Fishing The Osage From Hurricane Deck Bridge To Truman Dam

[Rwh46]

I'm planning on going down Friday and fish thru Sunday, and since I don't know this part of the lake very well I thought I would spend some time learning about it. I mean after all you need a place to go when the " big boats" get out, right. Anyway I think I hear the lmbs are getting ready to spawn so it might be fun unless the water is real stained. Any advice on where to go and what to throw would really be appreciated

[crittermo]

i'd like to help but i'm up close to the dam at the 5MM. up here the water is stained and i found beds this afternoon and caught a few on a white fluke. i'm going to hit a few spots in the morning where i know the bass spawn and see what i can find out. at your end of the lake i'm not really sure what's happening. sorry

[Jbrant]

My family has a cabin at the 51MM. We fish about a 20 mile stretch from Rainey Creek to Bollinger Creek. Water color can very a lot at our cabin - anywhere from very dirty (wet springs and when they are pulling water from Truman) to 2-3 visibilty. We were down about a month ago and had almost no visibility at the cabin. We fished all day Saturday around Bollinger and never found anything cleaner than 6-8" of visibility. I don't know how much, if any, the water has cleared up in this part of the lake. I'd guess a little, but would love to hear for sure (we may go down this weekend too).

I don't get down around the Hurricane Deck area very often but there are some nice big creeks you can get in and avoid the traffic. I do go put in at Larry Gale and fish the Nianguas a little - I really like that part of the lake.

[fishinwrench]

The dirty water shouldn't turn you off at all, it will have the fish super shallow. Drop a jig, lizard or a big tube around shoreline cover and be prepared to nail him/her before it hits the bottom.

[Jbrant]

Fished Saturday from 5:30 to 3 around Bollinger, a little bit Saturday evening at the 51 MM, and Sunday morning from 5:30 to about 11:00 around Proctor Creek. We had all kinds of bites Saturday - probably caught 25+ fish - but just two keepers. One skinny 18"= fish that barely weighed 2 1/4" and another 15" keeper. The rest were all 13 inches or less (and much less in many cases). Also had plenty of light bites that we didn't get a hook in. Fished everything (pockets, secondary points, creek channels, flat banks in shade, pea gravel, mixed rock) but main lake points and the extreme back ends of coves/pockets. Pretty much everything was behind the docks - anywhere from inches of water to 4-5 feet. Caught some under the walkways but nothing off the back corners of docks or under the docks (skipped a lot of soft plastics around the docks). Hardly anything around little brush piles either. We couldn't find quality bites. Hardly any of the fish were beat up (even the skinny one didn't have a beat up tail). All kinds of big gizzard shad up on the bank most of the morning. Caught a few on a spook - the rest on soft plastics. We did see a couple of small fish on bed in the afternoon Saturday in the back of a cove - first one we went all the way to the back of.

Sunday morning we went up lake hoping to find a little better bite. We found a couple more fish on beds first thing. Caught two keepers off of them. Caught a few other small fish before catching our last keeper around 10 on a shallow bank near some spawning shad. It went 3 - 6 and had a pretty beat up tail. It was in just a few inches of water. We didn't get as many bites this morning but did get 3 keepers in a much shorter time than it took to get two on Saturday. We did Carolina rig a main lake point but pretty much did the same thing as Saturday - flipped a lot behind docks and looked for shallow fish. Still couldn't catch anything relating to a dock.

Not sure what to do to find a little better quality fish. Think there was a tournament out of Runaway 2 Saturday morning. Anybody know the results of that?