Haris122

As we started hiking out of there friday afternoon i started noticing 2 good size groups of trout just relaxing lazily near the banks. Like 10-20 individuals each. Figures. One of these days my multiday fishing-vacation style trips will actually live up to my expectations, just a matter of time.

Went to Branson for a quick 2 1/2 day trip and managed to do poorly at Lake Taneycomo. We got there kind of late Wednesday so we fished from about 6-9pm about halfway between outlets 1 and 2 near the hatchery. Water seemed to be flowing fast, but not much prior experience to reference it to.We tried a few different things including crankbaits, inline spinners, and kastmaster-like spoons to no avail. In the end I got a bite on a black and white 1/16oz inline spinner close to 9pm, near the top of the water maybe 7-8 feet from me. Unfortunately it biting so close, and the drag being set pretty sturdy, allowed it to basically rip the hook out of itself within seconds of getting hooked. That was it for Wednesday. Thursday we first did some stuff around town, since it was my gf's birthday, but around 3 or so we made it back out onto the water. Since a storm was forecast, we pretty much went to the same spot between outlets 1 and 2, since there's only a short hike back to the car. Situation appeared to be the same. We couldn't buy us a bite with the lures we used. Finally we figured the storm was about to hit us, so at around 5 we decided to find Lilley's Landing and check out the bait/fly shop for a moment. I got me an ozarkanglers shirt, and found out that we can fish off their docks for free until 6 (provided the dock isn't packed with actual landing guests, which it wasn't at that time). So while waiting on the big storm that never materialized, we fished from the dock there for half an hour. Once again utilizing the same types of lures as before. Once again with the same results. Finally we decided to hit up the trophy section just downstream of the boat ramp, where I had fished the only other time I had gone to Taneycomo before, and by 7pm we were there wading. I expanded my arsenal a bit with a marabou jig under a slip bobber, and various other hard lures, but once again the going was slow. Around 8-8:30 stuff started "heating up". My gf got a bite on an in-line spinner of same color as I got the bite on the day before, but it got off. Shortly after I hooked a nice fighter on a rainbow trout colored minnow crankbait. I knew it wasn't small by the fight it gave, but wasn't sure just how big. When I got it to net, it wound up being a fiesty 14" Brown Trout. We got another couple bites after that but couldn't connect any more for that day. Friday we got decided to try the same spot but got a late start. Anyways we started up around 10:30 and pretty soon afterwards I got a nice 14" Rainbow Trout on the same little minnow crankbait as I got the Brown trout before. I was a little disappointed in the fight it gave considering it was a chunkier 14", but hadn't fought as good as the Brown one the night before, but it was still a fun experience. Anyways, we got another few bites, and then the bite died down again. Eventually after cycling through some more lures I got back to the same rainbow trout colored crankbait, and waded a little upstream. I started casting into the channel again, when something good hit it maybe 25-30 feet from me. After a few hiccups with the reel's anti-reverse, I managed to net an 18" walleye. After releasing it I eagerly awaited the proverbial opening of the flood gates, but in the end there wasn't any of that. I got a few more bites and chases but nothing that ever got itself hooked. My gf however hooked into a nice Brown Trout, yet again with that same crankbait, and after a good fight managed to bring it in. It squirmed out of her hands before we could measure it but it had to have been between 15-16". Anyways, aside from those 4 fish, the action was pretty scarce. Unfortunately we hardly managed to catch anything, much less numbers and huge sizes of them. I'm not sure why, but it definitely didn't work out for us overall. From what little I heard from others, it seemed like in general it was a slow day. Question is, was it as slow as it was for us? And if not, why was it so slow for us.

Cool, thanks spoon feeder.

Where do you go for the videos Spoon feeder? Wrench and Old Plug, thanks for the pointers. I need to really start spending more time fishing further out. With as much lake proper as there is compared to area near shoreline, it seems like a must have skill if you want to fish for white bass, stripers, and such.

Just discussed this a little bit with some fishing buddies of mine, but I was wondering is there a good way of knowing whether you just caught a shortnose gar or actually a juvenile alligator gar. I always thought the shortnose ones had a relatively broad snout just like the alligator one, so is there anything more to the snout anatomy, or anything else that could be used to set them aside.

Catfish is the one thing we didn't try for much. That and we hit it in the afternoon and had to leave right before evening really hit full force. So it seems like we went the polar opposites of that, jd.

Went to Perry County with a Fishing buddy yesterday again. Pretty early on he gets a 15" Largemouth on a chatterbait, hyping us up for more. However, most of the rest of the day we hit a lull where little to nothing (nothing for me) is biting, and definitely nothing gets caught. We hit several of our usual confidence spots, then some other spots, basically keep beating the shoreline to no avail with a variety of different lures. Finally later on in the day, we make it over to the little dam in one of the coves, and we start getting bites close to it. My buddy catches a Bluegill, then I go on a short-lived panfish hot streak and catch 5 Bluegill and a Rock Bass on a piece of plastic worm on 1/64th jighead under slip-bobber. Unfortunately that's the extent of the success for us. That early good catch had us thinking it was bound to become a real good day, but then the fish put us back in our place.

Wrench, just so I don't misinterpret "get to the fishes level", what do you mean by that?

So yesterday me and one of my fishing buddies made it out to Perry County Community Lake, and caught a few fish. Thing is everything we caught was near shore and for my catches, unimpressive, and the lake is supposed to have Striped/White hybrids (Wipers) in it too; So, since I'm assuming those dwell mainly in the deeper spots away from shore, and also just in general to increase my skill fishing the lake proper, and not just have the vast majority of my successful fishing be beating the bank, I was wondering what some good habits/techniques are for fishing deep, open water away from the shoreline, and which species are more likely to be caught fishing there than close to the bank. Right now my deep water fishing is usually restricted to trolling a shallow to medium diving crankbait as I'm moving between spots close to shore or prominent structure, but usually there isn't much rhyme or reason to it, and I rarely use much else.

