4 tourneys lately I have had to deal with high largely stained to murkey water. This is my worst nightmare, I dont do shallow powerfishing well, or I guess I should say, I dont like to do shallow powerfishing. What direction do you guys go when faced with a lake that is 10ft up in the willows and buckbrush or button bushes. I have flipped jigs/tubes/worms, thrown spinnerbaits, bounced cranks/ ripped grass/ frogged/ buzzed/ swam and done just about everything else I could think of, but I just cant get this flooded cover deal working for me. Do most of the fish come up to feed on flooded conditions, or do the postspawn fatties stay put in deeper areas as would normally happen. I havent spent the time deep I would normally this time of year, but when I do it seems not to be as good as usual. The shallow bite for dinks is on, but I need better quality fish....any ideas?

It sounds like you are dealing with exactly the same thing I have been. I finally got some info that paid off though. It seems the bass have been holding at the original shoreline during the day and heading to really shallow water in the morning and evening.

Jigs, crankbaits, c-rigs, t-rigs, and spinners have been working on the deeper fish with spinners and top-waters working in the mornings and evenings.

Three weeks ago we had a really cloudy day for our local tourney and I had great luck working a Tiny Torpedoe in 8 feet of water around the flooded willows. Everyone did fairly well that day if they worked their lures fast enough, but the fish didn't want to touch anything going slow.

I went out last weekend to keep learning the lake better (Truman Lake in Missouri and I am new to fishing it) and found t-rigs working at the original shoreline around the cove entrances (c-rigs are used a lot around here and I find I am more comfortable with the t-rig).

How high has the water been? The original shoreline was working here when the water was 7-10 foot above normal. 5 to 8 foot was working when the water was 16 feet high.

Taliesin, Welcome aboard!

FIN-S-R,

Five years ago I was fishing Bull Shoals the first weekend in June. The Corps of Engineers had taken charge of the reservior due to some legal requirements involving water release for downstream farmers. The point is, the water rose more than thirty feet in this huge lake with trees in full leaf! No one, including the guides, could get a bite.

My guide had another idea. We fished inside primary points in what appeared to be the middle of giant coves. We fished around the trees where the "normal" bank should be. For three days we never went fifteen minutes without "Fish On!"

So, my suggestion is to get away from the bank and the brush. Look for cover and structure in deeper water. You might be surprised.

So simple yet so profound...why didnt I think of that....a light just came on upstairs. That makes perfect sense now. i noticed schoolers running out about the area where the shore line used to be about 2 or 3 months ago. The water up on ft gibson (ne oklahoma) was anywhere from 5-12 ft high, and texoma (my home lake) is currently dropping and about 7 ft high, but has dropped about 3 ft. I caught a couple of the schoolers, but when they went down...I thought back into the willows and brush....I couldnt buy a bite....Maybe they were going back to the original shoreline...thats where no cover meets butt load a' cover. Now I gotta go try that out this weekend. Does truman run into the same watershed as grand/ hudson/ ft gibson/ ark. river.

So simple yet so profound.

Yep, that's our RW alright  

Does truman run into the same watershed as grand/ hudson/ ft gibson/ ark. river.

Not really. Eventually they all run into the Mississippi River, but not until then.

Truman lake has the Osage River, Grand River (not the same Grand River as down there), and several large creeks that flow into it. With that much water coming in, when they shut off the generators at the dam for several weeks the water went up like crazy. After flowing through Truman and the Lake of the Ozarks the osage River runs on into the Missouri River, then into the Mississippi.

Maybe the original shoreline would have worked when the water was 16 feet high. All the reports I saw put the fish up in the flooded willows though. This is a very difficult lake for bass though. Even the locals who fish here all the time can have a tough time of it.

BTW: I have done quite a bit of fishing in Lake Hudson down there (graduated High School at Pryor OK). Almost all of it catfishing though. I reserved bass fishing for all of the good ponds down there.