Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 10/22/2010 - Branson, MO

The theme of this record is like a broken record . . . wait it is a broken record. Our beautiful fall weather hasn't changed in weeks with a high blue sky, 75-85 degrees, no rain and only a little wind. Generation patterns . . . again, hardly any change. Most days, water is running any where from a half unit to two units, 25-85 megawatts, and varying during the day. Some days the generation starts at 3 p.m. and runs through the night. On others it starts at midnight and runs through the next day. The only consistent pattern is that there's no pattern at all. Little water runs on weekends, but not always, except that there is usually no generation most of the day on Sundays.

Fishing -- if anything it has slowed a bit. That's what we're hearing from guests and guides alike. But the minute or hour you think there's no trout in the lake, they turn on, and you can catch a bunch of nice rainbows. It's still fishing. Not biting? In the fall, low oxygen in the water usually gets blamed, but the rainbows I have caught fought hard and swam off quickly, indicating they have plenty of oxygen. The other reason suggested for the slowdown was fewer rainbows in the lake, but the Missouri Department of Conservation is still stocking. Fishing pressure has actually decreased the last week, too, and will continue to decrease in the coming weeks.

Night crawlers are still king, by far. We're carrying live minnows due to so many requests, but I don't think they're working any better than worms or Power Bait. The Gulp variety is still catching some rainbows but mostly smaller ones. And we do have some real small rainbows swimming around right now. I caught one last evening that didn't stretch to four inches. I was drifitng a san juan worm and a scud using a small split shot and felt something kind of like bumping gravel, but not quite. But not big enough to be a real fish? It was. It didn't stop bumping in a weird way, so I reeled it in and fought a fish on the hook. They are small!

I have a new recipe for a drift rig I want to share. I've been using it lately and I think it's a great rig. Tie the normal rig with a hook or fly on one end and a loop closer to the other end, but leave off the bell weight. Instead, make a loop, loop it through and make a small, simple knot in the line real close to the end of the line. That's it. Then pinch a split shot on the line and slide it down to the knot. What makes this better is, first, if your weight snags on the bottom, the shot will just pull loose. Tie another knot and pinch on another shot. This also allows you to change size of split shots easily. I really like this since our generation has been changing so much during the day lately. If it slows I can put on a smaller shot. If it speeds up, I can pinch on a little bigger shot. No, I don't have these in our tackle shop yet, but I'm working on getting them tied up.

I used one of these rigs yesterday, drifting a light brown san juan worm, medium chenille, 6x tippet, #10 hook and a #14 dead peppy scud on the bottom and caught some real nice rainbows. I boated to the dam about 11 a.m., after water started running at 9 a.m. There was just enough water to get all the way to the cable, although I was holding my breath running through the rebar area. I threw a 1/8-ounce sculpin jig from the cable down past rebar and caught five rainbows in the 15-to 18-inch range. They hit hard and fought hard. They were hungry. No browns. I didn't do as well through the big hole area but caught a few smaller rainbows down closer to the boat ramp. I worked the KOA stretch with no results. Started drifting my worm and scud at Lookout and quickly boated an 18-inch rainbow. It jumped three times and made five hard runs. I was amazed that this fish was this full of fight this time of year, pleasantly surprised. Caught six more rainbows before heading back to the resort, all in the slot. I could see our small rainbows as I drifted down, but I guess the big ones were getting to the flies first. Same result in the evening, but I found the dinks, too.

Night fishing below the dam has been a mixed bag. With water running so much at night, it's been tough for most who aren't used to fishing at night. There's some room at outlets #1 and #2, but tangles and trees cause most anglers to head back to a warm bed and dreams of doing better at daylight. But if you do catch the water down, there's a variety of flies to try and ways to work them. I would think the big browns would go after a larger fly but you know, we've been catching big browns at night on smaller wooly buggers for years. On moonlit nights like last night, don't be scared to try a white streamer. Check out my last report for a list of night time flies we have in the shop. Or, as I tell people when they ask about the flies in their own collection -- give them a try! They'll probably work.

