August 4Th. Fishing Report Blue Eye Missouri Table Rock Lake

[Bill Babler]

Well everyday you see something new or have something new happen. I am going to say we had just an excellent morning fishing out of Cow Creek. "Well one person did."

I have had some crazy things happen, but in my 20 plus years here on the Rock guiding I have never had one person catch 17 bass and his buddy pull the big Skunk-o-la. Happened this morning.

To start with I have not been catching that many quality bass in the Point 5 area. Today we had 17 K's with 16 keepers and they were just studs. Several of those old "Grey One's." Best 5 were an easy 13 pounds and that is big K's.

All our fish came out of deep trees this morning. Best depth was just at 40' suspended in the tops. Caught 12 on a crawler and 5 on a Yamamoto pbj 4 inch dropshot worm. The purple worm, cause he was embarrassed to continue using the crawler and trying to help his buddy put one in the boat.

Real deal here was chose of equipment. When you are in Rome you had better do what the Romans tell you. When you are fishing to suspended Table Rock bass in August, you had better use what the Guide tells you.

My one gentleman had a 6' Ugly stick with a push button Zeb-33 spooled with 30 pound line and I could not get him to put it down. No matter how I tried to modify the rig, I just could not get that reel and rod combo to work to vertical fish to these bass. Big coils of line would come off when he pushed the button and pulled the line out of the reel. The line would not go down, it would just lay on the water. I had to put two 3/8th. oz dropshot weights just to get it to unspool and sink.

Don't know if you have ever used the Ugly Stick in the 6 footer, but the back bone is somewhat of a truck axle and the white tip portion is as soft as a noddle. You could take the tip 8" from the end eye and bend it back and touch the blank.

He had at least 8 fish hooked for about 10 seconds each and that was that. I kept offering and trying and with 10 minutes to go he finely switched to my gear, and I kept them out an extra 1/2 hour and just could not get him bit as the bite by that time was history.

Just a wonderful gentleman, but Sheeeeee!!!. But, on the other hand I will take 16 keepers to the boat on a guide trip anytime, Let alone August 4th. I could give a flip who catches them.

Good Luck

[mjk86]

Good report, thanks, my brother and his family are down this week in the kimberling area, they had very similar results around long gravel points in the 30-40ft I believe. Mostlys K's and big fat healthy looking fish...not many keepers but numbers were good, and they are fat. Caught them all on a split shot crawler. His fiance caught a 4foot gar vertical jigging a keitech swimbait!

[Champ188]

Hopefully the gentleman will go home and chew on that for awhile and learn something ... most importantly, listen to the guide you hired to take you to the fish and help you catch them.

The average fisherman has no concept of the critical importance of the little bitty details when it comes to catching fish from highland reservoirs like Table Rock. I'm continually amazed at how much there is to learn, even after a lifetime of reasonably successful fishing for both pay and fun.
Congrats on a fine day, Bill. Glad to hear you finally found some of those big K's. I'm starting to really believe that these fish ... and some of our bigger LM, too ... are becoming more open water-oriented as the years go by.

[5bites]

WOW.

Was he a gentleman about it I hope? I'll never get the pride in fishing. I always want to use what they'll eat whether others perceive it as macho or not.

The irony is that (from my observation anyway) is the ones that refuse to use a finesse worm on a light rod are generally not very good fisherman period.

[5bites]

Btw good report and good job.

[Terrierman]

It took me a long time to learn, but anymore, whenever I am with someone who I am paying for advice, I take it. Doctor, Lawyer, Guide, you name it. I wish I had started out that way, it would have saved a lot of money, frustration and heartache over the years.

Sounds like it was a good day nonetheless.

[Bill Babler]

Have not shared the boat with a nicer guy. He was old school, and just deathly afraid of the open face spinning gear. Said his son had bought him a really nice outfit a couple of years ago and he had just tortured himself with it and never got it to work without tangling up.

Never complained, laughed and complimented his friend on every catch. Real Gentleman.

The deep bite right now is what we call a pressure bite. you just feel the pressure of the fish or the weight on the end of the line. If you are waiting to feel a tug, especially if you are using live bait, you will not. They will simply take the head hook crawler and be gone with it.

The fish are not rising from the trees to take the bait and then diving back into the tree. The fish are suspended just above the tree tops and when you lower the bait to them they just swim latterly over to it and suck it gently in. No up, no down and no chase. Very hard to feel the tug when there is none.

At times when you are fishing this type of structure you will also get bit as the bait is falling toward the tree tops. Watch your line. best way to do this is mark your line at about 35' with a magic marker. I usually will color about 3' of the line right in front of the reel and then folks can see when it hits the 35' mark. While the rig is going down, watch it closely. If it stops prior to the colored mark. pick up the slack and lift. Don't snap hook set, just have your rod tip about a foot off the water surface and pick up the slack and lift. The circle or simi-circle drop shot hooks are not designed for a snap set, just a lift.

While fishing these deep trees, always try and fish as vertical as possible, don't drag it or you will get hung up way to much. Also the picking up and redropping of the bait seems to really initiate strikes. When you get it down weather it be live or artificial, lift the bait a couple of feet from time to time and relower it. This is a great way to get more bites. Just a foot or two is all you have to do. It shakes both the live and artificial worm about. When fishing a drop shot worm, I really shake it and I also lift it up and down.

On kind of a bad note, we did have two extremely huge X type boats plow between us and the bank. Beck said it got so bad at Kimberling Sunday, He called it early as it was almost to the point of being dangerous and the big boats were simply running over him

My contribution to the trip today was a short feisty Small Mouth on a spoon.

[Quillback]

Great report as always, thanks!

[Guest big c]

Great report and thanks for the detailed presentation part. I was there yesterday and saw the crazy boat traffic. We were house shopping so my boat was left behind. Looking forward to some fall fishing when we get the place bought (hopefully). Take care and good fishing.

[willyfish]

Seriously folks, reread this post. This type of info is what this lake is about in the summer.