Lake of the Ozarks Fast Lane to Great Fishing

[slothman]

3 hours ago, conorsixtakc said:

Stockton's main lake doesn't even compare to the churn of LOZ in the Summer. It gets rough when mother nature decides to blow rollers, not when 300+ ocean vessels decide to plow to and from every lake front bar on the water.

I’ve said this for a long time. Stockton can get extremely rough, it’s true. However, the dam area of Lake of the Ozarks can get absolutely crazy rough even when there aren’t any boats on the lake when the wind is blowing hard from the West. 

[conorsixtakc]

What I was trying to say is that LOZ gets more churned up by these ocean going vessels than any COE reservoir like Stockton can. Anybody complaining about pleasure boaters on Stockton is just looking for something to complain about.

[Basfis]

We have a pontoon on Stockton. It’s darn near the extent of pleasure boats and honestly, pleasurable 🙂  never have a wake issue with the bass boat  

LofO, geez....it gets big and unpredictable in direction.  Always seems like ski moguls to navigate with a boat. The diamonds form and collapse in a rhythm u just can’t out guess.  Boat just crashes to the bottom of a trough that wasn’t there seconds before. It’s hell on kidneys.

I’ll take the rollers from the wind.  

[Walleye13]

Shrapnel, I respect your opinion and knowledge of the tournament circuit. But...hard for me to believe that the winning limits didn't come from the lower end (dam to the 6mm). Especially since I saw and talked to Rob & Ben who won two of them (sorry if that wasn't what you meant). That's not the issue though, year round relocation really is. Aside from the normal tournaments, how about the timing of the Big Bass Bash last April?  Lots of fish solidly on beds that weekend. The number of females displaced and relocated by 2400 boats probably over shadows the effects of all the other tournaments....

[shrapnel]

8 minutes ago, Walleye13 said:

Shrapnel, I respect your opinion and knowledge of the tournament circuit. But...hard for me to believe that the winning limits didn't come from the lower end (dam to the 6mm). Especially since I saw and talked to Rob & Ben who won two of them (sorry if that wasn't what you meant). That's not the issue though, year round relocation really is. Aside from the normal tournaments, how about the timing of the Big Bass Bash last April?  Lots of fish solidly on beds that weekend. The number of females displaced and relocated by 2400 boats probably over shadows the effects of all the other tournaments....

Kind of my point...where were all those big fish caught recently between the 6mm and dam released?  Alhonna?  Coffman?  Shawnee?  Those 3 combined don't see near the release rate as PB2, and yet the Glaize bite never compares to the lower end in the cold water.  LOZ is amazing in it's ability to sustain the fishery.  Could it be better?  I'm sure it could, but then it already gets enough pressure.

I expect the same issue this spring for the BBB also with bedding fish.  I live within a couple miles of PB2, trust me, it bums me out when I catch a 5lb fish with it's bottom jaw flesh ripped open from a cull pin used as a handle.

[MoCarp]

9 minutes ago, shrapnel said:

trust me, it bums me out when I catch a 5lb fish with it's bottom jaw flesh ripped open from a cull pin used as a handle.

The impacts of tourney after tourney after tourney have yet to be studied, and who's going to pay for something that would restrict them? some areas in the country have a great hostility to tourneys, I suspect real time release will be mandated in the future as an effort to hold off the inevitable restrictions placed on the numbers and times of tourneys. but when the get drunk and party boaters take over our favorite lakes it will just push people to the lakes that don't have such use.

one of the reasons I am opposed to thinks like bars on Stockton, and jet boat tours on Taney.....some of the mega-use lakes out west are examples, pretty soon they put caps on how many people can use the lake, or jack up a use permit to weed out people, imagine $100 bucks just to use the lake for one day.....

[shrapnel]

I share the passion and concern.  I've been fishing LOZ for 30+ yrs.  I actually think tournament pressure was worse in the 90's up until the crash around 05.  I'm still not seeing the boat numbers in some of the circuits we did back then, maybe there's more choices now but back then lots of tournaments were hundreds of boats, there's only a handful that top 100 now.   We have seen the population maintain and thrive through multiple generations of fish, assuming they live 15 yrs.  The tournament pressure is not new.

 

[Walleye13]

Good point Shrapnel. Two of those recent events were out of Alhonna (there was an 8.16lb er taken in Saturdays event). Nice to hear your observations from the '90's. I have only been fishing it hard for the past 5 years so I don't have that perspective to compare to. To MoCarps point, I've not been able to find any studies on tourney or relocation impacts on LOZ (and why if not needed??). From what I can gather, LOZ head biologist Greg Stoner stays on top of things pretty well. Certainly seems like the population continues to maintain and thrive as you noted.

Good luck up there in the Glaize. Hope you get one of those 10 lbers this spring!