dnj21

Got to Cooper at 6 am.  Heavy fog and then thunder and quick light rain.  Slowly made my way upstream in the fog.  Boats scattered around fishing.  35 megawatts till  9 or so and then they ramped it up to 150 when I left   
Threw the jerk till noon.  No fish caught after 10:30.  Had around 10 to the boat, rolled another 15 or so and had at least that many followers. Never caught a rainbow although at times groups would follow it all the way to boat.  
A couple of the browns that I rolled or had on for a while were real nice.  One XL brown followed the jerk to the boat and he was a tank.  
Back at it tomorrow.  @Travis Swift I swear I had all my bass gear but I just couldn’t leave my regular milk run. 
 



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Caught my personal best largemouth today. 5.20lbs. Was a pond bass but none the less the biggest bass live ever caught.  Sad to say it’s still a pound and a half behind my wife’s biggest bass out of the same pond. 

Well it was the first time fishing taneycomo for my son and he was excited to get after some trout.  We headed down Friday and put in at Cooper Creek about 4 that afternoon.  First thing we did was boat up to the dam and drifted back.  We fished jigs but it was tough for us.  We had a few strikes, picked up a lot of moss but just weren't getting any to the boat.  We stopped in at Lilly's and picked up more supplies, talked with duckydoty and got some tips.  We ended the day boating just a couple rainbows.  
Saturday we were on the water by about 830 and by then there was maybe 1 unit running.  again we run upstream and floated down from fall creek.  we did this most of the day and had much better results.  My wife landed the first (her first brown trout in MO) and last fish with several in between.  My son and I tag teamed a few as well. It was a great day on the water with several nice fish caught and some that didn't quite make it to the boat.  A big THANK YOU to @duckydoty for sharing some of his SS hand painted cranks and help putting us on fish.  and while my son wasn't successful hooking up with a brownie (certainly it wasn't for lack of trying) he did have plenty of luck with the bows.   




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There might have been a few caught this morning.  Might be a few to be caught.  Tested a few new things out. Some passed the initial evaluations, some didn’t pan out.  Company was incredible.  I can tell you, my wife and I are having ribs tonight. The BBQ sauce will be savored!  There is also a new addition to the mantle, a place where truely treasured items are displayed .

Make sure we get your usual picture updates to us- we will be on the look out.  Good luck!!
I don't have a trip planned down there for another 6 weeks.  UGH 

Make sure we get your usual picture updates to us- we will be on the look out.  Good luck!!
I don't have a trip planned down there for another 6 weeks.  UGH 

I went down Friday, mainly used worms in the live bait zone with kiddos.  Managed to get 30 min or so in zone 2 caught 5 or so on a white pj jig.  Water is up but very fishable.  My daughter just decided to let her hair go nuts this day.

Son!
Is that better?
It was cool.  Fortunate to land him.  He kept flipping around and hitting his tail on my line.  Just the power of it should have broken my line, not to mention flipping the jig out of its mouth.  Nothing I could do about that.
Thanks!

https://youtu.be/v9zbA2v33mo

Down at the landing eating biscuits thrown from the restaurants.

Paul, Duane and I started heading up lake this morning at 4:30.  Yes it was dark but the fog wasn't too bad.  No generation.  Duane was driving... he treated us to his world famous stick bait guide trips using his custom painted baits.
Boated to just above Fall Creek and made our way up through the Narrows.  Caught a few rainbows but it was slow.  Boated up to Lookout and trolled past the flats to Trophy Run.  Fished that area with little success.
Back down to the Narrows - still slow.  On down to Short Creek.  My shoulder was getting pretty sore so I switched to a jig.  Caught this nice rainbow on a 1/16th oz sculpin/ginger jig.

No browns.  May be a dozen rainbows on the stick bait.  Slow morning according to our guide.

Collin Leslie caught and released this 15-pound brown this morning fishing with Duane Doty. It was 30 inches long. Caught between Fall and Short Creek on a pink Powerworm.

Well you'd have almost 2 weeks to get it here, I'm 12 days backed up right now.  
Not difficult or overly technical to do.  I could talk you through it...... but not today. 😊
Tues-Wed. if you wanted to grab your tools and stand on the port side of the motor, give me a call and put me on speaker, we could take care of it in about 30 minutes. 

