Gonna fish Beaver Lake next week for some. They been catching 20 to 30 lbers. lately.

Have fun! I have always wanted to go there and give it a try.

Went one year ago but didn't use a guide caught em up to 15# on buck tails on points up creeks. Only bit in evenings but guides swear by the shad there

Good Luck

Sounds FUN!!!
Hope your supply of RonJig's is enough!

Tight Lines and Good Luck!

Thanks guys. I only booked 1/2 day in the am. I gotta get back to the grind too soon. I think Don just uses shad. All I brought with me was sunscreen, fishin hat, and a couple of my thumpers. lol
Oh, and a cooler for those fillets from my 30+ lbers.

Hope u have better luck than I did last year at Lake Ouachita

Hope you hit a grand slam or two, Jeff. Itza go big or go home kinda fishing

I just got back from a 2 day trip there. The guide was not using shad but he was using creek shiners. The first day he took us on a boat ride in milk chocolate muddy water and we trolled for 5 hours. One striper. The second day we went to clear water and caught 4 stripers up to 8 lbs and the rest were sandies.
THe guides web site said he uses shad but he had none in the bait tank. Two other boats at the dock were using creek shiners too.

I feel a little bit taken......

The big shiners work as well or better than shad this time of year...at least on Ouachita where I normally fish. You shouldn't feel taken cause its the go to bait this time of year.

I'll be drowning a few next week also.

I

I don't usually feel taken when I do a trip like this.
I know I am rolling the dice when I schedule a trip so far in advance. No one can guaranty what the weather and other conditions will be. I pay for the experience, and hope the guide I hired (after I researched him ahead of time)will do the best he can to make my day enjoyable. I figure if someone has been guiding for 37 years, he might have a good idea what the fish are doing most times of the year under different circumstances.
If not, I brought my thumper to teach him something new.

Well, My trip was a great success. I got a call from Don(Beaverfeverguides.com) about 5:30 Mon. morning as I was about to head to the boat. He told me to wait about an hour because the fog was too thick to see.
We finally started strolling live 4" to 6" shad. It seemed he just kept dragging out more and more rods to bait out. I said it's just you and me!
By the time he had them all baited, there were 14 live shad being dragged behind his boat!
That is definitely an art.
It was still pretty foggy, so we stayed close to our starting point.
I landed 1 huge 18" sand bass, and 1 21" striper.
The bite was like a catfish bite. tick tick tick, then gradually start to bend down. It was weird.
After the fog cleared some we moved to a couple of other unproductive spots.
We then traveled about 45 minutes down the lake just past a bridge. He graphed some fish and decided to try that area.
We landed 2 more nice striper, and then the action died. A bump here and there, but no takers.
After about an hour of that, I told him I was going to turn on my thumper.
He said, and I quote him, "Go ahead, I'll sit back here and laugh."
3 minutes later the first rod buried into the water. Before I could land that one, 2 more rods buried. he starts yelling "What the hell?"
I told him to bring some of those rods in, that we couldn't keep up but he kept baiting them and putting them back in.
For about an hour, we missed more than we caught. It was awesome.
He said he had been guiding for striper on Beaver Lake for 36 years, and had never seen anything like what just happened.
He said "I want one of them contraptions" "How much?"
When we packed up, we had both our limits and released 3 other legal ones. I have no idea how many we missed sitting the hook on.
He called his friend, another guide and ask how many fish they had. On speaker he replied 3 fish for the day with 3 clients.
Then Don told about our day. Richie said "I want one of the thumper things". " How much?"
Sold the 2 thumpers I had with me. They assured me others would be calling to order.
He videoed while I reeled in the largest fish of the day and we talked about my thumper while he videoed it. When I get the video from him I will post it here for you to watch.
I can now say I have caught my limit of stripers and then some on Beaver Lake.
And I have a new market area for my Bobo's Thumper.

Sounds like a great trip. It was productive more ways than one it sounds like. Congrats!

awesome!

Great read, Jeff! Congrats on the win win win trip. Guide, client, and BoboThumper all were winnets lol
Looking forward for the video. You CAN teach old dogs new tricks