KU_B

One of these? I was down there last week for the first time and had no clue what is was. It was the first for me. I had to take a pic and send it to my dad. It is a Goggle Eye or Rock Bass.

Thanks again to everyone. I am already starting to think about my next trip down there. I am thinking late October/early November depending how the weather goes. One thing is for sure, before i come back down again I know where to come to get the latest scoop. I probably won't chime in too much this summer, but I will definitely be lurking around quite a bit to see what is going on down here. I have develpped a serious infatuation with this lake.

I second this. I've been down here for the first time the past couple days. Yesterday was really frustrating. I was fishing shallow (mainly while looking for some bigger bedding fish) and becoming very frustaretd. Just about at any given time I could see no less than 4 bass (a few BIG ones) around my boat, but could not get bit on anything. I threw everything I had in the boat at them. Nothing. Tons of follows, but could not get hooked up. By pure dumb luck while trying to get a loop out of my reel I made a long cast near a boat dock and caught my first fish of the trip at about 2:00. Made another cast around the dock and caught another one. I figured out yesterday I could get bit throwing a Keitech Swing Impact around boat docks. I doubt I caught any keepers on this pattern, but all in all a pretty fun day. I probably 15-20 spots/largemouths around docks and I was able to get one 4-08 largemouth off a bed. So late last night I did some internet searching for some more recent fishing repots and found this forum. Reading through some post I realized I was probably fishing too shallow. So today I scrapped the bed fishing and fished the same areas I was yesterday, but put my boat in 25 to 35 feet of water and made 45 degree angle casts with the ned rig. Bingo. I probably caught 20 to 25 and much better quality. Probably half were keeper size. A mixure of mainly spots and largemouths with and a couple smallies and a Goggle Eye? (that's a first for me). One of the smallies was something else. He had some sort of very deteriorated plastic sticking out his throat and about a foot fishing line sticking out his butt. I tried yanking on the line but it seemed pretty firm so I just cut it down to about an inch. I also had a "one that got away story". I know I had a good fish on. He ended up wrapping me up in a tree in about 25 feet of water. In hindsight I wish I would have tried to let him swim out of it a little longer. Thanks to this forum for saving my trip. I love this lake. I will be back often. BTW - All of my fishing was done about 2 to 3 miles west of the Kimberling Bridge.