Biggest Walleye Lake

[rangerman]

Stockton for numbers, Table Rock is a definite sleeper. However, for size it would be close between Bull Shoals and LOZ. LOZ needs to be targeted the right time of the year. I caught my best MO walleye (9+) out of LOZ while trolling.

[Mitch f]

Yeah, you would have thought that at some point loz would have produced a 20 lb fish. Numerous nice fish in my younger days, but not so much anymore. A few years back mdc started an annual restocking program here at the lake. I think 300,000 fingerlings each year. Keeper fish are more common now, with an occasional 6 to 8 pounder being caught. Like you said, most are harvested when they reach keeper size and the spring runs are nothing compared to years back. Most of the larger fish are harvested during the spawning run.

I heard that a guy caught a 19lb walleye in the Ha Ha Tonka spring cove in the winter about 5 years ago with live shad for bait. But that can't be proven

[Wayne SW/MO]

BS and LOZ have had eye's forever, but BS gets the heavy stocking and holds the state record and going with the odds it should get the nod.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, it takes high water years for the native river run remnant fish to be able to run up those small streams running into Beaver (and Greers Ferry) to spawn. It's probably a real hit or miss thing even then, since those small streams can go back down as quickly as they come up. The river run fish need two things to spawn...deep riffles, and a pool just below that's big enough and deep enough for them to move back into during the day while they are in spawning mode. In Missouri, the season is closed at night during the spawning period to protect them on the spawning riffles, but nothing protects them during the day in the pools below.

The surprising thing is that there are still some fish with native river run genetics in Bull Shoals after all these years, given the widespread stocking of lake run fish and the rather limited spawning habitat. Just one, maybe two creeks big enough to furnish a little spawning area, and the water right below Powersite Dam.

If ever there was a fish that deserved really serious protection in the Ozarks, it's the native river run walleye. Not only are their populations low and a lot of their habitat has been lost to the dams, but they also have the potential to furnish a true world record type of fishery if managed right. It's just that walleye everywhere have always been considered a table fish more than anything else. That's slowly beginning to change, but some major attention to the potential of these walleye to grow to world record class size through both education and regulation would really help things along.

[laker67]

I heard that a guy caught a 19lb walleye in the Ha Ha Tonka spring cove in the winter about 5 years ago with live shad for bait. But that can't be proven

Same fish, first reported as 19 but ended up being 15 lb.

[Wayne SW/MO]

The surprising thing is that there are still some fish with native river run genetics in Bull Shoals after all these years, given the widespread stocking of lake run fish and the rather limited spawning habitat. Just one, maybe two creeks big enough to furnish a little spawning area, and the water right below Powersite Dam.

Al they collect the fish for the hatchery below Powersite during the run. I have no idea how this affects the overall program, but I suppose one could assume there are some river genetics in the mix.

LOZ had a lot of river run fish in the years before Truman, but I don't know if it still exist to any great extent. I know there is still a run, just don't know how strong it is.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, I know LOZ had good runs of river fish in the past. In fact, in a post in the walleye forum I mentioned a chapter in an old book back a few years after the lake first filled that talked about absolutely massive numbers of walleye being caught at the old dam at Osceola at the head of the lake. It was in February of 1932 that these fish first showed up, and many thousands of mostly small walleye were caught right below the dam that month. It was apparently a real circus atmosphere, with thousands of people showing up to catch (and obviously keep) those walleye, which were probably mostly males that had hatched out three or so years before and had thrived in the new lake. Nobody in this part of the country had ever seen anything remotely like it before, and they didn't afterward, either. Probably so many of those walleye were caught that it pretty well wrecked the whole population in Lake of the Ozarks for a few years, and also, I suspect that the females which had to have hatched out that same year were still a year away from sexual maturity that year, so not much spawning occured.

But I still believe that the river run walleye of the Osage, like those of the Gasconade and Meramec, just didn't have quite the same genetics as the fish in the south-flowing streams, with the possible exception for some reason of the fish in the Sac River, which undeniably grew big after Stockton was built. Same with the walleye in the Mississippi above St. Louis...you never hear of a really big walleye being caught below the navigation dams on the Mississippi.

It's also interesting that the old time guides and floaters on the White River apparently very seldom caught walleye. That same book chapter said that the author had only seen two walleye hooked in his years of floating, and one of those was on the Niangua, the other on the James in a stretch that is under Table Rock now. He said that a few guides he knew had caught as many as five in their lifetimes! It would seem that walleye were always pretty scarce on the upper White where the lakes are now, and that the main area where there were good populations of the big river run fish were all in the Black River system--Spring, Eleven Point, Current, and Black--and in the St. Francis and Castor.

[rangerman]

I think the osage is doing alright...two of us had 38 in a half day fishing in january..no big uns though.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, no doubt the Osage is good for numbers, much better, probably, than any of the rivers where the big river run fish are.

Back when I first started fishing for big winter walleye on Black River, you didn't bother to brag unless you caught one over ten pounds. My biggest was only 12.5 pounds, but I saw several 15-17.5 pounders caught, and a lot of 10 pound plus fish. Back then, most of the big fish were caught in the huge gravel dredged pools from November to mid-February. Now, what was the best pool is completely filled in, and there is a very nice boat ramp on the big pool below the 67 Hwy. bridge so it gets pounded unmercifully. You just don't hear of all that many big fish being caught on Black River anymore, although a couple guys I know that fish it all the time in the winter usually catch a couple between 10 and 15 pounds every winter.