I could see all of dude’s equipment reflected in the shiny surfaces of the gear he was shooting. Not very pro.
I appreciate the needs of a true professional to be efficient. In my case I am more trying to fully understand this than anything else; I shot one catalog for Nautilus reels about 5 years ago and was very dissatisfied with the results. Since that time this kind of setup has become much more common (probably because of eBay) and there seem to be a lot more resources online describing how to achieve the effects I was going for. Not to mention the excellent help I’ve gotten here on the board.
Thanks again,
Zach
