Babler's Report

We had a little contest.  Dam to the Narrows.  He won 16-14.

Nice one!  That orange belly on that first trout was crazy looking.  Never seen that before.

Got out on the upper lake at 0900 yesterday morning and boated to the dam.  Air temps at 26 water was 44.9  I boated up from Branson and did not see a single boat all the way to the cable.  Wanted to just use a fly rod and drifted from the cable to clay banks 2  times.   Started using a white/grey jig under a float about 12' and nothing the first 2 drifts.  Switched to a size 8 weighted shad fly and stripped and drifted it on a straight line again 2 times from the cable to clay banks and had zero.  Gave up the long stick for a drift and jerked a 110 plus one in french pearl thru the same water.  Again nothing to report.  That was 5 drifts on White and not even a bite. 

 I was not fishing a jig like the boys in the video.  I saw no shad and the fish I caught were spitting either grey or copper scuds.  Seems to be a right place right time deal.

Had noticed quite a bit of midging below the Brown Trout raceway so I tied a big dry  on with a size 18 black midge about 2 ft. under it.  Made 2 passes over that flat and caught one 12" brown on the dry.  I had just about had a dose at this point, so I dragged out the spinning rod and bottom bounded a egg and scud from the cable to the conservation ramp.twice.  Caught 4 really nice bow's on the size 14 copper/orange scud and lost one that was big, wide and silver.  Fish jumped right at the boat and put a nice show on.

Moved out of the restricted zone and caught about 1/2 dozen on a pink power worm from Fall Creek thru Trout Hollow on the flat side.  Lots and lots of midging going on between the docks on the slacker water.

Visited with Phil a bit and did whine some as I really expected the upper end to be a bit better.

Moved down town and the fish really bit on just about anything you wanted to throw, from the power worm to a midge to a spoon to a small crank bait.  Caught about 30 in a couple of hours.  Funnest deal was stripping a size 10 wooley below the walk out just above the fish house.  You would get a bite on just about every throw.  Best bite was at the end of the drift after the swing, just holding it in the current.  They would just thump it.  I missed more than I caught.

On a side note, folks fishing the docks below Scotty's were catching really nice fish on Power Bait.  Looked to me to be very nice fresh Big stockers.

Here is a bit of a pictorial of the copper/orange scud that I have had really good success with the past week.

Good Luck out there.

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That ain't no scud . . . . .thats a pellet fly.  C'mon.

What ever it is, they think its food.  You can drift a conventional hard or soft back here and the above tie will for the most part in a vernacular eat it up.

13 minutes ago, ColdWaterFshr said:

That ain't no scud . . . . .thats a pellet fly.  C'mon.

I think trout crack was so successful because it looked like a pellet.

If you want, you can call an egg a pellet.  Under pictures of a pellet it shows an egg shaped as one.  Pellet is also usually wrapped with low nap chenille to give the smooth appearance of a pellet, a lot of the time using a small cylindrical block to give it the appearance of a pellet, and is not tapered at the end.

 If your using a shrimp or a scud hook here and using a real leggy dubbing we have used it as a scud imitation forever.

It's not designed to imitate hatchery food but if it does, that probably is a plus.

Every fly shop on Taney will have this fly in their SCUD BIN and sell them 100 to one over conventional hard back scud imitations.

100 to 1 eh?  Think of all these misinformed customers paying $2.50 a pop thinking they are buying Amphipoda Gammarus (scuds) when they're really just fishing with Purinas Pelletonias (pellets).  Once they find out . . . . they gonna be mad!  Could be a class action suit.  They're a litigious bunch, those fly-fishers are.

🤪

 

Appropriate sized dowel rod cut in chunks and glued to scud hook works better than anything else.  Just sayin. 

There are times that orange scud is just crazy good.

They could also be fishing with Asellus Aquaticus.  Most of the over 2000 fly fishermen I've taken during the past 30 years in no way are either litigious or stupidest.  To put it in an Ozark vernacular,  "They just want to have fun."  I have also been informed by this unambiguous bunch that the price of a fly has nothing to do with anything as far as catching fish is concerned.😄

When asking the Oncorhynchus, Salmo and Salvelinus, they seem to have a very unmistakable opinion that if it looks like food and taste like food it is food, regardless of the phylum or the endeavor to create or imitate such a yum yum.

Have a great day.