I will get this started,
  10.5 inch beard 3/4 inch spurs but was a heavyweight,
  Not the most classic turkey hunt but dead is dead ,
                    BilletHead

I wanted to share a picture of my replica I got made and just got back of my 10+ pound rainbow from last fall.  With a suggestion from Phil Lilley I chose Don Frank from KC to do it and I think he did just a marvelous job. Thanks again for the suggestion Phil.  He did a great job with the orangish pink gill plates and fins. Pictures don't do it justice but I wanted to share. 

It's been hard to sit down and write a fishing report because of the uncertainty of conditions lately.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened four spill gates last Monday and left those gates opened exactly one foot each for one week.  I speculated that the opening of the gates would be temporary, only a couple of days, but that was not the case. So now that the gates are closed, and the work has been completed at the dam, I can evaluate future conditions . . .  maybe.
The release rate presently is 6,500 cubic feet per second (C.F.S.), Taneycomo's lake level is at 707.6 feet.  Dam operators are running it around the clock, and Table Rock Lake's level is dropping about two inches per day, 915.42 feet.  Power pool is 915 feet.  Beaver Lake is shut down and holding at 1,120 feet.  Their seasonal power pool is 1,120.43 feet.  Our water temperature is 43 degrees.
I would speculate we will see this flow for the next few days, until Table Rock's level drops to 915 feet... but you never know.
Our trout did see a good number of threadfin shad flow into Taneycomo from Table Rock through the spill gates, and now they are looking for about anything that looks like a threadfin -- white jigs, white hard baits, white flies.  Even spoons and spinners will work.  These fish can be aggressive in their feeding, especially the bigger browns and rainbows that are used to eating bigger meals, like other trout and forage fish.  So wake baits and larger jerk baits seem to be the ticket if you're fishing for trophies.
With two units running, you can easily boat up to the dam, but just stay in the middle of the lake.  We're using 3/32nd- to 1/16th-ounce white jigs, throwing them straight with no float and smaller 1/32nd-ounce jigs under a float four to seven-feet deep.  Switch out the color if they're not taking white to sculpin, sculpin/ginger, black/olive or white/gray.
Those who are throwing big jerk baits are throwing a Megabass 110+ in shad colors.  If you don't want to spend the big bucks on a Megabass, throw a Rouge or Rapala.  Suspending baits seemed to work better than floating or sinking.
This is the time of year when we start to see a lot of green moss on the bottom of our lake, so drifting anything on the bottom is hampered by the green stuff.  But that's not to say you can't catch trout by drifting a gray or olive scud, egg fly, San Juan Worm or a shad fly on the bottom. I'd recommend using very little weight and no weighted flies, if possible.  Better yet, use a float and fish any of these flies under it four-  to eight-feet deep.
Below Fall Creek, night crawlers are doing about the best along with minnows.  Minnows would be excellent because we know the threadfin shad have made it all the way down past Fall Creek, so those fish have seen and eaten a bunch of them.  White jigs are also pretty hot, even past Lilleys' Landing and Cooper Creek.
Our guides are back to using the pink and red Berkley's PowerWorm under a float eight- to 10-feet deep.  The best area is from Monkey Island down past the Landing, according to Steve Dickey who had just brought in a happy group of clients.  He said they're having to thin through smaller stocker rainbows to get the nice ones, but they are for sure there!
Another group of guys staying here brought in some nice rainbows which they caught drifting down by the Landing on white/orange PowerEggs with a pinch of worm on the hook.  You can't argue with success!  I did overhear some talking yesterday that they tried trolling and were surprised they did very well.  They were using a blue Rebel.
Here are some pictures of trout caught over the weekend by anglers who fished in our CAM benefit tournament.
 




These were all 20-inches-plus, the last one  24 inches caught on a white jig.  David Beal and Seth Turner.




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Thanks for sharing, that is great!  Sounds like you guys put on a clinic

Anyone else getting out in the morning for Youth season?  Will be the first for my 7yr old, we are pretty excited!!
Good luck to all!
 

Anyone else getting out in the morning for Youth season?  Will be the first for my 7yr old, we are pretty excited!!
Good luck to all!
 

Anyone else getting out in the morning for Youth season?  Will be the first for my 7yr old, we are pretty excited!!
Good luck to all!
 