Hard to really point to just one trip, but I'd say so far, it would have to be the first couple times I actually started fishing with my current fishing buddies. Up until then I pretty much either went by myself, or the occasional friend who wasn't really that into fishing. Then one day an old friend of mine, who used to be my martial arts teacher, noticed over facebook that I like to go fishing and suggested we go sometime. We met up on a rainy muddy day most casual fisherman would've opted out of, and hit up a couple spots, skunking out on all spots (though I think that was the day I snagged a ~3 foot Asian Carp after he had to leave), but noticing we we're both addicted to it. Next time he also introduced me to his other die-hard fishing buddy, and there's been a number of really funny trips since. Nowadays it's hard to find days that all 3 of us can make it, but it's still fun when it does work out.

Actually the last few years, most of the time the water has been low enough, and most of the bank sandy/gravelly enough that you can walk it easily. It's a long walk though, to make it all around it.

By "questionable", do you mean unsafe? If so, I would say it's no problem. I've been there plenty of times without issues from or with anyone. Kayaked there 3-4 times as well. It usually has that quiet, overlooked vibe. There's been plenty of times when I was either the only person there, or the only person fishing, alongside a few people hiking, or biking somewhere else within the park. And personally I like that about it. You can be pretty close to some industrial parks, and still feel like you have a lot of area to yourself. If only fishing was good, it would be a little hidden gem I'd say personally. I'm curious what stories have you heard of it?

Off topic, but if those walleyes came from Table Rock when the gates opened, how do they survive the drop from Table Rock down to Taneycomo? That water seems to go pretty steeply down the dam from the drone footage of the gates open. Hard for me to understand how they make such a big drop.

Unger is the one spot I might actually challenge that notion. On the Meramec by it I believe it, but actual Unger lake there has been a desert for me for years. However, I would love to have someone prove me wrong and catch even 12" fish there consistently, cause just knowing there's something in there, would reinvigorate me to keep at it. I hoped the floods would've stocked the lake back up some, but I've been there a number of times since, this year, with nothing but the usual results. It's rare that I get anything there anymore, even carp, gar, drum, or sunfish out of it. Anyone recently actually have any different experiences from there? I'll call it the Unger Lake challenge. Whoever consistently catches anything 12" or decent sunfish size, I'll give you a dollar (I know, hell of an incentive). But I have to witness it on 3 separate occasions not more than 3-4 trips between catches, lol.

I've been meaning to take a trip down to the red ribbon section or at least the park, but I just keep not getting to it. I'm overdue for some of it.

Anyone been down there recently? And if so how did it go?

I think the biggest problem is simply that for the number of people sharing our hobby, there's just too small an amount of places to go to. That and lots of people keep fish they should be releasing. And finally add to that that some of the spots look too artificial for me to want to fish there often, and that's the end result.

Sweet. Eventually I'll try the multi day stuff too. Never did though cause it's a pain in the butt with shuttling and stuff, since no one else I know is really into it.

Yeah no kidding. I think I'm going to check that out too. Been thinking of getting a real fishing kayak eventually, but with this deal, I might get it sooner than I thought. The 9.5' Perception Swifty I have, that I modified for fishing purposes has served me well so far, but it's a little cramped when I bring all the stuff I do, when I go fishing. Eventually it just gets annoying spending as much time as I do, fishing around for stuff I need, that I can only cram in somewhere around the seat. That, and a full day on the water fishing, gets kind of tiring on the back and legs with how small it is.

I've been meaning to give the Huzzah or Courtois a shot with the kayak or wading again, just hard to make it out everywhere I want to. I imagine by the end of the summer I'll make it out there once. And no worries, 99% of the time I'm catch and release on just about any fish, even crappie. So the Smallmouth would definitely get mercy, if they'd even get caught.

No clue where either of those are. I'm assuming though that stands for the entire span of the river?

What section of the Meramec did you fish?

Cool. With all these suggestions I'm feeling like I'll have more luck next time I get to use that spinnerbait.

Not much to report but yesterday me and my gf did the 6 mile float from meramec state park to meramec caverns in the afternoon. Didn't do all that great but at least we didn't get skunked. She wound up catching 4 sunfish on roostertails (probably would've caught more, but her fishing rod fell overboard and we couldn't find it, and she didn't want to fish much after that), and I got 3 sunfish on roostertails too, and 2 small smallmouth on a crawfish crankbait. I also tried fishing a topwater torpedo, and got a few missed blowups on that, and then a beetlespin, another shallow spinnerbait, and a flicker shad, all of which produced no bites. Both the smallmouth were under 10", and 2 of my sunfish were barely any longer than the actual roostertail, but it beat nothing. On a related note, do you guys put any kind of soft plastic on your spinnerbaits, or use them just as is, and if you do put stuff on them what kind of soft plastics do you guys prefer? I did some type of crawfish imitation but it seemed too bulky for the size of that spinnerbait, so I'm wondering what to potentially use next time.

True, but I'm not willing to settle just for them. Not when it doesn't take much more for us to have a small but healthy amount of bears, puma and others sprinkled in as well (will make me think twice about field dressing a deer, and carrying it out after sunset, but what the hell, it's worth it I think). Ultimately, I'd like to see a bear or two here in the wild with my own eyes one of these years (just from enough of a distance and sufficient sunlight like previously mentioned). I think that would be a pretty cool sight.