Hey guys with the winter hitting our area pretty hard right now I am continuing my learning process in an attempt to be more consistent at catching bass.  I have been fishing shortly after I could walk and we have had a cabin at Lake of the Ozarks for 30+ years up the Osage arm near the 75 MM.  We have always caught good fish from bass, crappie, cats, and white bass but I am now getting the urge to bass fish more seriously as I have been crappie fishing many of the recent years with some junk bank/dock beating for bass.  As I mentioned I want to become a little better at becoming consistent and be able to travel to hit other lakes and apply what I know there.  My wife is amazed/disappointed at how much time I have been spending reading and watching videos about fishing, even though I “thought” I was pretty good at catching fish before.  It is still uncertain for me if I will get into tournament fishing or not as I do not have friends that are that serious about fishing at this time, although I do have all the stuff and probably more than I would need to get started.  I am currently trying to improve my topo map reading and using my DI and SI HDS Lowrance equipment to improve my ability to fish structure and increase my odds of being on the fish.  What I am finding is that the upper end of the Osage arm above the 50 MM a lot different vs. the lower end of the lake or even going to say Kentucky lake where locating structure hot spots seem to be a bit easier as they seem to be more obvious.  The upper Osage is obviously more river based so I am interested in seeing what you guys think I am overlooking as I am guessing I don’t need to drive 25 min and waste all the gas to catch fish but I haven’t figured it out due to the number of mud flats, lack of defined points , no real ledges, and little variance in depth for the coves, for example Deer Creek normally not much deeper than 16 ft. and probably averages closer to 8-12 ft. even though it is a bigger cover for the area.   Maybe I am just being too picky and not taking advantage of the subtle areas as they are not as obvious.  I appreciate any in insight or challenges to my thought process to help me develop a few more target for next year.

 

Deer Creek:  My cabin location and cove I spend most of my time in.  We have caught a lot of fish here and kill the crappie in the spring but bass consistency seems to be an issue.  I generally target the boat docks which are opposite of the channel where I don’t feel there is much structure.

 

Knobby Creek:  Similar cove to Deer Creek in my opinion and I have caught a few fish in the docks straight across the cove entrance.

Big Buffalo and entrance: I have not fished much but not a lot stands out and many of the shallow spots near deep water I am pretty sure are mud.

I've fished Deer Creek a little bit. Had a tournament down there that launched from Warsaw a couple years ago. Deer Creek was the first place that gave me any kind of confidence as I boated the only 2 keeper sized fish in a full day of practice there. We ended up doing best in Turkey Creek and Spring Branch though. The guys that won it caught all their fish in White Branch on 10" worms. We caught all ours on spinnerbaits, although we had several that were really close on 10" worms and beaver style baits. The key for our fish was docks that had posts on them instead of floating docks. We could almost call our shots when we found those docks. 

Thanks.  Maybe focusing in on these types of docks could help a bit so your not trying to dissect everyone.  I am wanting to try to test the "dock that sticks out the farthest" or "the first or last few docks in a cove" to see if that will help narrow some water. 

 

Do you think these fish "winter"  in the same areas or around the deeper docks with poles and brush or do we need to be looking at bluffs or something else in the channel?  Really the toughest time for me to find any type of pattern is when the weather would tell me to be fishing deep i.e. summer and winter time.

What about looking around for brush piles/sinking them yourself? Bass can hold to those year round if you put them in the right places, and since you fish the same cove most of the time you would only have to sink a few.

What about looking around for brush piles/sinking them yourself? Bass can hold to those year round if you put them in the right places, and since you fish the same cove most of the time you would only have to sink a few.

I love this idea and it would give me something to do this winter.  The question I was mulling over the other day with a buddy is it looks like the guys that do this usually put it on some sort of structure so it increases the odds/number of fish that it will hold.  Maybe this is not as important in my area but it is part of the reason I would like to identify some of these potential spots so I can enhance them with a little brush to improve my odds of having fish there.