Bed and Breakfast Inn's of Missouri had their Spring meeting at Lake O.  What a good thing for me.😂  Got to go up and stay and fish with Ed and Debby Franko at Bass and Baskets about the 5 mile mark on Beautiful Lake of the Ozarks.  For those of you that don't know Ed, he is the ultimate good time.  Has a really good idea on whats going on at the dam area.  We fished from the 5 mile mark to the dam.
Water was pretty cloudy even by Lake Ozarks standards and ran from 47 to 51 degree.
After a pretty slow start on flat water, we got some breeze and the surface temps started to rise.  With that so did the bass and the bite.  We had 18  fish with 7 really nice keepers.   One being a Super Hog Mama.  I was more than holding my own, but the "Big Boy" caught the big girl on a custom painted megabass 110.  And get this, Birthday Cake was the custom color.
a
 
 
Ed has been custom painting some baits in his spare time and has just some super colors, a lot of them are really Table Rock sound and the Birthday cake is for sure one of them.  Here is a pretty good picture of it.  Opaque with violet purple back.  Just sounds like food.  Triple jerk, pause for several seconds.   They hit it when it was sitting still as usual.

We also caught them really good on a Jewel Spider Jig in Ozark Craw with a Eakins GP trailer.  Slow hop on the jig and they would swim off with it.

I did pretty well when I wasn't getting front ended on the docks and managed 5 of the keepers, I caught one on a stick bait and the rest on a jig, breaking one off at the end that might have been up there with Eddie Boy.

Always feels like going home on Lake of the Ozarks and it really is.
Locations we fished were inside secondary points, usually about  1/3rd. of the way back in the bigger coves.  Rip Rap transition to gravel with any type of a pocket handy and that seemed to be the deal.  Ed caught his jerkbait fish right on the bank, and I mean within 5 ft.   Jig fish were a little deeper, but for sure everything in the 8' and under range.

Most banks were the 45 degree type, but the flatter stuff had fish also.  Instead of depth transition, it is ledge to chunk to pea gravel up there.

Really good example of rock transition with the fish really close to the change.  Very shallow.  We saw quite a few crappie fishermen and they were fishing super shallow with a jig about 18" under a float right on the bank, same types of locations.
Great food, fantastic company and a green fish or two to make it the perfect day on my old stomping grounds.

If your looking for a great B&B on Lake O where the Bass fishing starts right from the dock, give Ed and Debby a call 573-692-6710.  I guarantee you lots of belly laughs, a good night sleep and the kind of Fishing and Folks that have made the Lake of the Ozarks one of Missouri's premier fishing and tourist destinations.
 It is kind of like here right now, its fixin to just get silly.
The thing about Lake O. is biggins live there and you can bass fish to catch them.  There not swimming 2.8" Keitechs 30 feet deep  to catch them.  Not knocking what I do for a living, but it is really nice to Big Boy fish once or twice a year.   Grrrrrr.
Good Luck
 
 
 
 
 

The second Mizzou club tournament of the year was Saturday. We put in at McCubbins Point. @Justin92297 and I ran WAY up the river in the jet. White bass were everywhere. Couldn't keep them off the line, so that was fun. caught about 50 bass. 25 white bass and we never fished for them. Saw an old timer that caught a crappie every cast for 30 minutes. I had never seen anything like it in my life and I've crappie fished a lot. He just pulled up on a brush pile and started casting a bobber and a jig and bobber and caught one every single cast. caught our bass flipping shallow wood all over the glaize but the creek was full of shorts. Ran almost all the way up to swinging bridges. We got 1st and 2nd in our club tournament. Justin beat me because he had a 4+ pound largemouth even though he only had 4 fish. I had all three species in my bag though and a 5 fish limit. Very fun day. Definitely going to try to do it again sometime. Had 14 lbs for out biggest 5.
We're headed to table rock to fish Wednesday-Sunday for spring break. Cannot wait to get back on my favorite Missouri lake.
Tight lines everybody


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Little one gave me a lesson at the whistle this morning, caught 5 to my 1 in the first half hour.  Every time I made a cast she was hollering for the net.  Great morning....

Little one gave me a lesson at the whistle this morning, caught 5 to my 1 in the first half hour.  Every time I made a cast she was hollering for the net.  Great morning....