BrockLee

Nice report! Congratulations on your big bass! I have yet to break the 6lb mark and can't wait to do it. Good luck on BBB, I will be there too!

I heard you were a cat lover...

What an awesome meal that will be! Nice job, thanks for sharing!

Pomme de Terre - Hermitage State Park Area Water temp 46-54 Clarity - Clear by the dam/ dingy further up Lindley arm Nathan Wesley / Brock Schuld This morning I got up, checked the temperature and shuddered. We hooked up the frost laden TR20 and headed down the road to Pomme de Terre. We took our time and soon realized that we didn’t know exactly what boat ramp we were looking for and when I check the website on my phone I discovered that the launch time was 7:00am and not 7:30am… So after a phone call and a little luck we arrived with about 15 minutes to take the cover off, launch the boat and get our gear on. By gear I mean Under Armour long johns, face masks, Bass Pro 100mph gear, the whole nine. We launched out of the Hermitage State Park and shot straight down the Lindley. I think we might have been the only boat out of the ten boats that went that direction. We found ourselves in some pea soup thick fog and had to throttle back a bit but got to the fishing spot within a few minutes. I grabbed my new favorite rod, a jerkbait rod and tossed a Lucky Craft 115 towards the bank. Repeat. Repeat. Bam! I had a small keeper in the livewell within 10 minutes of the start of the Tournament. We continued along this path and this pattern and by 9:00 exactly Wes and I had five keepers in the box. Wow. This was our seventh tournament ever and honestly the first time we ever had five fish to weigh! We didn’t even care that they were all around 1.5lbs. We had five fish! Then of course I caught my obligatory drum early on in the day and swore I had a monster bass on the end of my line and when I saw it, I contemplated cutting my line before Wes could see it...but I let him enjoy that big beautiful sucker and me cussing it as it slimed my gloves and everything I own. After that, knowing we had our box full with “weighable” fish, we were able to concentrate on every nook and cranny after that and ended up culling all our fish about three times apiece thanks to an excellent crankbait bite that developed after the sun warmed the water to about 52 degrees. Cranking them silly looking Wiggle Warts might just be what I was made to do! I worked them up front and Wes steadily stuck them with the Spro Mcstick jerkbait off the back of the boat. Around one point I got hung up….well I thought I was and I reached up and popped my line to get my Wiggle Wart freed and the line tugged back at me! I reeled up good size 4.6lb and was absolutely ecstatic! As we made our way in and out of a few coves we noticed that the fish weren’t really coming out of the coves but rather on the mouths. We might pull a dink here or there out of the backs, but our better quality fish were on the small points off the main lake. So we stuck to them and it treated us right. After spending seven hours on that part of the lake, we moved down by the dam to see if we could pull a nice fish off the rip rap. I caught a decent little fish on a Megabass 110+1 in some deep, deep water, but it was not as big as our smallest. We ended up catching 34 bass and only three didn’t measure. So we headed back the the weigh in and weighed our fish. The winner weighed a little over 25 lbs! The same two guys that won it two weeks ago pulled out another insane sack! Then they announced 3rd place at 13lbs and some change…. but wait… that means… YES. Wes and I finished 2nd with 15.49 lbs and actually made a couple dollars today! Man, we were so excited it was silly because we have never placed ever! We had a plan this morning, stuck to it, and caught fish. It was the one of the best days fishing I have ever had. Everything came together. Jerkbaits, wiggle warts, and be thorough! Right now it is on boys!

Hi, Welcome to the Forum! I am pretty much brand new here too but this place is full of great information and great people! Now on to the bass fishing... This is my guess, on the 25th of April, I will probably be flipping jigs at every piece of structure I could find. Crankbaits and spinnerbaits will be on the front deck of my boat and some type of super secret creature bait will be along side them. Pomme is incredibly clear in some places so lighter line possibly could help and keep a little distance between you and your target. Keep reading fishing reports on here while you are waiting to fish it. I write one every time I fish and try to post it on here. I hope this helps! -bt

Great report, thank you! I will be there Saturday!

