fly2fish

Time to get rid of the herons for sure now. Is it legal to spot light them at night, walk up to them and choke the living $#!t out of them?

Only when they are in the backseat.

If they shut it off completely you can start wading around at 703 and when it gets down to 702 you can get anywhere that you can get in the daytime. Make sure when you are wading across the gravel bar, that is normally dry, going to big hole that the water is not moving because that means that they might have just shut it down to 1 unit. F2F

Whoa I see the water was off last night for a while and it dropped out completely. Did anyone get down there? If it was anything like the last time they shut it off after running 24/7 for several days it was great. Need to take advantage of these nights because Beaver is full and when they decide to drop it, it will probably be back to round the clock generation. F2F

Got to get the jigs on the bottom, 4 feet is not going to get it. If you are using a spinning rod take the float off and bounce or slow roll the jig on the bottom. If you can find some slack water to pull in, cast into the current and let it drift down and look/feel for strikes when it nears the seam of the current and slack water. If you are using a fly rod you need to have a long leader at least 10ft with the float set slightly deeper than the water depth. Best of luck. F2F

Herons have been observed to eat at least 3 good size trout a day. There are at least 100 herons on Taney alone, Thats 100 herons X 3 fish=300 fish a day. 7days X 300 =2100 fish a week. 2100 X 52 weeks= 109,200 fish a year. And keep in mind they are exempt from the length limit in the trophy area as well as the brown trout limit. Thats more fish than I catch a year, maybe not Duane and Leonard but we can't shoot them though , they C & R mostly. F2F

We could get rid of the herons, that would make up for the lost numbers. A previous post says 100 herons eat about 110,000 trout a year, 3 trout a day, 2100 per week X 52 = 109,200. F2F

Does this mean that I will have to quit tying my own. Now with the high water maybe they will pick up the jig version too. F2F

Come on Leonard don't let a little lightening stop you. If I left when it lightening I would never get to fish. Were the fish at outlet 2 running above average like earlier in the week? F2F

I am the one that is usually a day late and sometimes an hour or two late. When I was up for a week in March I hit the water around 10 pm each night and 2 of those nights they cranked the water on at midnight . I left to early Sunday night when the water started down because the night before it only went to 708, when I found out it was completely shut off I almost went back down. Monday night I called while I was standing out in the water to verify it was down to zero. I have only had 4 or 5 nights like that in 50 or 60 nights the last 3 years, one of those was 2 days before knee replacement (with Duane) and the last was in Oct. last year (with Leonard). F2F

As I mentioned in the previous report the water level was just above 710 when I drove down and checked at 8:30 pm. Went back at 10:45 to drift fish outlet 2 and could see the water had already started down. Rigged up with a scud, red san juan and a red egg top to bottom with 3 split shots just above the egg. Caught 11 the first hour, 7 on the san juan, 3 on the egg and one on the scud all nice bows, measured the first one at a hair over 16 inches the rest didn't vary by more than an inch either way. However I did hook one that I knew was on the egg when I hit him with the light and he made a short run and for a few seconds all hell broke loose and when I got it back up the first fish was gone and I had foul hooked a smaller one with the san juan. First time that has happened to me. As the water continued to drop I called and the message was ZERO units and the water level 703.5. I watched the 3 rocks just down from the stairs that I use to gauge when I can head down stream. At 1:45 I re-rigged with a white streamer and headed to Big Hole. The gravel that is normally dry still had about a foot of water over it and the fog was just about head high. I reached my favorite spot and fish were jumping all over the place. Had a lot of short strikes in the first 10 casts with only 3 landed. Instead of trimming the tail I changed to a black and purple Hibernator and it was on then. I was hooking up almost every cast, during one stretch I caught 18 on 18 straight casts in less than 15 minutes. Almost all were less than 13 inches and hit within the first 2 strips and pauses. Then I went 2 casts without a hit so I checked my fly to see that it was still on, it was they were just slowing down a bit to about 3 fish every 5 casts but the fish were slightly bigger back up in the 14-16 in. range. Guess they had established their feeding lanes and ran the smaller ones out. Headed back in about about 2:30 after catching over 40 in that 45 minute span. So with the 11 others it made for one of those once in every several months 50 fish night. Well its back home today until next month hope they keep shutting the water down periodically to give everyone a chance to get the kinks out of their fly lines. F2F

Posted twice

Odee's BBQ is reopened in still yet a different location from the one that burned last year. It is now on the near west end on 76 just east of the Titanic a couple blocks (where Penelopes was). Same good food and service.

