diamond dave

Just a little free advice. Nothing agains Walmart, but I hope you don't buy any of your stuff from there.

not sure, but you can go to chartered waters.com and maybe they can tell you. That's where I buy mine from.

Lets see how many times we can beat a dead horse. Carefull there may be nothing left for the buzzards. Ha Ha.

You're going to love Branson. I have a couple friends of mine from California and they left a tiny 3 bedroom house that was almost 60 yrs old and it sold for 600,000. They moved here to a near mansion on Table Rock Lake with a breath taking viev and there own boat dock and paid cash for a 250,000 home. They got a steal, but it sure does help living in California first and moving to the midwest.

You can't forget about the famous g-bug from chartered waters. This fly will smoke fish all day long. Also when you can't get a bite on anything else, this is a definite go to fly.

the bows have been spawning for a couple of months already. Do you live around the area?

Hey Brian, I live in Branson, just off of Bird Road. Our subdivision got hit pretty hard. All the siding on the east side of my house has 1000's of holes in it from the marble size hail which was 3 inches deep when I got home. My neighbor had his garage door concave in from winds and two homes down both houses had their front doors blown off with heavy damage on inside. Our place looks terrible now and I'm sure it will look like that for a long time, till the insurance companies can pay up.

Hey, I liked your report. Was going to ask do you use a fly rod for smallies. I've never used a fly rod for smallies, but would love to learn how to do it. I'm from Branson, any chance there are good places around here to find some smallmouth with a fly rod?

Were you fishing in rebar hole or between outlet 2 and 3 or down by the ledge?

I went to that link and it looks pretty cool. I would love to go. It said resgistration is neccesarry but I couln't find anywhere to go to get to register. Anyone have any ideas on how to sign up. By the way I fished Bennet opening day. I was by myself since my brother was sick and so I fished from buzzer to buzzer with only 2 breaks maybe totaling 45 minutes. I caught around 30 fish but had to work way too hard for them. I guess I am spoiled by fishing Taneycomo all the time. There I can catch 30 fish in about 2 hrs and never move. I caught a lot on scuds about size 20 in the slow shallow water. It was mainly behind people that were fishing casting way out there. It's great to see the looks on peoples faces when you catch fish were they would never dream of fishing. I had to do a lot of walking and I don't think I've ever switched so many flies in my entire life. I must have tried everything in my box. They would hit a fly for about 2 or 3 strikes and then it was done for. That made it difficult along with the thousands (not exaggerating) of pieces of moss floating down the river getting your float and sometimes fly covered. Oh, an obvious problem was the amount of people fishing there. Talk about a hard time finding a good spot. A lot of people rant and rave about how rude people are on Taneycomo. You should be grateful that you only see maybe one or two rude people on Taney in a month's time. I had so many people walk right where I was fishing past the stone bridge. Not one or two by a constant stream of people. I hope I'm not sounding to harsh on Bennet but I think it will be a long time before I go back to fish there.

I was fishing down by the ledge. It's a lot easier to park down there then it is to walk all the way from outlet 2. That's were we met though and were you saw our lights. I've alway wanted to fish with rapallas at night. Maybe we should go fishing at night sometime.

You weren't alone Sunday night. I went down there with a friend of mine from church down by the ledge aroun 8 to 11. We were using purple and green mohair leeches and had a great time. I caught about 20 and he caught about 15 and of course as always I missed about 30 strikes. There was no moon out and plenty of stars. Other than your feet and hands going numb it was great. With this good of fishing at night I was shocked that there was only one other person down there.

Hey, I was out there today as well. I was on top of the rebar hole again and was doing pretty good with small bit scuds size 20 and 22 mainly in olive color. Fished for about 3 hrs and hardly had to switch flies at all today. What a great day to be fishing.

I bought one last year from River Run Outfitters by the dam. It's a 9 ft. 4wt and I love it. I've had several people cast it and say it cast like butter. They say, I could cast as far as you if I had a rod like that. I'm telling you, it is the best fly rod I've ever bought. Talk to Carol when you go in to the shop and she will take good care of you.

I don't have any jig heads to tie white mini jigs, but I do have some beads. Maybe I could put some white marabou in front of a gold bead on an 18 size hook and do ok. What do you think?