It’s easy to take the Lake of the Ozarks for granted, perhaps because, for almost of us, it has “always” been there. It hasn’t been, of course, and the story of its creation is one of the reasons the lake is a truly amazing body of water.
Building a hydro-electric power plant on the Osage River was originally the brainchild of Kansas City developer Ralph Street in 1912. He was able to construct some of the roads, railroads and other infrastructure needed to build a dam before his funding ran out in the mid-1920’s.
St. Louis-based Union Electric took over the project and enlarged it far beyond Street’s wildest dreams. Construction of the dam began on August 6, 1929, and the 54,000-acre lake reached its designed 660-foot msl elevation some 22 months later on May 20, 1931. At that time, it was the largest manmade lake in the United States and among the largest in the world.
By way of comparison, the LOZ’s upstream neighbor, Truman Reservoir, was built by the Corps of Engineers and began construction in August 1964 and filled late in 1979 — 15 years later.
Admittedly, a multitude of factors — very much including the Vietnam War — made dam-building more complex in the 1970’s than it had been in the 1920’s. On the other hand, although some rudimentary motorized equipment was used, most of the work done on the Lake of the Ozarks project — including clearing the entire lake basin — was done by men and mules.
But be all that as it may, for you and me, it’s the high quality of the year round multi-species fishery found in the Lake of the Ozarks that makes it a truly amazing body of water. Moreover, the term “year round” should be taken literally. No matter whether you like to fish for crappie, black bass or catfish, right now is as good a time as any to ply the waters of the United States’ last major water project built by civilian entrepreneurs.
Crappie are among my favorite species, and the crappie that call the Lake of the Ozarks home are among my favorite crappie. That’s primarily because they can almost always be found near or under boat docks, and the Lake of the Ozarks has thousands of them.
Alas, all docks are not created equal in the eyes of a crappie. While the following is one of those rules with many exceptions, concentrating on docks which are suspended over sloping pea gravel bottoms and which have attached brush usually will maximize the number of keepers per hour.
When the spirit of the lake is smiling, swimming a jig suspended beneath a slip float parallel to the sides of the dock is all that’s required to load the boat. However, there are more than a few days when the ability to “shoot” a jig to the very back edge of a dock’s well or even in between its individual floats can make all the difference. To accomplish this feat, grasp the outside of the hook’s bend in your off hand, bend the rod double while holding the line with your finger and then release the jig, followed by the line a millisecond later. It’s easier than it sounds, although not by very much.
Local crappie experts rely on jigs almost exclusively at this time of the year. One-sixteenth ounce tube-tipped leadheads are standard issue, but the pros always have one-thirty-second ounce leadheads available, dressed not just with tubes but with hair or marabou as well.
Some days color doesn’t matter enough to worry about, but there are also days when color makes all the difference.
Purists won’t like this hint, but if you want to maximize your fun, try adding half a nightcrawler behind a jig’s artificial body. This may — and I stress may — make the jig slightly less
appealing to crappie, but it will make it far more appealing to walleye, channel cats, drum and carp–any of which can be very exciting on light tackle.
From now until early march, black bass can be found prowling points, primarily, but by no means exclusively, in the eastern half of the lake. Casting jerkbaits (long minnow-shaped hard plastic lures with lips of various lengths) has become the de rigueur’ method not only because it’s effective but also because you don’t have to be kin to Guido Hibdon to master the technique.
Everyone knows that blue cats and deep water go together like ham and eggs. Even so, in January and February, feel free to ignore that truism in favor of one of the mud flats next to the river channel. Get as shallow as possible — two feet is deep enough — and fan cast your fresh cut shad baits all around your boat. If there are blue cats nearby, the action will be fast and furious. If you haven’t had a bite in 15 minutes or so, move.
Given you can find shad — which, admittedly, isn’t always a given — catching blue cats in the two- to four-pound class really is as easy as it sounds.
