So here we go, kicking off the very first fishing report by Firehouse Bowfishing. We plan to post updates throughout the year to share what the fishing conditions are like in the Ozarks. So, if you are wanting to come down and book a fishing trip with us this might answer some questions of how the fishing is doing. Currently, the weather has made for a crazy start to the fishing season this year with brutal cold experienced across the country. Here in the Ozarks, we experienced multiple weeks of at or below freezing temperatures coupled with snow amounts not seen in 20 years that caused most of our lakes and rivers to freeze over for the first time that we have ever seen. Almost all the lakes including Stockton, Truman, Table Rock, an Taneycomo were starting to freeze over on the banks and in the coves, primarily the river systems. Due to the cold weather, ice, and snow pushing in and freezing our rivers and boat ramps making it impossible to launch the boat, gigging season got cut short and we ended up not being able to go out as much the last few weeks of the season in February as we had originally planned. The James River has completely frozen over and shut down traffic to boating and we were not able to get up there to go gigging. However, we did have a successful year gigging for suckers once the temperature got down and the water started to clear up back in December through January. This year we saw a large spike in the number of hog suckers compared to white suckers. Overall, we gigged more hogs than any others this season which isn’t bad seeing as they taste better anyways. This week we had our first warm spell of the year, our temperatures finally got above freezing, with temperatures in the 40’s. It felt like a heat wave when you are used to fishing when it is 0° outside every day, so we hit the lake and have been fishing a lot. The ice has slowly started to melt, and fishing is starting to look more promising that we will be able to get back into our waterways hopefully right around the time bowfishing should be taking off. From what we have found, and with talking to other locals, we have not experienced any big fish kills from the cold like Texas is having right now, so that is great! We are seeing some small numbers of shad dying off, which is typical with the cold water. In the meantime, we have been fishing hard on Taneycomo for trout. Thankfully with the lake being fed off the bottom of Table Rock, the water temps have been able to stay in the mid 40’s. With the constant need for power, the generators have made enough current to keep Taneycomo one of the only places to fish that has not frozen over. The cold weather has not seemed to affect the trout, the bite has been extremely well. We are throwing top water spoons and a combination of jigs and worms under floats drifting in the current from 5 to 7 feet deep and doing well. The best bite has come from when the dam is flowing around 2500-3000 CFS. On lower lake Taneycomo, a lot of the boat ramps, docks, and fishing areas have frozen over making fishing anywhere other than the main channel difficult; but for the most part trout fishing has been good on Tanycomo this year. Last weekend we had our first bowfishing tournament of 2021. With all the pockets and rivers still frozen over, we decided to go trout fishing for a couple hours on Taneycomo waiting on dark so we could use our lights to bowfish, then jumped lakes to Table Rock to go after suckers. It was interesting the amount of sucker fish we found on main lake in the slack water due to suckers typically being a fish that want to hang out were there is current. Main lake Table Rock is averaging right around lower 40° and the bowfishing is tough. We were able to find a few common carp and a few grass carp, but they are holding in about 15 ft of water and very spaced out, making them hard to see and hard to shoot. The primary fish target that we were going after for this tournament were sucker fish due to the cold. We landed one sucker that weighed just under 10 lbs, which if you are not familiar with these fish that is huge! The tournament was a big 5 format, and we took second place on 23 pounds of sucker fish and won first place on number with 7 total fish; if that tells you how slow the bowfishing has been due to all this ice and cold. We have warm days in the forecast for the rest of the month and pushing into March, this should help finish melting the rest of the ice. As we are starting to approach the beginning of March the bowfishing season is looking promising right now. We have not had our usual winter flooding. Since the lakes have had a higher demand for power from the cold, levels have dropped below power pool and with no flooding currently we are not experiencing any overages on water like we have had for the past many years. So, unless we get the spring floods to come in, right now, it looks like we might get lucky and have a normal water level year. We may even have a potential for a low water level year which will help find some fish, but we are not holding our breath because it has been many years since the lakes could drop that low. As we are moving into March, it looks like conditions are going to start improving. The buffalo carp should start coming up here soon and we are going to be out doing some scouting and getting ready, watching, and waiting for those to come up. We have some bowfishing trips booked starting towards the end of March so bowfishing season is kicking off and we are getting ready!
Late winter 2021
