Small Lake near Jane, MO

[ollie]

Took Buzz to a small lake in SW MO between Noel and Jane yesterday. I have known about this place since I was a small kid and have memories of catching lots of bass out of it. It is a day lake where you pay at the mailbox down the road. Been that way ever since. Fast forward to the current and the fishing is a LOT tougher than when I was a kid! lol The way I understand it is that the lake was formed in the mid 50's and it is fairly deep as well. So I guess when I was a kid in the late 60's it still had a lot of stocked fish in it, but no much anymore. There are bass in there that is for sure, but the dynamics of the lake have changed more than likely. I fished it before about 5-6 years ago and didn't do so great on it as well. Since then every time I have went by there it is mossed over big time. So I went last week and was surprised to find that the water was down and super clear. They had also cut a lot of timber next to the shoreline to clean it up as well. Looked pretty good so I gave it a go. I only caught two that day, but it was nice to see the lake was in better shape. I also got stuck in soft grass and had to get the lady down the road to yank me out! Now to yesterday. We got there around 8 and when we pulled up the water was up big time and all the timber was muck floating all over the lake! That hard rain that flooded out much of NWA brought that lake up about 4 feet. I won't lie, it was tough again to fish. Buzz hooked up right out of the gate with a nice 15" on top water so we thought that was a good sign, but we soon found out it wasn't. I finally hooked up with a bass about 10", but the best part of that was it was on a new rod I had out a couple of times already and hadn't caught anything on. Got the skunk off of it finally! Then I scored again not long after that with a 16". That would be all for me and then Buzz caught another one that went about the same size as my first one. That was in 3+ hours of fishing. We called it quits after that and came home. Buzz bait and spinnerbait were what we caught them on. Couldn't get a bite from anything else we threw.

[tjm]

Horton's? I didn't think they  still had that open to fishing. Seems like 20-25  years ago that I was told the fishing was poor. My older brother used to like fishing there and was friends with the owner.

[ollie]

That's the one. Didn't think anyone else knew the name of it! lol It sure doesn't fish like it used to that is for sure. Most of the time it is covered in moss as well, but not this last week.