If you have a business, resort, service, or dealership in the Lake of the Ozarks area you should advertise here.  We know there are countless options for advertising in the Lake of the Ozarks area, but you won't find a more cost effective way to get your name before the Missouri sporting public that the MSIN. Lake of the Ozarks Is Great Place For Beginners  by John Neporadny Jr.

Lake of the Ozarks State Park web page

Lake of the Ozarks Is Great Place For Beginners by John Neporadny Jr. Catering to anglers of all ages and skills, the Lake of the Ozarks has a rich tradition of introducing its visitors to the sport of fishing.

Whether competing in a bass tournament or relaxing on a dock and tight-lining for catfish, you have plenty of opportunities to catch fish from this 54,000-acre reservoir. Competitive anglers flock to the lake because they know it contains a quality bass population.  The lake's numerous crappie, white bass and catfish also provide lots of action for recreational fishermen throughout the year. But the lake's most abundant-- and probably it's best-- fishing asset is the sunfish. While they pursue bass, crappie, catfish and white bass now, skilled anglers visiting the Lake of the Ozarks probably got started in the sport by catching bluegill, green sunfish, pumpkinseeds and other small sunfish. These diminutive panfish abound in the Lake of the Ozarks and each year introduce a new generation of anglers to the sport.

The best time to catch bluegill is a hot, sunny summer afternoon, which makes covered docks ideal spots for kids to fish because the floating structure provides plenty of shade and reduces the risk of sunburn. The docks also offer shelter and food for the throngs of sunfish swimming under the piers. Plenty of sunfish and other gamefish are attracted to resort docks because the owners or caretakers sink brush piles in the wells and along the sides of the docks.

These spots provide hours of consistent fishing action, which is necessary to get the beginning angler hooked on the sport .After fishing for bass or crappie from your boat in the morning, you can spend the summertime afternoon on the resort dock teaching
your children how to fish. Even though they're on a flat, stable surface, children should wear a life jacket while fishing on a dock. Sometimes the excitement of hooking a fish can cause youngsters to lean over the water to look at the fish, and they could end up in the lake.

When introducing children to fishing, I recommend you equip them with a short, lightweight rod and a simple spincast reel, such as the Zebco 202 model, filled with 8- or 10-pound line. Light line works best even for these aggressive sunfish, because the panfish become wary of the monofilament after a couple of fish have been hooked. Since sunfish have such tiny mouths, you should tie on small hooks such as a size 4 or 6 straight-shanked model. You can either drop your bait straight down and tight-line with a BB split shot or without any weight. For the first-time angler, I suggest attaching a small BB split shot to the line and the smallest bobber you can find. This makes it easier for beginning anglers to detect strikes because they can just watch for the bobber to submerge. If you attach too large of a bobber, the float causes too much resistance when the fish grabs the bait, which causes the bluegill to spit it out. Novice anglers tend to let sunfish run too long with the bait and the fish tend to swallow the hook, so you also need a pair of needlenose pliers for dislodging hooks.

Despite their small size, sunfish have large appetites and aren't choosy about what they eat. Some baits we have used over the year to catch these panfish include worms, a piece of hot dog, wax worms, corn and artificial baits such as Berkley Power Wigglers. We have even caught some green sunfish (the most voracious eaters in the lake) on bare hooks.

When using a worm cut it into pieces, so the bait will be easier to thread on the hook and harder for the sunfish to take off without getting stuck. Putting the whole piece of worm on the hook allows the bluegill to bite off pieces of the worm and avoid the hook. Since cutting worms into pieces creates such a mess, I prefer baiting a youngster's hook with a cricket. Bluegill crave these insects, which are easy to place on a hook without all the mess. Simply stick the hook through the collar behind the cricket's head and thread it through the body and out the bug's belly for the best results. I recommend taking along 50 to 100 crickets for a day on the dock because sunfish devour these bugs in a hurry and you'll also lose some when you're trying to hook them and they jump out of your hand.

