Vacation in Kansas, Missouri.....

[DocSpotty]

Got back from my first 3 week vacation in I don’t know when a few days ago. First stop was in Kansas to visit the in-laws…..they live a bit out in the bushes from Leavenworth. My father-in-law rebuilt the pond next to his house a few years ago and restocked it with channel cats, hybrid bluegill, black crappie and a few triploid grass carp….don’t know why he didn’t put any bass in there…..I also suggested putting a few musky in but then that’s all there would be left after awhile…lol. Leaving Alaska and going to 100+ degree weather with high humidity absolutely sucks!! I was met at my in laws by a good friend I have taken fishing in Montana…he ran me immediately out to a few local ponds to sample the largemouth bass. Have to love the first place….right next to us the family had a shooting range set-up and someone decided to come and sight in there AK47….scared the living heck right outta me:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/NavesPond.jpg

Despite the gunfire we did manage to catch many small bass:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/NavesBass.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/NavesBass2.jpg

The following morning I decided to feed the catfish to see what size they were. Then I walked to the neighbors’ pond and did some bass fishing but it got too hot after an hour and I hoofed it back to the homestead:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/BoneyBass2.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/BoneyBass.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/BoneyBass3.jpg

Later that afternoon we did a little fishing with the kids. Using nitecrawlers we managed to excite some of the pond dwellers. The panfish went rabid for the bobber action. My nephew Heston was pretty jazzed:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/HestonHyBluegill.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/Hestonstylin.jpg

Uncle Hy seemed to have some sort of bizarre physical attraction to the bream:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/KansasMontSummer09083.jpg

My daughter, Elyssa, really zeroed in on the big ones:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/WeenyFish.jpg

But when we had a contest for biggest she did come out ahead:
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/LyssaWins.jpg

Four days into our vacation we all drove down to Branson, Missouri for a few days….where it was even hotter….wish it would melt off my extra layer of blubber. While in Branson we went to the hatchery there….some very large brown and rainbow broodstock:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/BroodBrowns.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/BroodBows.jpg

Cool video of a feeding rainbow…fish was 8-10 lbs class….wouldn’t that be a hoot on a flyrod:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/th_MoBowVid.jpg (http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/?action=view&current=MoBowVid.flv)

On the next to last day in Branson….for being a good boy….my wife released me into the wild to fish for bass on Table Rock Lake. Went out at O dark thirty so we could get some surface action before the water began to boil when the sun came up. Had great fun catching 20 or so bass….predominantly spotted bass….my first….and a few largemouth. I caught all mine on a little frog pattern torpedo lure that must be around 20 years old. This was the largest fish of the morning….a largemouth:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TableRockBass.jpg

I hooked up with another guy to fish through the heat of the day…young kid who assured me we could still catch fish. We headed further up the lake and cruised around to some floating dock areas to target suspended bass. It was the first time I have done “drop shotting” with nitecrawlers…we were targeting fish suspending 25-35 feet down in much deeper water. I was pretty impressed with the results…...catching another 15-20 bass from 11:30am to 5:30pm….mostly spotted:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TRockSpottie.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TRockSpot.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TableRockSpotted.jpg

Got a really nice spotted bass in the 3+ lbs. category:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TRock3Spottie.jpg

And tallied one really nice largemouth bass which was quite difficult to extricate from the dock and back of the boat I had cast behind:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TRockBigBass.jpg

So the bass fishing was definitely a great success as far as I was concerned. Will have to get back down that way again and spend more than 1 day fishing that area. The next day we headed back to the Leavenworth homestead and a few more days of fishing the pond…..it’s great only having to walk 100 feet out the back door to arrive at the fishing dock.

After a morning trip into Cabelas in Kansas City….I grabbed some small jig heads and some Berkeley Gulp fish tails and was ready to give my fly rod a workout on the pond.
Began by working the fish into a bit of a frenzy with the floating catfish food….then after catching several smaller bluegills nailed this one which was a pound and a half:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/HybridBluegill.jpg

About 2 hours later I had caught 3 or 4 dozen bluegill on the fly rod and had kept several to eat for dinner that night:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/PondFlyBluegills.jpg

During the end of this fishing spree I was surprised by a very nice channel cat which smacked the little jig and kept him for dinner also:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/ChannelCat.jpg

The dinner was absolutely fantastic with fresh beer batter fried catfish and bluegill…my daughter even rated the catfish as better than halibut from home (Alaska)….they were darn good. After dinner some of the other cousins showed up again and we all hit the pond fishing for a few more hours. Young Mr. Heston managed a nice kitty fish with his father:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/HyHestonCat.jpg

Then Elyssa tied into a nice catfish and brought it in by herself:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/LyssaCatfish.jpg

I managed to help Heston in with another one:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/HestonCatfish.jpg

And even my wife, Erica, brought one in on the fly rod…after a prolonged battle…I’m not great with identifying catfish but this one looked like a flathead catfish…not a channel….anyone out there tell me for sure?

