Thread: Grand lake archives

Well, inspired by Marks pics and posts, I made the trip up. I am sad to say prolly wont be going again, at least not on a weekend. For a moment I was confused and thought I actually had somehow gone too far up the turnpike and ended up in the Joplin Walmart parking lot. But no, it WAS twin bridges! I'm telling you, it made Crowder in the spring look, well... uncrowded. It wasn't bad Friday evening and it kinda sucked me in, but I should have known better. I left Tulsa Friday at 130 pm, on the water at 3:45 with about 10 trucks in the parking lot at Twin Bridges which I thought was odd for a weekday, but someone said they were sand bass fishing. Drove around for 2 hours checking out the river. I Picked a spot to settle into and did well. Caught 14 good fish between 1.25 and 1.75 LBS with no small ones. I stayed until 9 pm. It was a different kind of bite. I did best drifting with the current speed along the lay downs. If you were above a lay down and were going current speed you wouldn't go 15 feet without a hit. Unfortunately that didnt click in my head until 8 pm and it was getting cold. I thought I would just pick up were I left off in the morning, Ha! I knew I was in trouble when I launched before dawn and 10 boats had already beat me. By 9 am I was surrounded by 14 boats (yes, I counted them). With so much motoring around and jostling for position I couldnt drift like I wanted or hold still with out bobbing up and down like a cork. So I went on the search again but I could not find an area that had fish but not boats. There were 2 areas I found that had fish but were mobbed, each had around 10 -20 boats all crowded together. There were only a few that were sand bass fishing. Those Missouri boys fish tight! It was like fishing the roaring river for trout. I could only catch 4 decent fish in several hours. Left early. Those fish did not take a shine to all the boat traffic. I may fish it again but I will make sure its at night or call ahead about the crowds.

Originally Posted by Crappiekirby

Fishers, what kinda boat were you in? I was down there Saturday trying to fight the crowd as well.
I seen a few crappie fisherman, one was drifting in a Tracker that was fishing over one of my favorite piles. I wanted to say hi but didn't want to bother anyone either.

I was not able to drift on Saturday, the boat traffic was too heavy. So that could not have been me. The drifting I did was after dark on Friday night. Used markers along the long laydowns. I pointed the nose upriver and drifted backward with the current along the length of the laydowns just bumping the trolling motor on the lowest speed left and right to keep on course. Found a few good trees about 50-75 feet long that you could get a good drift over.