Mozingo Lake, Missouri – Bass Report

On Saturday March 31st Wade Kuehl and I participated in the Woods Sporting Goods Team Bass Tournament on Mozingo Lake in Missouri. It was Wade’s first tournament and I thought the productive waters of Mozingo would be a great place to show him the ropes. With the diverse structure and cover at Mozingo any angler can find an area that fits your fishing style.

Luckily the weather man was off on his forecast. They had been calling for heavy rain until 1pm along with 25-30 mph winds. It started out a pretty nice day. Temps were in the mid 50’s and there was a light 5-10 mph southeast wind. Knowing the dam is typically productive I thought we should start there. The water temp was 55 degrees. I began throwing an old Tenn. colored Junior D crankbait and Wade started out with a green pumpkin tube. It wasn’t long before I caught our first fish of the day. It was about a 14" largemouth, and inch shy of the legal length limit. I alternated between a jerkbait and a crankbait. I didn’t get a bite on the jerkbait all day. We did see other anglers catch a few on them. I found that the crankbait was working for me so I stuck with that most of the time. We caught a couple more 14" bass. Around 8:30 I switched up and started throwing some plastic. I rigged up a green pumpkin/orange tail Venom Hot Shot on a 1/8 oz Rockhopper Standup Jig Head. A hot shot is basically an uncut tube bait. I find that is stands up in the water better than anything else. On my first cast I caught our first keeper. It was a 16" bass. I continued to throw the hot shot, but never had another bite. By 9am I was back to the Junior D. It wasn’t long before I hooked up with a 4.08 lb bass shown above. It was caught about 12 feet deep in about 18 feet of water. We continued to crank the area with no other bites.

Next we moved around a timber point near the dam, which may have been a mistake. We did catch several small bass as we moved around the point. Those were caught on a Lucky Craft SKT Mini shallow runner in the ghost minnow color. We worked our way into the back of this little cove catching more 12"-14" bass, but no keepers. Our plan was to let our productive area of the dam to settle down a little and get back out there. As we came around the point there was a boat fishing in the area we caught the 4 lb bass. We fished near by waiting for them to leave, but not before they pulled at least one keeper from the area. We continued cranking the rip rap along the dam and catching several other small bass. When the other boat pulled out we pulled in a caught a couple bass in the 13" range. The dam was very productive, but not the size of bass we were looking for.

We decided to look for some new areas to fish. We headed north and worked our way back out into a timber filled cove. The water temp in this part of the lake was 61 degrees. I didn’t have much luck. I alternated between a jig, shallow crankbait and a lipless crankbait. Wade alternated between a Mann’s Minus One in the firetiger color and a spinnerbait. At about 11:40 he caught his first keeper. It was a 15.25" bass. That was the last keeper we caught that day. The wind began to blow what seemed like a constant 20-25 mph. It made boat control and fishing tough. We went back to the dam to try to get out of the wind with no luck and no bites either. So we hit a couple other areas trying to get out of the wind but there was no escape. We went back to the cove Wade caught his keeper and spent the rest of the day. Wade caught several more short fish. Around 2 pm the wind began to blow over 30 mph. It made for a challenging ride back to the ramp. There were waves out there 5-6 feet tall. There was one instance with the wind and the waves I though we were going to flip over backwards. Thankfully, we made it back ok just before the water patrol shut down the lake.

Overall it we had a great time fishing. The larger fish were a little hard to come by, but the smaller bass were chunky and fought like they were 4 pounders. We finished in 24th place with 8.32 pounds out of 50 teams. The winning team boated 5 bass weighing 17.92 pounds.

On a sad note a boat capsized on the lake around 2pm. The mother and 4 kids were all wearing life vests and were rescued, but the father was not. He wore himself out holding the two youngest (3 & 4 yr olds) together until they were rescued and then he went under. A competing boat stopped to rescue the family and dove in after the father. They got him to the shore, but their efforts to revive him failed. Keep the family of Johnny R. Fennell in your prayers.