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/EricaMeKitty.jpg

Even old Beluga Daddy managed a nice fly rod channel:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/FlyrodCat.jpg

Spent the evening’s fishing talking with Hank, my father-in-law, and his stocking of the pond. He didn’t think the fish would reproduce but we caught several small catfish which had to be spawned the year before and saw two large “balls” of baby catfish apparently hatched this year. Caught herds of small bluegill so they are reproducing as well. The only fish he was concerned about were the crappie…he had stocked 50 of those and hadn’t seen them since. As it got later into the evening I switched to fishing the little jig in the deepest part of the pond….where natural springs bubbled in…. and was rewarded with many 4” long crappie. Just before I knocked off for the evening I hooked something much better and landed this large crappie….I guess a few of the original stocking still survived.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/MeCrappie.jpg

After dark that night the dog started barking like crazy out in the driveway and we ran out there to find this lovely specimen of snapper turtleism wandering around:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/Snapper.jpg

We were trying to figure out how to get his onery beast somewhere else when Hank decided to give it a shovel ride over to the neighbors’. It was one torqued off turtle…managed to catch one of the vicious snaps with a short video:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/th_SnapperRemoval.jpg (http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/?action=view&current=SnapperRemoval.flv)

Hope the neighbors’ enjoy their new pet…..hehe.

The next day was our final one as we had to leave in the late afternoon. This gave me the time to do some “meat” fishing in the morning as my wife wanted to take home some yummy catfish fillets. So after sorting through several panfish I locked onto this guy:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/KittyBack.jpg

By the time that one was in….Elyssa was back and we hooked another nice catfish that she brought in:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/DadLyssaCat.jpg

I ended up with a few more nice kitty fish….all on the fly rod:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/DoubleCats.jpg

Kept on catching nice fish when I finally landed another nice crappie of about 1 ½ pounds. Thought maybe I was done catching fish when I hooked into another obviously nice one but definitely not a cat. After a few minute struggle the largest crappie I have caught came to the surface and was landed…..it was just at 3 lbs on my scale….what a toad. Here are some pics of the last two crappie:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/BigCrappie.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/DoubleCrappies.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/TwoCrappies.jpg

With that I filleted out our fish…..dropped them in the freezer and left the burning furnace that was Kansas. Had a great time with the in laws but it was really hot. From Kansas, though….. we didn’t go home but headed back west to visit my extended family in Montana….but that is another story…..it should be told in a few days.

Brian

[Skyler]

Awesome report!


Even old Beluga Daddy managed a nice fly rod channel:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/DocEsox/FlyrodCat.jpg


YOU ARE A GOD! You see that Wingnut? He beat the ultimate challenge without even trying, lol. A catfish on the fly. Someone just raised the bar, ha ha ha!

[tacklejunkie]

Nice work Doc. Amazing report as usual. Great read! Thanks for sharing.

[BingJr]

Beautiful Report. I was in Texas for 2 weeks and it was hot as well, but the fishing is so good, you don't notice too much.. :)


Great job on the nice kitties on the Fly Rod.

[troutdog]

Tough to duplicate the adventures of Doc Spotty, lots of awesome fish...WTG!!!!

"Fight On!"


TD

[DccFISHerMan]

damn dude, trip looked like an awesome one!

[bullets_full]

That looked like one hell of an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing and congrats on many QUALITY fish!

_Bullets

[Troutman65]

What a Great Vacation. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us all.

Catching the CATFISH on the fly is incredible :!!!::Idea::Cool::Big Grin::Wink::!!!:


Patrick

[DCCTrouserTrout]

great report as always.

[Ifishtoolittle]

Greatest Freshwater report I've ever read WTG man! BTW my name is Bryan. Hehe.

[DreStyle]

So it is possible to catch a catfish on the fly. Hopefully you'll be at legends and you can share the secret.

[sliu6122]

Dang you killed it, GJ

[cjschock]

Beautiful slabs.