Very Strong Bite 3-28 to 3-31!!!! About to be on Fire!

[David Goddard]

Table Rock continues to impress me every time I an lucky enough to fish this lake. @Justin92297 and I fished the lower end on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday and we fished the Kings and the White on Saturday.

Thursday we had 17.3 lbs for our biggest 5 including a 4 lb smallmouth that Justin caught and a 4.5 lb largemouth that I caught. We caught 12 keepers on Thursday and all of them came off Keitech 2.8 swimbaits in sexy shad color on quarter ounce head with a weed guard and jerk baits. Cedar trees seemed to be the biggest key for us pretty much all week. Just slow rolling that small swimbait through the trees or making a long cast with the jerk bait past the tree to get it down to max diving depth when it came past the tree got us almost all of our bites. We caught some in trees that were in 30-40 feet and topped out in 15-20, and we caught some in trees that were in 15-20 feet.

 

Friday brought more of the same for us. the only difference was this time we found fish schooling like crazy back in a creek. I caught a keeper largemouth on a spook and missed 2 other blow ups and we caught 10 keepers on Friday. Today in the area that we found schoolers we just fished out baits around where the fish were schooling and caught a bunch. Many of them were shorts but we saw some really big ones blow up on the surface. The bite after the schooling activity in the morning was pretty much the same. Small swimbait and jerk bait through trees in the same depth zone.

 

Saturday we decided to see a new part of the lake and put in at Viola. Neither one of us had ever fished the kings and we thought maybe there would be a good rock crawler or wiggle wart bite up there. We did not catch them on crankbaits but we caught them flipping main lake wood that was on the steep banks with a small jig and a swing head with a menace grub and on an underspin with a 3.3 Keitech. Trees were again very important; wherever there were cedar trees in about 20 ft of water on the main lake there were bass. Saturday was definitely our best day for numbers. we caught over 50 fish and had 18 keepers. No big ones but it was a very fun day and I like that part of the lake a lot. 

 

Sunday we fished the lower end again and only had like half of a day since we had to get back to Columbia for class on Monday. We only had 4 keepers and all of them came out of very deep trees that topped out in like 15-25 feet that were over 40-60 ft. on the 2.8 Keitech. Sunday was a tough post frontal day. Probably only caught 10 fish and only 4 keepers. 

 

Lastly I wanted to touch on the meanmouth that Justin and I caught. We caught a total of 3 that we noticed this week and I had never thought that there were many in the lake. We also caught a surprisingly low number of smallmouth in 4 days (probably only like 10). Is the spotted bass population in Table Rock breeding out the smallmouth? I sure hope not. Either way Table Rock is my favorite lake in the U.S. and I cant wait to go back again. Also, if anyone is looking to fish a tournament this weekend on Lake of the Ozarks come fish the Mizzou Fundraiser Tournament out of PB #2 on this Saturday Tight lines everybody.

[STLbassbuster]

Awesome fishing and report guys! It's pretty nice having so many stellar fisheries within a 3-4 hour drive of where I live. TR is a challenging lake and it keeps me coming back for more.

[David Goddard]

42 minutes ago, STLbassbuster said:

Awesome fishing and report guys! It's pretty nice having so many stellar fisheries within a 3-4 hour drive of where I live. TR is a challenging lake and it keeps me coming back for more.

I will live within 1 hour of table rock some day. It is my favorite area of the country I have ever been to that doesn't have winter for 6 months haha

[Quillback]

That's some great fishing!  Would've have liked to been there today but a buddy of mine wanted to fish Spavinaw today as he has a club tourney there Saturday, we caught one lousy 2 lb bass for our efforts and left early as the wind was howling.  

 

[David Goddard]

1 hour ago, Quillback said:

That's some great fishing!  Would've have liked to been there today but a buddy of mine wanted to fish Spavinaw today as he has a club tourney there Saturday, we caught one lousy 2 lb bass for our efforts and left early as the wind was howling.  

 

If I'm within an hour of table rock it's almost impossible to convince me to go anywhere else. Most addicting place in the world knowing that any hook set could be a very big bass of any of the 3 major species

[Lvn2Fish]

1 hour ago, David Goddard said:

If I'm within an hour of table rock it's almost impossible to convince me to go anywhere else. Most addicting place in the world knowing that any hook set could be a very big bass of any of the 3 major species

That’s a beautiful meanmouth (spot smallie hybrid) fairly rare to catch one . I usually get two or three a year . 

[Fish24/7]

so much detail and such nice fish !  

you gotta love OAF!

[David Goddard]

5 hours ago, Fish24/7 said:

so much detail and such nice fish !  

you gotta love OAF!

This forum has helped me catch a ton of fish from small creeks to big lakes. It wouldn't be right if I didn't try to return the favor!

[David Goddard]

6 hours ago, Lvn2Fish said:

That’s a beautiful meanmouth (spot smallie hybrid) fairly rare to catch one . I usually get two or three a year . 

I used to think they were very rare until I started to fish multispecies lakes a lot. I probably caught around 20 of them last year from the osage river and lake of the ozarks as well as smaller creeks and streams. That was the first I have ever seen from table rock though. We caught 3 meanmouth in the 4 days we fished. That one had the most vivid markings though

[Johnsfolly]

5 hours ago, David Goddard said:

This forum has helped me catch a ton of fish from small creeks to big lakes. It wouldn't be right if I didn't try to return the favor!

Thanks for sharing your success! That's what makes this this forum great!