Fishing Tablerock Lake Last Few Days

Points, secondary points, trees, brush piles and stumps. Presentation is very very slow.

I left Osage Beach on Wednesday to pre fish and fish the Central Pro-Am tournament this past weekend on Tablerock Lake. When I left LOZ, the lake was still frozen and I was just looking forward to get on the water. As a courtesy to Mike Webb, Tournament Director and simply an amazing individual, I fished the Pro-Am as a boater as there were co-anglers on a wait list, including myself. I pre-fished on Wednesday with my close friends and awesome fisherman, Marcus Sykora and Bill Davenport. Marcus is practicing for tournaments the next two weekends in a row on Tablerock. We caught a lot of fish, including 5 keepers. Thursday and Friday I spent the days searching 80% of my time with my graph to find fish and structure in preparation for being a boater/pro for the first time ever…yikes, lots of pressure to be a boater on a foreign lake. I was not fishing the tourney for a trophy or anything like that, I just enjoy the competition and fishing all day, but the pressure that I felt was for my co-anglers, who each of them on both days fish the entire tournament series and any keepers will give them points for the season. The little bit of pre-fishing that I did was with the A-Rig as a search bait. Central Pro-Am does not allow the A-Rig (thankfully), I needed to try to translate the A-Rig bite to a non A-Rig bite. So, I threw swim baits, swam grubs, threw the jig and jerkbait. The only bites during the tournament came on Sunday with my Co-Angler Dave Bewley from Blue Springs. Dave, caught two on the jerkbait. Considering the pressure I felt on a foreign lake to get my co-angler some fish, Dave and I were dancing on the deck and high fiving as we were both skunked on Saturday. My co-angler on Saturday, Vanetta Groeteke, was very supportive and understanding of my lake of experience on Tablerock and thus we made decisions as a team and while we were around fish all day, the bite just did not materialize for either of us. The cool thing is that Vanetta’s sons, finished the tourney 1st and 4th, those boys can really fish!! The bite the entire weekend on Tablerock was tough and the winning two day weight was only just over 20 pounds. However, the Groeteke boys figured them out. Many anglers were skunked, so while I would have liked to catch more fish, I was somewhat satisfied that the entire field of terrific Tablerock anglers struggled to get bit. It seemed the best bite of the weekend came from the river systems of Tablerock on the jig, grub and Booyah single hook a-Rig look alike. I will be back fishing on Lake of the Ozarks on Wednesday afternoon. I have heard that the LOZ bite has been tough as well. Now that the ice has thawed, the water is very cold and it may take some time for the fish to get active and for us anglers to figure out a strategy to get them to bite. Congratulations to two of the best LOZ Anglers, Terry Blankenship and Mike Malone for winning the BWTSA tournament this past Sunday on LOZ. These two fisherman just have a knack for figuring out the fish during the toughest bites.