Flood gates at Bagnell

[brownieman]

mcp,

i know it's illegal to throw past the line below truman...same at bagnell?

is this a new reg. or has it always been that way...i know some people chance it but i'm not one of em, lol

thanks

bm

[mcp633]

As far as I know, it's always been that way. It's how my pop found out that ignorance of the law is no defense! There is frequently an agent in the area, and with the size of some of the fish I saw (I think there were more than a few that wouldn't fit sideways in the back of my F-150), the agent would be watching for sure. It's too tempting for the violators! I'm talking huge man, HUGE!!! fish. And not just to Tiny Elvis!

[BrianK]

here are a couple pics from 2 nites ago.

That water is pretty scary looking and i definitely wouldn't anchor out there.

The water is up in the trees and lots of current sucking back up into the dam.

Looked over the rail and also saw some HUGE shadows come up from the depths...those fish alone can eat your boat which is another reason not to anchor up.

Not kidding. looked like some 4+ foot long catfish down there.

Catch em if you can!!!

Brian

[brownieman]

here are a couple pics from 2 nites ago.

That water is pretty scary looking and i definitely wouldn't anchor out there.

The water is up in the trees and lots of current sucking back up into the dam.

Looked over the rail and also saw some HUGE shadows come up from the depths...those fish alone can eat your boat which is another reason not to anchor up.

Not kidding. looked like some 4+ foot long catfish down there.

Catch em if you can!!!

Brian

good pics brian,

from the overlook use a pair of binocs and you can really see in the water good...there are some huge fish in there...amazing !!

biggest cat i have caught is a 55 lb. flathead but i have seen a guy land a 94 lb. blue, was kind of a team effort, lol...both below truman dam.

several of us got soaked on that one after about a half hour fight...

[Seth]

Seth,

they're all above the line. if you sit up at the observation area the area above the line is packed with HUGE fish. I took my kids down the other day, just to look at it. really kind of cool.

Yea, I can believe that. The only big fish (20 lbs+) that I have seen caught from up there were pulled out by guys fishing right next to the dam illegally.

I guess they gotta move down below that line one of these days though.

The talk of these huge catfish has me all pumped to go up there now. If a person wanted to anchor near the line, I would suggest trying it along the right side of the dam away from the flood gates. The water is not overly rough there. The water below the flood gates are really rough and throw some pretty good size wakes, so unless you have a barge I wouldn't suggest anchoring there.

I'll be sure and go take a look of the balcony up there to see some of those catfish. I've never seen big catfish like that at Bagnell, but I have at Truman. It's an amazing sight!

[Seth]

Well me and two other guys made it up to Bagnell today and fished from 2:30 to 9:30. We landed about 40 catfish between the three of us. Most of them were blues with a few channels mixed in. The biggest was about 6 pounds. Every fish we caught today looked like a football. Everything was caught on shad. Talk to some other guys who did really good using shrimp also. The man we talked too also said that some lady caught a "hog", but we never seen it.

The spoonbill were jumping everywhere today. It was pretty neat watching 20 pound spoonbill fly 2-3 feet out of the water.

I went up to the lookout balcony before we started fishing to see what was swimming around near the dam. LOTS OF BIG FISH! The only problem was that every one of them was a darn asian carp, NO CATFISH! We had brought our bow fishing rigs as always, but those stupid things never did come down below the yellow line where we could shoot them. Man they were thick in there and I bet some of them would have went 30 if not 40 pounds. It's a shame a person can't bow fish over the yellow line for those carp.