To try night fishing, first, carry a light but keep it off the water you're fishing . . . and off the water others are fishing. Light will spook fish and they will leave the area--quickly. Second, don't be in a big hurry to wade out in the water. A lot of these trout cruise the banks for sculpin. Third, don't crowd the angler who's already in the water. Remember, there's current. If you wade in just below someone who's fishing, you're probably standing where he was casting. Keep a long space between each other or don't wade out very far.

If the water isn't running, in the area above Fall Creek, micro jigs in olive, tan or black are working. Fish them four-to six-feet deep under an indicator. These are also working below Fall Creek. We've been getting a good midge hatch in the evenings, and rainbows have been taking them off the surface. Tie on a zebra midge in red or black, #14 or #16's and place an indicator 12 inches from the fly. Target these midging trout as they rise. You can throw this rig with a fly rod or spin cast rod and reel.

Scuds imitate freshwater shrimp, which are the staple food for our trout. Shrimp live mainly in the upper end of the lake where it's shallow, but they are found throughout the lake living in gravel and dead, lying timbers. Beaded scuds can be used under an indicator, just like a micro or marabou jig, and worked close to dead trees and steeper banks and docks.

Scuds are a great fly to use above Fall Creek just off the flats in the channel. If the water is off, you can use a tandem rig (two flies about 18 inches apart) under an indicator. Set the depth according to the water you're fishing, and make sure your flies are on the bottom. Use a weighted scud or use split shots to get them down. Move the indicator every 10 to 15 seconds to make the flies hop off the bottom. Scuds swim and do come off the bottom when swimming. You're flies should mimic these bugs as closely as possible to attract a bite. If the indicator moves in the slightest, set the hook!

Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 7/16/2010 - Branson, MO

It's been an amazing year so far here on Lake Taneycomo. In the past three years our lake/river has seen a great deal of water -- water from the upper White River basin, Beaver and Table Rock lakes, as well as major river systems feeding each lake. This constant flow over this period has created fertile conditions for trout food, namely freshwater shrimp. These small crustaceons, that live in the gravel at the bottom of our lake, are very high in protein. You'll find dried freshwater shrimp, called "scuds," sold in pet stores to feed various small pets like turtles. When a fishery has an abundant population of scuds, its fish will exhibit very healthy growth rates. That's what we're seeing for our trout right now.

In the past, we would see big, fat rainbows after a lengthy shad run from Table Rock Lake. Threadfin shad would flow from the dam, dead or stunned from their trip through the turbines, and our trout would feast on them until their bellies would bulge. They would grow so fast that we'd see two-pound rainbows in no time, but that wouldn't last. In less than six months, most of these rainbows would move out of the trophy area and be caught out of the lake, ending a seemingly steller trophy run. The resident food base would not handle the growth spurt and the larger rainbows in the system. Why? In time, we'd experience long periods of no generation on our lake when water would not run, would not move, thus depleting the population of freshwater shrimp down to levels that could not sustain the size and number of rainbows.

Because of the three years of flowing water on Taneycomo, we are seeing big numbers of big rainbows throughout the lake, not just in the trophy area. Our scud population doesn't stop at Fall Creek, the lower boundary of the trophy area; it extends down further that anyone suspects. Back in the "hay day" of big trout on Taneycomo, the 1960's and early 1970's, huge schools of scuds were found in the Branson downtown area. A friend who then worked on the Sammy Lane Pirate Cruise remembers how the crew would stomp on their dock to knock the scuds off the floatation, causing a trout feeding frenzy. They would drop their lines in the water and pull out three- and four- pound rainbows one after the other. We might not have that kind of scud population, today but it's still amazingly good when we see two- and three- pound rainbows caught fairly consistently well below the trophy area.

