Central Missouri Bass Fishing Binge: 3/4-3/12

I’ve been waiting for the month of March to hit ever since I found out that I was going to get a chance to take part in the Central Division College Fishing opener down on Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. What a rush it was to pack up the bass gear and tow the boat 650 miles knowing that a bass fishing oasis was awaiting for a couple of junkies that have been locked in the ice cap for months. The itinerary involved arriving to Osage Beach, MO Friday morning and prefishing through Sunday, as the lake went off limits to college anglers that Monday. Knowing a bit about the Ozarks helped Zac narrow down the areas that we would start and end our prefishing, while both of our combined knowledge of fishing jerkbaits in cold water helped us to have pretty instantaneous results. The pattern we knew would be the key going in was to fish secondary points in some of the major creek arms of the lake near the Bagnell dam. The water here is cleaner and cooler which has fish gorging on shad. In the dirtier sections of the lake where the water was warmer, fish would be relating to the bottom and more scattered, searching for crayfish in the rocks. Our first day of prefishing produced a lot of small largemouths fishing Lucky Craft pointers and Megabass 110’s. Late in the day I finally caught a solid fish around 2-3/4 lbs on a secondary point.

On day two we planned to be more efficient and refined and narrowed our fishing down to only secondary points in the larger creeks. The smaller creeks that we fished seemed to be holding fewer fish. Slowly but surely things were starting to get better for us, and more and better fish were finally starting to come to the boat. On the third day of practice we started in a new creek very near the dam. It took about 3 casts in this creek before i hooked up with a nice 3 pound fish. Trolling over to another point close by produced 2 more keepers on the jerkbait. It wasn’t 20 minutes of fishing before I had 4 keepers in the boat and some shorts and we decided to leave the area for further investigation during the tournament. That day the sun came out and things changed. We weren’t getting bit much so we experimented with colors. It wasn’t long before we found out that when the sun shines at this place, they like chrome. This was exemplified by a 5 pound pig that crushed Zac’s old smithwick rogue and gave him a hard battle before hitting the net. With 6 fish in the boat weighing 17 pounds, we were feeling very confident in the areas we had found and had a milkrun of 3 or 4 creeks that we were positive we could get bit in during the tournament. We left the lake with a smile on our faces and headed south to Table Rock Lake in the morning for some fun fishing.

Table rock Lake was a different animal than Lake of the Ozarks, but I wouldn’t say I minded! The lake was absolutely awesome to fish and pulling 2-1/2 pound spots out of clear water is a rush! Especially when you had never caught one in your life before the trip. We spent three days fishing on Table rock and caught a lot of fish. I think we had 40 fish days each day we were there, but there wasn’t a whole lot for size. We had a couple of fish around 3 pounds and a lot of 2 pounders. The biggest difference maker for me on Table Rock was innovation with a different technique that I don’t think anybody is doing on this lake. Everyone down there likes to swim a grub through submerged cedar trees in deep water. It’s a spotted bass killer. But most guys were saying that swimming them through the shallower trees in 10-30 feet was just asking for snags. I got to thinking, bought some salt/pepper grubs and put it to work after catching a few bass on a jerkbait on a secondary point. What I did was take a white lethal weapon swim jig, thin the skirt down to 10-15 strands, and swim the jig & grub combination through the standing cedar trees on 8 pound fluorocarbon on a 6’6″ M spinning rod. My 2nd cast, I got absolutely rocked by a chunky spotted bass. From that point forward it was game on. The trick was letting the rod do the work and only reeling to take up slack. Subtle pulls, keeping the bait 10-15 feet down with an occasional flick of the wrist when contacting the timber, was a shocker to these spotted bass that I guarantee haven’t seen anything quite like this. A few fish were also caught on jerkbaits, Crankbaits and spinnerbaits, but by far the swim jig was my go to bait for table rock.

After table rock, we headed to Stockton Lake in central Missouri for a day. Zac had piles of homework to do, so he stayed in all day while I went out on yet another new body of water. I fished a lot of points in creeks along with some main lake points and caught fish just about everywhere I went. Only 3 of them were keepers however. It was just tough to locate better fish. The difference here was the water was dirtier, warmer, and shallower. I was fishing my jerkbaits in only 6-10 feet of water where on Lake of the Ozarks or Table Rock they’d be in 30. I think with a little more time I would have been able to locate some bigger fish in deep, offshore structure adjacent to these male infested creeks that I was fishing. It was still fun however getting smacked with a jerkbait, and good practice for the day to follow.
The tournament brought much different conditions from our pre fishing, and After an Everstart tournament field had pounded the water for a week, it was hard to tell how our water might be holding up. After arriving in our number one creek, and fishing a couple points it was clear that things were a lot different. I caught some small fish suspending around the docks in 25 feet of water, something that we had none of in practice. Finally after about an hour and a half I hooked up with a decent 2-1/2 pound fish on an american shad pointer. With that fish we had our confidence back but perhaps it was premature. The day was a grind to say the least. The air temperature soared into the mid 60’s with bluebird skies and very little wind. A condition that makes fishing tough for the jerkbait, especially when dealing with those pressured fish. We made an adjustment half way through the day, and I took the back of the boat and soaked a jig for the rest of the tournament, while Zac fished a jerkbait and wiggle wart out of the front. I caught one more 2 pound fish on the jig, but it wasn’t enough to put us in the top 5. A 2+ pound fish did almost reach the net, but it popped off Zac’s chrome rogue right at the boat. We finished 14th out of 40 with our weight of 4-6 for 2 fish. 5th place was 2 for 6-9 so it was clear how important one more fish would have been. Of all 40 teams, only 3 of them caught more than 3 fish, and the winning bag was 11 lbs 13 oz for 5 fish. A very tough day would be a statement that all of the teams could agree with. No matter the outcome, I am very pleased with the trip. It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun catching some bass to help get me through what’s left of our northern winter. It won’t be long before we can duplicate the same techniques on our homewater!
Thanks for reading,
Cade