Pomme de Terre - Hermitage State Park Area Water temp 40-49 Clarity - Clear by the dam/ dingy further up Lindley arm Matthew Mullins/Brock Schuld Well today was a good day. We didn't pay to play this weekend and just went out to have some fun and to do a little scouting for later on this year. Matt had never fished Pomme but he was excited and at my house in Warsaw around 9:00am. It was snowing as we pulled out of the drive and we thought, this might be a bad idea. Well that was wrong, the snow let up and the clouds were out when we got to Hermitage. We launched and started fishing at the ever so popular coves by the dam, you know the ones I am talking about with about 9 boats jammed into a 40x40ft section. The tournament guys were throwing Wiggle Warts, jerkbaits and A-rigs, a lot like the past couple weeks. Well we gave it about 20 minutes of throwing some jerks and playing trolling motor chicken and high tailed it down the Lindley Arm. Days like today make the Save Phace mask I bought worth it and my buddies that made fun of it turn green with envy when their eyeballs turn into ice cubes. The water was clear in the first cove and I threw a Megabass Vision 110 in Pro Blue and started working it. Matt threw the same bait in the Luck-E-Strike version. I caught a few within the first hour and Matt had caught one. Megabass - 4, Luck-E-Strike -1. One of those four was a hungry 4lb 6oz pig that still had about a 10 inch crappie in its throat when it bit the Megabass. It couldn’t even swallow it before hammering my lure, what a catch! Matt reacted by absolutely crushing me with a 5lb 8oz pig and three others that were between 3 1/2lb and 4 1/2lb. People were fishing behind us and in front of us all day and picking a few off here and there, but we sat in the same stretch of 300 yards and picked it apart and that's where we picked up 14 of our 15 bass we caught. I got snagged on a rock in the rough water and lost my Vision 110, which was the first time that has happened and I am starting to think the RC STX is looking pretty good after that. That was the only one I had, so fishing was pretty much over for me, I threw some various other colors but didn't have confidence in them, therefore I didn't catch fish. About the middle of the afternoon the sun made it’s way out of the clouds and the skies turned blue. It was really hard to catch fish after that. Matt however did catch a tasty 17 inch Walleye which I might have ate for dinner, on his jerkbait. After the sun was out we fished a little more headed back towards the put in off the main lake and I pulled one more fish out. Then we called it quits. We had 15 fish and only 3 didn't measure. We measured our bigger fish and we would have had around 20-21 lbs for our best five. Which for us, is absolutely incredible. Jerkbaits right now guys, blue ones. We didn’t fish any Wiggle Warts or A-rigs so I don’t know about them but I know they have been filling up the boat too. The picture with the crappie tail just doesn't do it justice. And Matt's fish was a big dude..

Conman, Here is a little report I wrote... Pomme de Terre - USA Bassin’ - Lighthouse Ramp Water temp 46-53 Clarity - Gin clear up north / Dirty dingy further southwest Nathan Wesley/Brock Schuld Started off the day going straight across from the ramp to the 3 coves by the dam. The water was pretty dirty and lots of algae/moss balls floating and gunking up our jerkbaits. I was throwing a Megabass GP Pro Blue Vision 110+1, Wes was throwing a shad colored RC STX. We Moved west down the lake and looked for schools of fish and bass running through them, found a lot of white bass/crappie schools but nothing that stood out to us as bass. We fished there anyways and caught a nice 2lb white bass on a jerkbait. We moved further south staying with the jerkbaits and intermittently throwing a Spro Little John squarebill/medium diver knowing we shouldn’t but it just felt right. We got to a lot shallower, dirtier, warmer water by the Bolivar Access and had no luck. Back up the lake past the dam and the Pomme de Terre State Park. Around 1:00pm I caught a small keeper on a Lucky Craft Pointer SP in Nishiki in about two foot of crystal clear water. We added him to the livewell and our spirits were brought up and thought we might be onto something. We continued to fish in the small coves and cuts past the State Park and didn’t have anymore luck. Back to the dam. We hung outside the dam and fished what looked like an old road bed with jerkbaits. At 3:00pm Wes slammed an absolute hog and added 3.92lbs to our livewell. Shortly after we had to weigh in our fish and take our beating. 26lbs and some change took it… with several 22lb+ sacks behind it. It was unreal.

Hi everyone, My name is Brock, I am 28 and work for the Air National Guard at Whiteman. I moved down to Sterett Creek in Warsaw in October. I lived in Sedalia for the past couple years but things didn't work out with my wife and we decided to part ways, but we are still good friends thankfully. So I decided to move to Warsaw to be closer to the lakes and become a better angler. I love bass fishing first and foremost but sometimes make time to crappie fish when it is stupid easy and I feel like eating fish. I fish Truman, Lake of the Ozarks and Pomme mainly and sometimes I get down to Table Rock and Bull Shoals. I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. -bt

Thank you all for the feedback. I really do appreciate it.

