Tough Day Fishing Today

Backs of coves with bait fish, secondary points, bluff ends and main lake docks with wind. 10mm to 4mm of the Osage.

Today was a difficult day fishing for me. As I plan to fish the Alhonna Fall Tournament (8mm) in a couple of weeks, I thought that I would check out some different potential patterns from the 10mm to 4mm. I am not really familiar with this area, so as much as I was fishing, I was scouting, idling around and watching my map and graph. So, I checked out several coves for bait fish, bluffs for bait fish and secondary points. It seemed that I was running from place to place today, but that is part of preparation for a tournament. There were plenty of bait fish high in the water column in the very backs of many coves, the bait fish however were quite small, not gizzard shad – I fished these areas, but I could not locate any good fish. The bait fish are starting to get on bluffs and bluff ends, which once this happens, there can be some very good big fish caught on jigs either free falling or on ledges. A BB member caught a 6.10 pounder on a bluff, free falling a jig by the mouth of the Gravois during the Big Bass Bash. I had most confidence with getting a bite today, swimming a 6″ swim bait along side docks on the main channel on the side of the dock that had wind hitting on it. I had the most bites and caught fish on that pattern today. I had a couple of very hard hits that stopped my bait, but the fish just did not eat the big bait to be able to catch em.

The water in the lower part of the lake is very clear, this is not my strength, but if you are a good clear water fisherman, you should be able to get something going. The water starts to get a bit more stained from the toll bridge to the mouth of the Glaize, this is what I observed today.