Fishing Report

Generation has been, well, difficult to gauge. Southwest Power Administration's generation schedule is set midafternoon the day prior, but it was off yesterday after holding closely to projection for a couple of weeks. We've had front after front cross our area with downpours that last 5-10 minutes, but these rains are localized to the degree that we might get a big downpour here at the resort, but up the road two miles on the Branson strip they might stay dry. . . and visa versa. Table Rock has not seen a bump in it's level, but Bull Shoals has jumped almost two feet. Yesterday the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ran, for the first time in quite a while, some serious water through Table Rock Dam, opening four turbines but not quite full. Our lake level topped 710 feet, nine feet higher that our power pool which is 701.3 feet.

Fluxuating water levels: Typically when generation is started at the dam and water starts to move, our trout start feeding. Bugs and worms get washed into the lake when the water floods the bank edges, weeds and grassy areas. Scuds might start moving up out of their hiding places in the rocks. Midge larvae don't usually move unless we see a drop of movement, say when the Corps is shutting down the turbines. But when the trout see generation flows they haven't seen in a while, I believe they don't feed as well as they do when they see consistent flows. When the Corps fluctuates the levels during the day, for instance, the flow and level of the lake will vary by six inches to a foot several times an hour -- up and down -- and our trout don't seem to like that or at least they don't think about eating during those periods. Not sure why they do that, but we wish they'd stop!

Guessing what the Corps will do the rest of the week would be tough. I would just go fishing and take whatever comes. You should start early in the day, not necessarily because you'll catch more fish early but to give yourself the best chance to find when the trout will feed the most. I'd say later in the afternoon and evening is going to be the slowest, assuming that the Corps might be running a lot of water at that time. We're finding the best times to catch trout are from 8 a.m. until noon, but that depends on cloud cover. We've had cloudy days for the most part this month, which is great for fishing, but if the clouds clear in the afternoon and it is supposed to hit the 90's, the rest of the week, mid- to late afternoons will be unconfortable at best. High sun and no wind together yield the poorest fishing time.

But early, catching has been pretty good. Our guides have been doing the best, bait-wise, on night crawlers. It's surprising how many anglers step into our office and ask what the best bait is and expect a colored answer -- "pink Power Bait" is what they want to hear. When we answer "night crawlers," it's as if we said that the fish were all dead, or at least not biting. Live, "real" bait generally catches more fish than artificial bait. Now Eddie Ketchum, my Berkley fishing buddy, may not agree, but we see stocker rainbows being caught on Power Bait more than the larger, wiser rainbows. We float our worms, injecting them with air using a blow bottle. This floats the worm off the bottom so that the trout will see them quickly and eat them quickly.

The best area has been from Short to Fall Creeks, but this area has been the hardest hit the last few weeks. Fish numbers have been dropping from the pressure, so some of our guides and clients have been heading down to Monkey Island, just above downtown Branson, and finding good numbers of rainbows. Same thing, floating night crawlers off the bottom. Use a pre-made drift rig or just a small #6 hook and a split shot up the line about 18 inches. Use only the head half of the worm but save the tails. Hook the worm once, leaving each half of the worm hanging off the hook freely. You don't have to hide the hook!!! Inject the worm on the head half and let 'er fly. One more helpful hint - set the rod down and secure it. Wait for the bite, lift the rod and let the trout take the worm, then set the hook.

If they swallow the bait, and you want to release the fish, don't touch the fish, just cut the line close to the fish's mouth and drop it back into the water. Digging the hook out will likely kill the trout.

Yes, Gulp Power Bait eggs will catch rainbows, too. Use one white egg with another colored egg. The odd color varies, so buy all the other colors and keep switching until you find the right combination. Only use two eggs, though. I've seen people using a whole chain of eggs on larger hooks. I don't think rainbows are into eating candy necklaces.

Jig and float fishing catches more trout than just about any other technique. Tie on a small barrell swivel, but before that, slip on a float. Then tie on about six feet of two-pound line, preferablly flourocarbon. We use Vanish. Then tie on a 1/256th-ounce micro jig, either tan or olive. We've been fishing this rig anywhere from Lookout Island in the trophy area down to Monkey Island and catching trout. Throw it out and let it sit a minute, then twitch the float a bit and watch for the slightest movement. Have to be quick at times, but other times, they'll take it under.

