Shirey Bay

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Originally Posted by Slabyanker

Anybody ever fish the horseshoe lake inside Rainey Brake? Not sure of what the name of it is.

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that's the name of it. horseshoe lake and it is a complete circle. the last time i fished it was summer before last and may be the last time i ever fish it i saw a rattle snake swim behind my boat bout 20 ft. had it's head up out of the water and tail straight up out of the water and was on top of the water just like a cotton mouth swims if you've ever seen a cotton mouth in the water. don't know if i could fish that place again without having to watch all around the boat for rattle snakes. it looks like the picture turtle has his fish at. that place round that lake is covered up with rattle snakes. a man that cut timber for me on the farm cut timber for the game and fish on raney brake and said they killed 154 timber rattlers while cutting the timber there. and yes, i know you aren't supposed to kill snakes but they can't get that man. he's no longer living. the only time you can kill a snake is when it threatens you. they all threaten me.

I've seen plenty of cottonmouths. Not very many rattlesnakes. I used to have a good spot bank fishing for crappie in the spring on languille river. I wont go back to it because of the number of cottonmouths we would see up close. Was the fishing any good? I dont mind the snakes near as much if I'm in the boat.

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Originally Posted by Slabyanker

Anybody ever fish the horseshoe lake inside Rainey Brake? Not sure of what the name of it is.

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Fished it several times. The fish are small and few, the water is high right now, but its clear, and black.

a few years back i did good on both bass and crappie. not so good the last couple of years i fished it other than a couple of bream fishing trips. catch'em bedding and it can get real good for them. it has some over a pound shell crackers in it. i got into a bed probably half way round the thing. set in that one spot and caught the limit of good bream and even better shell crackers. sounds like we are losing all our old fishing places. fished horners and shireys both probably over 50 years ago. an old man lived on the bank of shireys and rented wooden boats for i think a 1.00 a day.

We don't live in a good part of the state for fishing. Sure wish there were some big lakes nearby.

Horseshoe has filled in over the years and not ever deep when at normal pool,wish they would fix the dam better to hold more water.In the summer months its hard to get around even with the tm raised up you'll stir up mud.All the fish have gotten smaller and fewer of them,from the look of things its going to be covered up in duckweed this year.
Oldduckhunter if you talking about just around the bend in the straight away north of the ramp I haven't found the bream there in the last three years.After the big flood a few years ago I caught two flyers out of it which I released them back but haven't caught another,pretty fish.

I like fishing big and little horseshoe south of newport but they too are now posted,BIG crackers in there.

Big lakes,at one time they where talking about daming up strawberry river to make a lake almost as big as north fork.Never did find out why they decided not to,wish they would have buildit it,we could of had a smallmouth lake and crappie big as basketballs.

at one time they also talked bout daming 5 of the big creeks running into spring river. that would have been great. now it costs too much money to do anything. they can't even finish the bono lake. i bet it will be another mudhole like frierson.

That would have been great to dam up strawberry or spring river. Sure wish they would do something. Even a lake half the size of Norfork would be great. The Bono lake will probably be like Frierson, and stay muddy all the time.

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Originally Posted by olduckhunter

at one time they also talked bout daming 5 of the big creeks running into spring river. that would have been great. now it costs too much money to do anything. they can't even finish the bono lake. i bet it will be another mudhole like frierson.

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Sure didn't see the end of this post. Wouldn't have made mine if i had.:Rofl