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.
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