Husband out fished me.

[perchplucker]

Went to the Osage Saturday. Beautiful day in the water. Several dink bass. A couple of BIG bluegill. Then husband caught this 6 lb. 4 oz drum. . Checked usual spots for white bass. But nothing. Haven't caught one all summer in the rivers. Don't see any Shad. Just baby carp. They outgrow small predators quickly. Have seen a decline in game fish in the rivers over the last few years.

[perchplucker]

Had to take pic of picture with IPad. Duh

[LSL Angler]

That's a big one, congrats

[Lil Baby]

any reason you can think of why the decline of fish? I go on the Osage a few times a year and noticed the river is chalked full of every kind of carp. I carp fish when the river is low and it is crazy the numbers I catch. I have also noticed the carp have moved more out of the smaller rivers like the maries and into the osage.

[perchplucker]

Personally I think it is the Asian Carp. The eat plankton, algae and that type of stuff. They also strip leaves off stuff when water is high. Small fry and minnows need something to eat. If nothing for them to eat they don't survive. Not for sure what grown gizzard Shad eat. But when there is no Shad for a food source fish go looking for a food source. White bass need Shad to eat. They bust those schools like crazy. So if no food for them there is no white bass. The carp grow to fast for the whites to eat for long. Just my idea but seems to have been a steady decline since the carp invasion.

[doggone]

large fish with a voracious appetite for plankton that can out breed and out survive any fish natural to the USA (to this point anyway). The plankton is the basis for all water life. Mess with the natural food chain and anything is possible. The fishing as it was 30 years ago for those bodies of water affected is gone. I saw my first one at Bagnell dam around 1998 I think? Since then I have watched schools of thousands swim by my boat on the Ohio,Tennessee,Cumberland,Mississippi,and their tributaries.