Hit outlet 1 about 10 pm. water level 710.8. Leonard and another fisherman were on the point or what was left of it. He said things were slow and it was tough casting out far enough to reach the current. I went above the tree and caught one right off the bat on a black PMS jig and that was it until the water dropped 2 feet about 11 and then they started hitting on a white jig and a white and gray Rat-l-trap. Hung something big on the first cast with the trap but it came loose when I reached up to turn my light on didn't get to see what it was. Quit about 2 am and stopped by the shelter to see how Leonard did after they left for outlet 2. Same results drifting San Juans and scuds things picked up there after the drop. Sunday night water up so I started at the access point below outlet 1 with a white jig, no problem getting a good bottom bump going there , had 3 hits on the first 3 casts before landing one on the fifth cast. After about an hour went up to the point and continued to catch a few on the white jig and also on a black and gold F2 rapala biggest was 16 inch brown on the first cast with the rapala. Water started dropping about 1:30 only this time it dropped about 6 feet and things slowed down instead of picking up, went back below outlet 1 and caught a couple more on the F2. When I got back to the room to see what they had dropped to and it said ZERO units running, I almost went back to throw the fly rod because the upper end was really stacked with fish. Just checked below the dam at 8:30pm and it was socked in with fog and 4 units and no one around. Think I will just drift fish tonight. Let you know later how that goes. F2F

Will be down late Saturday night thru Monday night hitting the high water with PMS jigs and maybe drifting outlet 2 if no one else is there. F2F

Why am I the only one able to get on. I know there has to be a problem, I could not get in through my bookmark but I got in through Leonards website link. F2F

My favorites and most used are 8' 6" (now 5" ) 4 wt Sage for night fishing Taney 8' 3 wt Browing for day fishing Taney, Crane and small ponds 8' 8 wt Heddon fiberglass for heavy freshwater and saltwater 7' 8" 5 wt Berkley Performa for everything in between. Also have a 6 piece 8' 5-6wt Martin for traveling when I can't take the others. Best thing I didn't pay over $40 for any of them F2F

I caught several during the flood event of '08. There seemed to have been some schooled up under the overhanging tree below outlet 2 and a few scattered up by outlet 1. Caught most on white jigs, and PMS olive jigs. F2F

My guess is MAY 10, 2009. If it is within 50,000 I will hit it that many times on that day!!! F2F

Thats the way you can see them in the water at night, when your light hits those big ol' eyes they glow white. This high water should bring the hold overs back up that moved on down when they started cutting back the water late last year. F2F

Don't think I would go up that creek especially without a paddle.

I was there all last week and my mom and dad was with us the first half of the week and wanted a few to take home so I took them down to Lilly's dock to fish one afternoon, nothing. Next morning down to the point where Roark enters nothing, so I said I would keep 3 or 4 while I was night fishing, out of the first 5 fish 2 were under 12". I didn't keep them because I was going to be fishing another 3 hours or so and thought I would keep them during the last hour, wouldn't you know it everything the last hour were in the 13-18 inch range. Did manage 2 on another night though. I dropped a couple under 12 measuring them. F2F

I stayed there last week, I was in the building across the street from the ones on the water, I think it is the one that you can see between the riverfront ones. I did not hear any of the construction or was bothered by any of the trucks coming and going. I did go look at the backside, it looks like those rocks will attract fish during generation since it will create some turbulence over them. F2F

I probably wouldn't be making this report except a fly rod and reel was found by outlet 1. If you left one and can describe it give Leonard a call at 417-779-8061. Fishing was really sloooow, fished with jigs from outlet 1 all the way to the cable and back only caught 4 all browns, the first time that has happened. Water ran since midnight Wednesday, color didn't seem to matter white, olive pine squirrel, black pine squirrel all had about the same number of hits. Quit early (1 AM) because I was thinking about hitting Crane Friday morning. Hey if someone can claim the fly rod and fly box Vince found they can get into fly fishing really cheap or it could be someone that got frustrated and got rid of both. F2F

I will be there for the 5th night in a row. White Nissan Murano with son and friends. 12 fish has been the worst night so far in 3 hours rest of the nights were 20+. HC