Current Lake Conditions

[Ham]

I would be absolutely SHOCKED if you could not drag up some smallies off main lake points in 18-35 FOW water. You may have to fish through smaller ones.

I have not worked out all the tricks on Ned for trout. I have caught them on most of the colors I have thrown. White if it is cloudy. Dirt would be my first choice for sunny.

[mojorig]

Looks like the new crest will be somewhere in the 688 ft-msl range.

[Ham]

Looks like the new crest will be somewhere in the 688 ft-msl range.

You're lucky Phil reminded us of the no curse words thing. I got a whole lot of unhappy I would express inappropriately.

[Rob P]

688 is predicted? Wow

677 last weekend, but it went up about 4 feet since then.

Lotsa debris near Oakland.

heading down this weekend..

We'll try to get out, maybe troll some for the walleye.

Maybe just do yard work.

Campground ramp was open, but no where to park.

Had to back a long way down around the curve.

The area along the causeway is open to launch, but its loose material and no pavement.

Also no where to park.

[mixermarkb]

Hey Guys-

I was down at Branson last week, fished Table Rock Tuesday, powersite dam looking for big stripers Tuesday night, Table Rock Wednesday morning, and dropped in at Buck Creek on Bull Wednesday afternoon. We caught fish on topwater and grubs around the dam area at the rock both days. Nothing awesome, but 12-15 each. Long runout points- fishing for suspended fish. We had a giant swing and a miss throwing big swim baits for the stripers- which wasn't a surprise because that was sort of a Hail Mary anyway-

Wednesday Eve, I hit one of the best topwater bites I've had in years on Bull. Ham is right, there are Smallies to be caught on the Ned/grub/tube out on the gravel points in 20-40ish, but the topwater deal I found was much shallower. Still very flat main lake points, but I found solid keepers in bushes 12-18 feet deep. I saw almost no topwater activity, but running a walking bait over the top of those bushes put maybe 20 keepers in the boat in the last hour or so of daylight. They weren't blowing up and missing like the fish on TR, lots of these fish had the front treble in their lips and the back treble somewhere down in their mouth. I don't know if it's a repeatable pattern, or if I was just fishing for fish turned on by tropical low pressure, but it sure was fun-

There were some floaters in the lake, but as long as you kept an eye out, it was plenty safe to run.

[mixermarkb]

Here are some pics-

Plus I'd like to give a special shout out to Phil Lilley for having his guys dig around and find me a used trolling motor in their storage unit, and selling it to me at a VERY reasonable price. I had two boats down, with my business partner and his dad fishing out of one, and me and my son fishing out of the other. The troller on our boat shot craps midmorning on Tuesday. Having bought a used troller off of Phil from the classifieds here a while back, and being very happy with the deal, I sent him a message here on the OAF, and I was back on the water a couple hours later.

Many thanks!

[HardHead]

Thanks for info mixermark, I'll make sure I have a top water tied on in the eve at dusk. Looks like your little buddy had a blast - those are the best trips!

[Ham]

Excellent work my man! I'm jealous.

[mixermarkb]

Hardhead-

Give a spook a try for sure. Don't get too hung up on casting at the bank though- once I got dialed in, I was doing much better fishing parallel to the bank with the boat in about 15 feet of water. On the flat points I was fishing, that still put us a good bit off the bank. I wouldn't just make it a dusk thing either- with any cloud cover at all fish might just come up and whack it, if indeed they are holding up in the flooded cover and what I had happen wasn't just a fluke-

[Ham]

I looked for that bite and never found it, but it may have just been the wrong day or the wrong creek. Sure sounds like fun though.