If you're too squeamish to hook on a messy worm or a fidgety cricket, you can use the easiest and cheapest bait for sunfish. Rolling up a piece of bread and kneading it onto the hook will also catch plenty of sunfish. One trick for catching these little fish when the action slows is to tear up pieces of bread and drop them into the water.

The falling bread crumbs attract sunfish from all directions and triggers a feeding frenzy. Have your children drop their pieces of bread on a hook into the middle of this action and they'll immediately get bites.

The resort docks at the Lake of the Ozarks are great places to teach a kid how to fish. Spending a couple of hours with them catching bluegill off the dock will introduce your kids to a sport they can enjoy the rest of their lives and then carry on a family tradition by teaching their children when they return to the lake for their summer vacations. For information on lodging and other facilities at the Lake of the Ozarks or to receive a free 152-page vacation guide, call theLake of the Ozarks Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-FUN-LAKE or visit the Lake of the Ozarks Convention and Visitors Bureau web site at funlake.com.
 

Cloud over Lake Ozark bass has a silver lining
The same conditions that contributed to the deaths of some bass last year is fueling rapid growth of bass, crappie and other sought-after game fish.

JEFFERSON CITY -- Anglers who were disappointed and concerned about bass fishing at Lake of the Ozarks last year will be glad to learn that the situation has a silver lining. They can look forward to good fishing this year and even better fishing in the foreseeable future.

Last summer and fall, anglers reported lackluster fishing for two black bass species - largemouth and spotted bass. Below-average success in fishing tournaments confirmed the reports.

Anglers were understandably concerned when they not only caught fewer fish, but discovered that some of the bass they were catching had open sores on their bodies. Many feared an outbreak of Largemouth Bass Virus (LMBV), a disease that has hurt bass populations in lakes in Arkansas and some other states in recent years. Conservation Department Fisheries Management Biologist Greg Stoner says this concern wasn't unreasonable, but doesn't seem to have been on target.

"We collected several largemouth bass during the fall, 2001 B.A.S.S. Invitational tournament," said Stoner. "Analysis of these fish showed they were suffering from infections of a protozoan parasite and a bacterial infection. Both of these organisms are common in Missouri lakes and streams and can cause fish to lose scales and develop open sores. It also causes the fish to be sluggish, which makes them less likely to be caught by anglers."

According to Stoner, the Conservation Department found LMBV in a few fish at Lake of the Ozarks the previous spring, but they didn't find any evidence of the disease there in the fall. He said the cause of last fall's bass sickness probably can be traced to weather patterns over a three-year period.

"Rainfall around Lake of the Ozarks was significantly below normal during 1999 and 2000," said Stoner. "During droughts, nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, accumulate on the ground. When more normal rains returned in 2001, they flushed these accumulated nutrients from the watershed into the lake. That created ideal conditions for the growth of the bacteria and protozoans we found on the sick fish. A shot of nutrients is the most likely suspect for causing the fishing slump we saw last year.

The good news, says Stoner, is that last fall's slump was a temporary phenomenon. "The great concern among bass anglers was the absence of keeper-size largemouth bass. I'm happy to announce that our electrofishing catch rates of legal largemouth bass this spring was very similar to the 1997 to 2001 average. We may have lost a few fish to disease last fall, but good numbers of legal fish remain."

That's not the only good news, or even the best news, says Stoner. He said the same nutrient boost that encouraged abnormal growth of disease organisms also favored a bountiful crop of the microscopic plants and animals that form the foundation of the lake's food chain.

"It looks as though conditions during 2001 were extremely good for spawning success and survival of young fish," said Stoner. "Fall 2001 fish surveys showed what could be the best crappie reproduction in a decade." Furthermore, said Stoner, Conservation Department biologists found the highest number of young largemouth bass ever recorded.

And the news gets even better. Although spring electrofishing surveys don't normally find significant numbers of the walleye fingerlings the Conservation Department stocks each year, last year's surveys captured walleye fingerlings at a rate of more than 10 per hour of sampling. "That indicates extremely good survival of these stocked fish," said Stoner.

"Even though Lake of the Ozarks experienced some problems recently," said Stoner, "the fish populations remain in good shape, and the future is extremely promising."

- Jim Low -