David Goddard

Dang those are a couple TRL studs! What arm of the lake?

Dang thats quite a bit better than I did this past weekend; for numbers anyways. I've never went way up a major river arm on Table Rock, but I've been dying to go way up the White and see what I can do. I always have a hard time leaving the lower end. Maybe next trip!

I ran up long creek a pretty good ways but the water got pretty muddy and scared me away

Thanks! You're right about that!

Thanks! You're right about that!

Me too man. I used to say smallies were the hardest fighters on every body of water but, I'm tellin' you what, one of those mean ol' spots will give any smallie a run for their money in my opinion.

Finally made it back down to the best lake in Missouri (in my opinion) last weekend. @Justin92297 and I found the bite to be fairly tough; atleast after 9 or 10 a.m. caught fish on an a-rig, single swimbait, and ned rig. I hate throwing that stupid a-rig, but after struggling I thought it might work well. It didn't. Fish seemed to be very scattered. I dont really have good enough electronics to fish deep since I was in my dads aluminum jet. What the heck happened to the jerk bait bite that everyone was talking about? I threw a jerk bait a ton and never even had a bite on it. We put in a bunch of hours too. Fished pretty much dawn to dark both Sunday and Saturday for 14 fish, 9 of which were keepers. 2 smallmouth, 2 largemouth, and 5 spots. I broke my pb spot with one that went 3.20. The spots are freaking huge right now. They almost all look like theyve swallowed a softball. We caught all of our fish on mainlake points 10-40 foot of water. I love this lake so much. Hoping to move there after I'm done with school. Tight lines everyone. This post has been promoted to an article

Well with my last 2 outings being absolutely phenomenal, I guess I cant be too disappointed that yesterday I fished for 6 hours and caught 3 twelve inch bass. I headed to a stream that I pretty much know nothing about accept that I smashed them at a different location a week ago. I figured I could run a similar pattern (clear tributaries on a muddy river) on a different stretch with similar results. I was very wrong. The water was higher than last time and had just crested and started to come down. Are those water conditions bad to fish? I found clear tributaries but they held almost no fish. I threw the kitchen sink at them too, swimbaits, a rigs, brown sticks (ned), crankbaits, HD craw, everything. Only had 6 bites and only capitalized on 3 of them. Did have a good one on the HD craw which spit it at the yak. 16-18 incher. Anyways, being outside fishing sure beats the hell out of sitting on the couch and waiting for spring, even if I didnt catch hardly any fish. Plus my cat Rapala got his first lick of a smalljaw so I'm sure hes addicted for life. My girlfriend came along too after getting off at 3 a.m. and working a 12 hr shift in the ER so there's a lot to be thankful for. Any one have any ideas on why it was so much worse than last time other than location? Thanks in advance and Happy New Year!

Well my screen name is my name. Not much to say there. My picture is me and my cat, Rapala, on my favorite stretch of the Osage river. That day I caught a 7.76 largemouth, my biggest to date, on a buzz bait. Great topic!

I can tell you that you dont have to burn much gas to find pretty good bass fishing around Troy in streams. Good luck!

Well maybe we'll have to get on the water together sometime.

I'm not trying to start anything I'm just starting my opinion. The guy at the bait shop told me pretty much everything that I posted. Didn't even specify the body of water. As far as hunting spots on here I'm sure people do it but I wont let that stop me from posting on here. I've never had anything but positive feedback from everyone on this page and the whole fishing community for that matter. I love looking for fishing reports on here and I dont think anything will change that. I hope we can all get on smallies like that someday. Merry Christmas everybody!

Yep I appreciate it. I like this forum and I've learned a bunch here. I think this forum is a great place for learning about some pretty tricky fisheries and I try to make my reports very straight forward on how I catch fish. What type of bank or bottom contour, lures, water conditions, etc. but I'll never reveal my locations. I put in the work and everyone else should too. That's my take on it anyways.

Justin and I both take a lot of pride in finding our own pattern and fish. One of the reasons I don't love LOZ is because of all of the released fish. We always find our own fish and hope others do the same. I'm definitely not a fan of spot poachers.

Thank you! That means a lot coming from an angler like yourself!

Well if you guys read my last post, you would know that I fished a stream for smallmouth with high, cold, muddy water and could only manage to snatch about a dozen largeheads. So on this last Thursday I headed to another body of high, moving cold, muddy, water in search of that elusive 20 inch brown bass. I had done some homework on google maps and gotten a tip from a local bait shot, so I started looking for clearer tributaries and finally found one after about a 12-15 mile run. I threw a 3.3 inch keitech in sexy shad color all day and justin threw a brown stick (i.e. ned rig). We put an absolute smack down on them. Justin caught 63 or 64 bass and I caught 41 I think. However, his average size was like 11 or 12 inches and mine was like 14 or 15. Also, I caught quite a few more fish 16"+ than he did. We had 5 that were 17 inches and over for out biggest 5 and the biggest one I caught was about 3 lbs. We doubled up 6 times with many more missed opportunities. By far one if the funnest days of fishing in my life. Well knowing that this bite wouldn't last forever we got out again as soon as we could which happened to be the 23rd. Justin, myself, and his little brother Josh ended up catching around 60 on the exact same pattern with little swimbaits. The only difference was this time we used 2.8 keitechs because I had burned through all of my 3.3s the last day. Another amazing day of fishing. I caught one that was almost 3.5 lbs and almost 19 inches. Josh caught a nice 2 lb meanmouth and justin again won the numbers game with his brown stick. Big thank you to everyone who has supported the Mizzou bass team and given me advice on here. It is much appreciated. Merry Christmas!

Gosh dang! I should ask questions in here more often. I'm getting advice from the kings of river smallie fishing in the ozarks! I tried the shallow trick to no avail. However, in doing that, I did catch my best largehead of the day. They probably were in those eddys. That will be the first thing I try next time.

Thank you. I'll definitely try that next time!

His momma is like that. Just kills everything from birds to snakes to squirrels. I started him at like 5 or 6 weeks on the leash and harness and he loves it. Tugs at the leash just like a puppy. His favorite things to do is be outside chasing everything that moves

I headed out to one of my favorite kayaking spots yesterday with my girlfriend and my cat. I was hoping that the water wouldn't be high and muddy but unfortunately it was. I fished the first 2 or 3 hours without a bite and finally figured a little something out slow rolling a war eagle finesse spinnerbait. It was my cat's first time on the kayaks and he loved it so that was cool. Usually when I fish at this place I catch about 40% smallmouth and 60% largemouth with a random spotted bass sprinkled in but for whatever reason I didn't catch a single smallie. I caught 4 largemouth in the 3-4 pound range which are very good fish but I would trade all 4 of those nice largemouth for an 18"+ smallmouth. I was wondering if any of you all had some advice for chasing river smallmouth when the water gets muddy. I don't have a ton of experience fishing river smallmouth and I would love to learn some more. Thanks guys tight lines.

Well I dont think you missed out on much. A guy on the Mizzou bass team who's from Buffalo and fishes Pomme more than any other lake went and did pretty bad. He said the high blue skys and no wind made for a tough bite.

Yeah like i said we didnt catch a bunch of fish but we caught good ones. I think once the water gets a bit colder all the fish will be wintering and the main lake/bluff wall bite will be better. My guess is that there's probably a good wiggle wart/ rock crawler bite somewhere on the lake on deep secondarys and creek channel swings back in pockets. Just my opinion but good luck. The water was nice and clear and the lake was pretty much empty.

Yes we were near the bridge

I don't know the lake at all so I can't tell you which arm, but we put in at Hermitage and never went farther than 20 minutes from the ramp.