April 16-17-2008
Taneycomo & Roark Creek
I’ve been fishing a lot lately so updating the site was on the back burner. Here lately I’ve been waking up contemplating where the best fishing would be. It’s really important to know how to read water and the reason I say this is because it’s key to having a successful day of fishing right now. And also for staying on the bite all day long.
Taneycomo 17th
I got a call from a friend around noon who told me they were running one unit. I thought he was lying so I called the dam and sure enough they were only generating one unit. I immediately stopped everything I was doing and headed for the river. I knew I had to be quick before I missed out on this opportunity. I just knew all this high water had to bring some big fish up and they haven’t seen to much in the way of flies. So everything told me this was going to be a good day. Slow current and shallow water makes for good fishing any day on Taneycomo.
I was on the water about thirty minutes later. My goal was to fish the sides of the banks to see if I could get one of these big boys to bite. The water was still dingy so I decided to stick to loud patterns that would search out some fish. So the flies of choice were big egg patterns.
Well… to make a long story short, It was a good day to be on the river and the gamble paid off. I stuck a really nice brown fishing just up from chute two about two hours into the day. We also caught plenty of nice rainbows in the 18 inch range. These fish have some nice colors and all seem to be big with fat belly’s. And it didn’t matter where you fished either. We caught fish all the way down to the boat ramp from up top. Everywhere we went we caught fish. I didn’t fish in the middle so I don’t know how that’s fishing, but I would imagine it was all good yesterday.
I’m glad I went yesterday because today they’re running all four generators again. It was one of those days you hear about you should’ve been there yesterday.
The 16th Roark Creek
I decided to fish Roark Creek instead of fishing the upper section of Taneycomo. I drove to the MDC boat ramp and noticed right off that the water was still pretty dingy and dirty. All four wheels were running so it just didn’t convince me that this was the best place to fish right now. We headed down to the boat ramp that is right next to Scotty’s trout dock and to my surprise they were towing his dock back up to it’s original spot.
On the way down I noticed tons of debris and big branches floating downstream so I went slow taking no chances messing up my motor. When we got there I could see the water was clear and no boats in sight, but I didn’t know if that was good or bad. Usually when you see no boats it’s a pretty good indication that the fish aren’t biting. When we got around the bend I saw one boat fishing in-between the two bridges. It was Chuck from Angers & Archery guiding three guys and one of them was hooked up. Where they were fishing I would say the depth was six to eight feet deep. It looked like to me they were rigged with an indicator dead drifting something. That told me everything I needed to know, the fish were in here and they were biting.
As you go up the creek it gets narrower and shallower and to me, that’s where the fish are more concentrated at. At least for me, that’s where I’ve seen more and caught more in this whole creek and today was no different. The only thing I do different then the other boats is I like to go as far as I can in the creek until I see fish holding. This day was a little different because there was a little more water and it was colder than normally at this time of the year. You see, this creek can somewhat be a gamble as far as fishing goes. And for the matter, trout fishing because once the water warms up these fish are out of here.
The great part about fishing way up in the creek is fly fishing is the best. And because of the way the structure is set up it makes for some great holding areas for trout. There’s a little cement wall that goes across right at the mouth where the creek dumps into this big body of water. Most people stop right there and that’s where I do things a little different. I go around the bend and that’s where all the fish are right now. You have to see it for yourself.
Ok, I let the secret out and I want to because it’s some great fly fishing. You either need a flat bottom or pontoon boat or walk in and wet wade to it. If you have a big boat I don’t see any way you can get in here. There’s a couple of deep pools that hold over 100 trout and you can clean house. We must of caught well over 50 fish out of each pool. And the funny thing was they didn’t get smart to it. That’s another thing I like about this, you really think your somewhere else because it’s so different. It’s real fly fishing at it’s finest. Even though these trout are hatchery raised it kind of makes you think your fishing for wild trout. I say this because they are in an actual “wild environment” so it gives you that feeling. Another thing it does is it teaches you the ways of a trout, where they actually hold and how they feed verses the tailwater. I can tell you this, you get lost in the moment fishing back here.
These fish are somewhat spooky so you have to row back there so you don’t spook them all out. I like to start in the back of the creek and work my way out. That’s the good thing I found out about this area. The fish will swim out when you enter and when everything settles back down they’ll come back. So it’s action the whole time as you fish your way out. We rigged up with sink tips that sunk 3.9 IPS and threw size 6 leech patterns in a variety of colors. That’s pretty much what we stuck with all day because it was working so well. The average size trout we caught were between 10-16 inches. I haven’t seen anything too big, but a lot of trout. Take advantage of this because it won’t last too much longer and good luck!!