Fly fishing below the dam is very good, but you have to know what you're doing. Early is best. It does get tough as the sun rises high in the sky. The water is clear and shallow and the trout up there are pretty smart -- they've seen and have eaten a lot of flies. As I told a young man the other day in the shop, you can use 6x tippet, but if you want to hook up more often, use 7x. The other thing you must have is an arsenal of flies in your box of different colors and sizes of scuds, midges and woolies.

If the water is running, you'll be limited where you can access the lake . . . and there will be a crowd at those accesses. Scuds will be your friend. Weighted #16 to #20's in various shades of gray, olive or tan. San Juan worms in red, brown and purple. Zebra midge #16 to #18's in red, black and olive. Small egg patterns in orange, white and brown. If you catch the water down, strip a #16 red or yellow soft hackle or an olive #14 wooly bugger. If you catch the water down at night, we have some great night patterns created just for our water. Hibernators and PMS, as well as leaches and buggers in large sizes (#6 to #2's) and mostly dark colors.

If you're fly fishing from a boat in the trophy area, if the water is running you'll need to drift your fly on the bottom. Best way is to use a fairly large indicator and allow plenty of line below it to drag the bottom. From Lookout down to Fall Creek, stay in the middle to shallow side of the lake and fish your fly about 10 feet deep, depending on how much water they're running. Add a split shot if you think your fly isn't making contact with the bottom. You can sub your scud or egg fly for a micro jig. Pink with a chrome head or a tan jig has been working pretty well.

If you catch the water off, shorten up your line under the indicator and use a micro jig in olive or tan. If you're using a scud, get it to the bottom and switch it to attract a strike.

Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 4/01/2010 - Branson, MO

Floodgates were opened last week at Table Rock Dam to move water from Beaver and Table Rock lakes. The last three rains poured a total of 6 to 10 inches in the area.  One unit is down at Table Rock Dam, so floodgates make up for the loss of flow, plus some.  Beaver’s level is not dropping yet, but Table Rock is at a clip of four inches per day.  Table Rock’s level has dropped from 918.5 feet to 917.4 and should be down to 915.0 by next weekend. 

 

Report amended:   The floodgates have been shut off, and the fourth generator is back on line.

 

All this water has intimidated a lot of anglers.  As I’ve been sharing with them, it’s not the water flow itself but the 15-20 mph winds that’s making fishing tough.  As I’ve preached for many months, you’ve GOT to be on the bottom to get bit.  With this flow and the added effect of wind, it’s challenging!  Trout have been biting pretty well if you can present something to them in a good way – and that’s the trick.

 

We’ve been sending most of our guests downstream, basically advising them to find less windy spots to drift minnows or Gulp PowerBait eggs -- one white and one of another color like pink, orange or yellow -- on the bottom using a drift rig.  Up in the creeks, we’re finding a lot of trout looking to get out of the current.  Throwing spinners and spoons is good because these rainbows seem to be in the mood for chasing.  Also put a Gulp egg on a small jig hook and fish it under a float four-to five-feet deep.

 

Guide Bill Babler had a fantastic trip fishing this morning.  Especially from 7-9 a.m. with one-eighth ounce white jigs.  His clients caught some incredibly nice rainbows ranging from 18 to 22 inches in length.  With the gates off and dim prospects for more shad, these trout will be eyeing anything white for weeks to come.

Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 3/04/2010 - Branson, MO

Generation and water temperature are always the first items I talk about in my fishing reports. Why? Because everything revolves around them. How you can fish, where and with what. I don’t talk about temperature as much as generation—it’s usually not an issue, but right now I feel it is. Table Rock Dam has been running two units 24/7 for more than a week in an effort to get Table Rock to power pool—915.0 feet. I emphasize the “.0” because at the moment it’s at .3. I’ve been told by a little bird that when it reaches .0 the dam operators will back off on generation. That may mean periods of zero or at least less generation in the coming days.