Lake of the Ozarks - 22 March 2015 USA Bassin’ - PB#2 Water temp 44-56 Clarity - “Lake Ozark Clear” / Dingy towards end of the Glaize Matthew Mullins / Brock Schuld We arrived an hour and a half early to find ourselves amongst a sea of Power Poles and HDS 12 sidescan units and my anxiety kicked in. There were jerseys with sponsors everywhere and a big trailer out front that read Anglers In Action and it brought back memories to my first tournament Wes and I fished three years ago in my Triton 18 Explorer with a 115 Optimax. This morning AiA had a 100 boat tournament launching at 7:00am, just thirty minutes before the smaller 17 boat USA Bassin’ tournament I had conned myself into doing again. I watched as the boats and trailers separated, engines fired and smoke hovered above water for an hour. I felt my stomach tighten and worried about everything I could think of, “Will the boat start?” “What if we don’t catch anything?”. I choke it all down, we launch the “new to me” Red metal flake Triton TR20, we hit the livewell check as boat #3, after the no wake zone, the Hot Foot was down. We came up and was running over 60mph loaded down in the matter of a couple seconds. A short run straight out of PB#2 we turned right into the first cove that wasn’t occupied with 15 boats. Ten minutes into the jerkbait game, Matt pulls in our first fish, 14 ⅞ inches, which is a short fist on LOZ but the vibe is good. We move down the cove, there are shad flipping and bait balls on the graph, this is going to be a great bite, I can feel it. I catch a 14 inch bass in the creek channel of the cove in 20 foot of water casting at the shad flipping and working the Shad with Peach belly RC STX, identical to what Matt is using. We continued there for awhile and packed up to make a series of short runs down the Glaize arm. We mainly hit rocky coves, some with drops, some gradual grades. We just couldn’t figure it out. There were times of desperation that involved me with an Alabama Rig in 50 ft of water and Matt fishing a football jig alongside me and even some crankbaits. We ended up back into a shallow cove forced to the opposite side by unruly crappie anglers between some docks in 3 foot of water looking down a 15 foot narrow little cut. I threw a Lucky Craft GP Pro Blue Pointer SP and caught two short fish and Matt caught another dink that rivaled the size of his jerkbait. We gained some much needed confidence. There was time left. There is always time left in a tournament. I have caught 5 fish in 30 minutes on good days. That’s what I told myself. That didn’t last long. We watched as the pattern changed. The jerkbait pattern stopped today and we refused to shy away from it. I wouldn’t accept that a spinnerbait would work, it wasn’t time, there wasn’t enough wind. We decided to flip some older docks and ran around Osage Beach looking for anything built prior to the year 2012. The adventure under the Grand Glaize Bridge ended up being a waste of time and as we ate the wake of a 60 ft yacht my over rev indicator beeped as my prop came out of the water when we became airborne while running back to the fishable lake parts. We ended up hitting some coves right outside of PB#2, throwing a chatterbait while Matt flipped a jig. The end was near. There was bait everywhere, all different sizes. How do we compete with a million of the real things? In the last 10 minutes of fishable time, in the back, back, back of the cove I throw my Blue LC Pointer SP and jerk it erratically real fast, completely out of frustration. I stopped it 6 ft from the boat to watch it suspend and shimmer two feet under the cleanest LOZ water I have ever seen, it is quite a thing to see such perfection in a lure like a well made jerkbait. And then it happened. An absolute hog, comes up and slams it with his face, mouth closed, as I set the hook into nothing. I watched a giant take interest in my bait and I reacted too fast. It was over. We had been been defeated by the bass. We limped back to the weigh in, licking our wounds with the feelings of defeat. It was at that time that I realized I had set the hook in my fingertips more than in actual fish when I looked down at my bloody sunburned hands to turn in our poker chip. We stood there and watched the fish being weighed in. It was nothing like yesterday at Pomme. 8 lbs and some change took it! 5 lb sacks took 2nd and 3rd. As we packed up, we had the same conversation I had with Wes a day earlier. What the hell are we doing wrong? Why didn’t we catch fish? The guys that caught those fish worked for them and deserved every dollar they made. It was one of the harder days I have had. Not just physically but mentally. All I have wanted in the last three years was a tournament boat, a fast motor, and nice tackle. I have all of those things now and the last two days have proved to me that I need to learn more about bass fishing. I can’t buy my way to the podium.

It was insane. Insanely tough for my boat... but those other guys weighed in some sacks! It was cool to see such nice fish being caught even if it wasn't by me. One guy had a 7 1/2 lber! Great lake..

First thing, thank you very much for taking time out of your day to help us out. We haven't fished Pomme as much as some of these other lakes, so information like that is invaluable to us. It is much appreciated. I just read about the open tournament this weekend on the other thread. I thought it was one you had to qualify for until I read the rules... Now I am dangerously close to "donating" my entry fee money! Thanks, Brock

Hi everyone, I am the buddy he is talking about fishing with. We usually put in at the Pomme De Terre state park off of 64B but can go anywhere from there relatively quick or change our put in if the fishing is going to be better elsewhere... Thank you all for your time and answers! -Brock