KIMBERLING CITY, Mo. The river runs dry pretty quickly on Table Rock Lake, warns a local tournament angler.
Bassmaster Elite Series anglers relying on either of the two main rivers on Thursday's first day of The Rock presented by TheraSeed might struggle on Friday, say Wes Endicott, an area angler who's fished events on Table Rock Lake the past 10 years.
While 20 anglers didn't weigh a fish and 22 weighed in only one on Day 1 of the year's final event, a number of anglers did weigh in decent bags, although Endicott advises most not to expect repeat performances.
"Not bad. I kind of expected that," he said of the leaders' weights. "I imagine several caught them up in the river. I don't think that will hold up more than two days. They just don't take the pressure real well."
"I really think the guys who are doing well, Skeet (Reese, who leads with 15-10) is up in either Lost Creek or James River. Those are the two best river systems. The James is the most fertile river on Table Rock. They just grow a lot bigger up there and there seems to be a lot more.
"From my tournament experience, somebody can bust a big bag one day, but it's particularly hard to do it two days in a row. The guys that caught a consistent 10–pound bite out on the main lake will do very well in this tournament come day 3 and 4."
Fishing the main lake requires special expertise and tactics because of its depth, Endicott said.
"You need to be really proficient with your electronics," he said. "The fish last weekend were actually in 30 feet of water. They may come off the bottom or may be suspended in the treeptops that are in 50, 60 feet of water. You can go find the treeptops, see the fish and drop it right in front of him and antagonize him into biting. A lot of times they'll yawn, and you drop it in there when they yawn and they'll bite."
Endicott said Kentucky bass begin schooling at this time and suspend around long sloping gravel points, but they are too tight to structure to be seen on electronics. He said dropping a bait six feet above the bottom sometimes brings the school up and into view.
"It's tough on a lot of people," Endicott said on this type of fishing. "We do that here year round, but the touring guys I just don't know if they get that much experience in the course of a year. It'll be kind of challenging for most of them."
With 102 boats, he sees the fishing getting tougher, especially after noticing that the thermocline was breaking up last week, giving the bass a lot more area to roam.
"One thing we might see, if we get a real dark morning and they get out early, we're going to see a lot more of the smallmouth being caught," Endicott said. "You can catch some real studs. You can see 6-pound smallmouth in tournaments. So if they get out early, the weights could come up a little bit."
Clouds or rain could give the Elite pros that smallmouth bite all day, where Endicott said they can drag a football jig all day long. "As soon as the sun comes over the horizon, they like to disappear," he said. "I think that's why we didn't see more good weights today."