Water temps have held around 39, which is really cold for this time of year. Trout don’t mind the cold — really their warm water friends don’t either. They will feed but be slower about it. The bite may be softer, not as hard as it would be in 45-degree water. So presentation should also be a tad slower to get more bites. Just think “slow motion.” That’s what you’d be in if you were cold —moving a little slower. But just as with bass or crappie fishing, if we see a rise in water temps, we’ll see a rise in motion, action and feeding. Suppose generation slows and lake temps rise into the 50’s. If water temperatures rise a little, I bet you’ll see our trout respond with a feeding frenzy. Well, even if they don’t, at least you’re on the lake on a nice warm day!

I can’t say for sure whether we have had shad come through Table Rock Dam this week. Shad are dying like crazy on Table Rock due to the cold-water temps. It stands to reason that we should see some shad, but to tell the truth, I haven’t been out to investigate in more than a week nor heard any reports of sightings. At least one team fishing in Saturday’s tournament did well with white jigs and spinners between Fall Creek to Short Creek. Two teams fished up in the trophy area and reported catching a number of nice rainbows in the 17-18-inch range. One team said they were drifting with egg flies and san juan worms.

Our tournament Saturday was for artificial only with no baits allowed. Most anglers used jigs while others cast spoons, spinners and crank baits. The $800 prize for the largest, legal brown trout went unclaimed for the fourth year in a row. I’m sure there were man anglers jerking rouges and rapalas for that one big brown, but there were no takers. Many guys I talked to reported using two-pound fluorocarbon line, putting their jigs right on the bottom to get bit. Their thinking was that the fluorocarbon got them to the bottom easier and the two-pound line let them feel the light bite better. It was sunny Saturday, but most areas on the lake were windy. Other teams said they fished around the docks, just as they might fish for bass around structures. The tighter they stayed towards the docks, the better bites they had.

Lots of males and sows were weighed in, and most, if not all. were milking or dropping eggs. The stretch of time these rainbows spawn is awfully long, it seems. We were catching milking males way back in early January.

Minnows and night crawlers are still catching the better rainbows verses the baits (Gulp and paste), but either type of bait will yield you a limit in short time. Be sure to adjust your weight when drifting. If the water slows down, lessen the weight or you’ll be hanging up all the time.

Now IF we see some down water and you have the chance to wade below the dam, bring your wooly buggers, cracklebacks and soft hackles. The wind is blowing most days, and it’s supposed to be warmer soon. Midge hatches should be off the chart, and as the water warms, rainbows should be cruising the flats looking for something moving on the surface … oh, let’s hope so!!

Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 2/03/2010 - Branson, MO

Generation continues.  Beaver and Table Rock close in on their perspective power pool  levels and all wade fishermen wait with baited breath for forecasted rain/sleet/snow to hold off.  Three units run 24/7 right now at Taney, giving boaters free reign of the lake.  Drifting is the word, the key at catching trout. 

Nothing much has changed from my last report.  I do want to reemphasize the fact that the last 2 trout tournaments have been won by anglers fishing down from the Landing to Bee Creek and even lower on the lake.  Large rainbows were stocked way down at Powersite Dam over 2 months ago and it seems most have been either caught or spread out to the point that it's hardly worth the run down there to try to catch one.  Rainbows weighing an average of a pound are pretty common and found in the wide open water below the Landing.  Some talked about keying in on docks and others fishing over grass beds close to banks.  Cleos and other spoons have made a comeback of sorts along with jigs and medium cranks baits. 

I got out this afternoon and boated to the dam.  Chilly run but not too bad once stopped and fishing.  It was an off afternoon for at least fish biting.  I made 4 drifted from the cable to the KOA and averaged 4 bites per drift.  Caught a dozen rainbows total, most about 13-14 inches with one pushing 17 and it was a big silver pig.  It had a "shad belly" but from the way they weren't paying ANY attention to white tells me they've seen no shad - yet.  Best color by far was olive - 1/8th to get down to the bottom and they were hitting light.  Seems like right in the middle of these fronts, the trout take a siesta and today was the day.  Talked to Bob Wehnert and he said about the same thing.  Tomorrow through the weekend, our trout should wake up and want breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

I wouldn't miss the chance drifting a night crawler or minnow from Fall Creek down past Short Creek for a larger rainbow or possibly a brown.  I think with all the attention the lower lake has been getting, the upper lake may hold some forgotten lunkers. 

Babler fished yesterday.  I'll go ahead and write a report for him, leaving out the exaggerated numbers :)  Bill, if you don't want me to rib you, write the report next time!  He said catching was "off the chart" but his charts are alittle suspect at times.  Pink micro jig under a float and it had to be fished deep to get close to the bottom I'd say.  He fished exclusively from Andy's house to Fall Creek. 

I did drift that section, first with a jig which I got no bites half way down, then switched to a egg fly, peach, and caught 3 on the lower section.  I did quit at the Narrows cause I was needed back at the office. 

One more note:  They're starting to put sections of Fall Creek's dock in the water.  Looks like it's going to be a nice big dock. 

Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 1/22/2010 - Branson, MO

Even with milder temperatures, generation patterns on Lake Taneycomo remain about the same as they were, compared to the winter blast days a couple weeks ago.  It’s pretty much round the clock generation from one to two units, frustrating wade fisherman who have wait for months for the opportunity to fish below the dam without high water levels and current.

 

Table Rock is well below power pool but the lake above, Beaver, is being dropped from it’s high level to power pool.  Some speculate that 7 feet of water from Beaver Lake added to Table Rock only equates to a 6-foot raise but regardless, it seems the Corps’s plan is to keep Table Rock’s levels about the same as they are now and move Beaver’s water through the system.  Looking at the lake level charts, Beaver is dropping 4 to 5 inches per day which means it will take about 18 days to drop Beaver to power pool, without rains.   But there is rain in the forecast.

 

So we’ll talk about boat fishing, although dock fishing off our dock (Lilleys’ Landing), and docks further down, are fishable and fishing has been fairly good.

 

Fishing pressure on the lake this month has been minimal.  Not many people braved the cold temperature earlier in the month and since the weather broke, boaters have stayed away from the lake – probably don’t want to get the boat out of storage in fear of another cold spell.  Regardless, there seems to be a huge number of rainbows in the lake right now with many of what I’d call lunker size.

 

I talked to some guys that fished yesterday and they did very well using 1/16^th oz black jigs, working them off the bottom of the lake down below Branson down the Kanakuk Camp clear down to Bee Creek.  These anglers have been fishing here for a number of years and said they’d never caught trout like this, ever.  Many of the rainbows they caught were over 16 inches, big and fat and fought like steelhead.

 

Other anglers are heading down lake from the resort and having the same results using Gulp Powerbait eggs in varied colors – white, pink and orange.  Above the resort up to Fall Creek, night crawlers and minnows seem to do better that Gulp Eggs.  The current varies depending on where you are and how much water is running.  When they are running only one unit, the current here at the resort is very slow and even gets slower the further down lake you get.  So it’s almost like still fishing and dropping an anchor isn’t out of the question. 

 

Bill and I got out yesterday in the boat for a while.  We were out while that cold front moved through and temperatures dropped from the high 60’s to low 40’s.  The water dropped out from two to one units too – we thought fishing wouldn’t be very good, but it was.

 

We boated up not quite to Lookout and started… Bill using his fly rod, pink micro jig under an indicator 9 feet deep and me using my jig/spin rod and throwing an 1/8^th oz sculpin jig, working it off the bottom.  They were running 2 units at 706 feet but the level had already started dropping out on our first drift.  The top end didn’t produce much, it was only when we got below the tennis courts did the rods start bending, and they bent quite a lot.

 

Both techniques caught rainbows, many were small dinks from 8 to 11 inches.  There were a few “eaters” as Bill calls them – right below the 12-inch mark.  And there were the Taneycomo Trophy Rainbows we are accustomed to – 16 to 18 inches, beat red sides and gill plates.

 

Bill switched to his spin rod but stayed with his jig and float.  He bought a 10-foot, Okuma Steelhead Rod for jig and float fishing and it worked pretty well.  I tried it – it was a little heavy and awkward to cast but setting the hook even on a long cast was no problem.

 

All in all, we caught quite a few rainbows in the 2 hours we were out.  Hopefully he can get the video to work on his new site at http://whiteriveroutfitters.com

 

Remember, we have our first public trout tournament next weekend, January 30, here at the Landing.

Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report 1/11/2010 - Branson, MO

Fishing in zero temps… are you crazy? Most things breaks in cold, everything else doesn’t work. Livewells and water lines freeze. Exhaust clog and motors melt. Boats freeze and stick to trailer bunks. Guides on rods pack with ice in seconds.
Fingers and toes as well as face freeze.

Shall I go on?

But these guys wouldn’t miss it for the world! A group of guys have fished one weekend each winter for the past 30 years. It turned into a friendly fishing tournament in honor of a fallen comrade, Elmer Boswell.

So this past Saturday morning, with temperatures close to the zero mark, they left our dock in boats to fish over 8 hours in weather most of us would be looking for a warm spot next to a fireplace instead.

I’ve always told the Boswell group their trip nets them some of the best trout fishing Taneycomo has to offer. Why? November and December are the least fished months of the year. MDC continues to stock trout during these months so rainbow populations grow. Less pressure on our trout allow them to grow accustom to their environment as well as grow in size. Thus, the first of January is prime time trout fishing proven by the bags of trout brought to the dock for weigh in the Boswell Tournament.

In addition, this past 18 months we’ve seen almost non-stop generation which means our lake’s food base is in excellent shape, evident by our fat and healthy trout.

Just consider the weighs from yesterday’s contest – the top eight teams weighed in 8 trout averaging over a pound apiece. Largest rainbow was over 6 pounds and it was caught all the way down at Powersite, the bottom end of Taneycomo, on a jig. Many of these rainbows aren’t being caught close to the trophy area. The Boswell group aren’t allowed to fish above Fall Creek so none came from the trophy area. I know for a fact that most were caught below Cooper Creek.

All that to say this…. trout fishing on Taneycomo is pretty darn good right now.

For a New Years present, the Corp gave us 3 days of no generation. Since then we’ve had 24/7 water, from 1 to 3 units depending on… well I’m not sure. Usually temps like we’ve had merit 4 full units but we haven’t had 4 units. On the contrary, most of the time we’ve had less than one unit. At the dock, you could barely see the water moving. But with lake levels below normal and warm days in the forecast, we may see more periods of no generation this week.

Midge hatches, we’ve had big hatches since the water has been slowed. When the water was off, it seemed like nonstop hatches. Rainbows were really keying in on the little buggers, dimpling the surface, picking off hatchlings. I caught rainbows on Zebra Midges, #16 olive, under an indicator from 6 to 20 inches deep, depending on the depth of water I was fishing. Also did well stripping soft hackles, #14 red or black, when the surface was choppy due to wind.

Jig fishing has also been really good, either tossing a 1/8th ounce straight or a small 1/125th ounce under a float. Dark colors seem to be the ticket – Sculpin, brown, black, olive but I did talk to someone yesterday that said ginger worked real well for him.

Minnows were popular this weekend. Unfortunately, we hadn’t gotten our first shipment in so we sent our guys down to Scotty’s Trout Dock. Our trout seem like they start keying in on minnows in the winter. That would make sense if shad had been coming through Table Rock Dam’s turbines but they haven’t… not yet. Night crawlers were also good as well as Gulp Eggs.

Some guys trolled Rapala Countdowns and caught rainbows and a few browns. One angler said he caught a 19-inch brown on Friday trolling a countdown.