Phil Lilley

Let me spain a little. Michael Maples married Bill Medley's daughter, McKenna. She sings with her dad at Harrah's in Vegas, along with Bucky Heard who has taken his original partner's place, Bobby Hatfield. Maples used to live in Branson and owned a gym where I met him about 11 years ago. Bill Medley and I share birthdays - 9/19 - so I text them to wish him a happy birthday every year. So Maples does this video yesterday... thus "Bill's cake" and then Bucky asking me to send him 2 bucks... Made my day... along with all the other activities. It's great to have awesome friends.

Just had a couple of guys bring in 3 big walleye they caught with a guide this morning- they needed to clean them. They measured 24-26 inches. Said they were fishing for bass... night crawlers in 20-25 feet and straight west of Moonshine - my guess on the long, main point there.

Anyone have any recommendations for sealing asphalt yourself. I've looked at Lowes and Home Depot products and am not impressed. I think I'd like to use a petro-based product. I don't think a water based sealant would work - ever. Years ago we rented a trailer with a hot mix sealant to seal our church parking lot but that company is no longer in biz. Thanks

Start about noon and go into the night. We'll light the firepits.

Sure I love cheesecake but it’s not on my list of approved foods... but it is my birthday 🎂

In the span of eternity, hours, days, years are all a vapor in time. We are allotted just so much time here... spend it wisely.

Yea I’m still in Boston...

We all like to get our hands dirty, especially Ryan. He’s a jewel!

I’m turning 60 Wednesday 9/19 and I’m going to be cooking, eating and visiting all day... and you’re invited. Noonish till dark and beyond. We’ll have the chicken on the smoker and may be some Alaska fish on the grill. Come by if you can.

Someone asked about next years tournaments so I posted the flyers. Entries are Lisa’s deal. I don’t know when she takes them.

In Taney, they clipped their adipose fin.

Medium/Light to Light action, 6' or 6'6" - even 7' if you find one you like. The key is finding something that works well for you. Our rods - Lilley's 30th anniversary rods - are one piece, 6' and a lot of people like them. But we have some new rods in the shop that are real nice for the money you need to shake - try if you'd like. Crappie Pro is the brand. Spinning reels - lots of them out there. We carry Lews and Pfluger but there's others out there that are good.

In the story... I didn't know they renamed the dam to Ozark Beach Dam. I'll always call it Powersite.

Glad you released her up there... I wouldn't transport a big fish right now. O2 is too low. Good job on the release. You said you saw one yesterday... was that the same one you think?

Should have taken screenshots of the map each day instead of posting the image url. It changes everyday.

The brunt of it hits us on Friday I think. Rest of the time it's thunderstorms coming and going.

Pondweed. It varies up here on the upper lake from year to year. This year is not bad, worse than last year but 2 years ago it was huge. Fish love it - makes great cover. There's tons of minnows holding in it around our dock - rainbows run in and out of it. Learn to use it to your advantage. Weedless lures - frogs would be good. Mice?

River looks great. Making wonderful memories. Thanks!

It has shifted... and will probably move again.

Projected path goes west of our watershed... right now. But could move and dump a lot of rain on us next week.

Below are PDF files of flyers you can download and view/print. 2019 Boswell Flyer.pdf (private) RAW Entry Letter 2019.pdf (private) Masters -Elfrink Entry Form 2019.pdf (public)

Overall, this has been a very good summer for trout fishing here on Lake Taneycomo. Taneycomo's water temperature has risen a degree to 50 and still is very clear. We've seen periods of cooler days where generation is short and lessens in the afternoons and hot days when the flow starts about 1 p.m. and runs up to four units until late into the evening. The dissolved oxygen in the water varies widely, but in general has been very good. We bought a D.O. meter so we could keep an eye on the levels and have found readings between 5.9 and 9.1 p.p.m. which is great! Here's an article I wrote describing what changes our tail water goes through each fall season. Seasonal Issue: Low Dissolved Oxygen and Restricted Flows The United States Geological Society performs a test at each of the U. S. Corps of Army Engineers' lakes in our area once a month from July through December. The August profile just came out. It measures temperature and dissolved oxygen at different levels of the lake at the dam face. You might find this interesting. Table Rock's Profile Note: Taneycomo's water comes from 130 feet deep in Table Rock, and the house units gets it water from at 150 to 160 feet deep. House units are running anytime the turbines are not, so the water you see at that level is what's running into the upper lake. This explains why the dissolved oxygen level drops when the water isn't running, especially at night when the water doesn't get any help from the sun. The house unit powers only the powerhouse itself. Big winter and spring floods affect the water flowing from Table Rock Lake, not just for the current year, but the following year, too. We are one year out from the last flood, so this fall we could see warmer water temperatures than normal. Cold water holds oxygen better than warm water, so we also might see our cold water fish stress easier. This does affect fishing, but more than that, it affects catch-and-release survival rates. That means we need to be even more mindful about how we handle trout caught if they are to be released. I need to write an article on handling trout . . . I'll work on that. All that said, I believe this is going to be a banner fall season for both rainbows and browns. We are already seeing large browns in the trophy area as well as very good quality rainbows being caught mid-lake. In our fishing tournament this last Saturday, we saw more good quality rainbows weighed in than we've ever recorded in a summer tournament. Looking at the leader board, I can count 10 rainbows that topped three pounds. Plus the rainbows in the winning bag that were not weighed individually could have added two or three to that category. None of these rainbows were recently stocked as "broad stock," although some broads have been stocked lately by the hatchery. And this is not counting the large rainbows and one brown caught the previous two days by anglers fishing before the tournament. All of these big trout were caught below Fall Creek, out of the trophy area. A good number of these were caught below the U.S. Highway 65 bridge. We do not have details and on how each trout was caught, but they were caught in multiple ways. Most, I think, were caught trolling using spoons and crank baits. Others were caught on the pink worm/jig head under a float, throwing stick baits and casting jigs. Swing Oil Baits is a one-man operation owned by Frank Dietl of Washington, MO. He and his partner, John Hittler, of Hillsboro, MO, won the benefit tournament on Saturday. Frank makes a soft plastic worm just like the Berkley pink worm that we plan to sell in our shop. He caught at least one of big rainbows on his pink worm. I personally haven't fished down lake as much as a lot of tour tournaments anglers, but their time there has truly paid off, as witnessed by the big trout caught down there in the past couple of years. It's bigger, deeper water, so there's more places for fish to hide. Rainbows aren't known for holding around structure, but I think they do tend to be found in and around docks. Browns, on the other hand, are structure fish, lying in wait for something to swim by. On bright, sunny days, wind is almost always the key to the bite. The last few days, I have fished about 10 a.m. to net a few rainbows for a "fish- weighing experiment." I hope to improve the way we weigh our trout at tournaments. I've been running up lake about a quarter mile to where the wind starts to come around the corner from the southwest and I find feeding rainbows under the surface at about five feet deep. I'm using my fly rod, throwing a two-fly rig with a #14 green zebra midge, gold head and wire, and a #16 red zebra midge with a gold head, gold wire, fishing it under a float five feet deep. I'm using Rio 6x tippet. The take is aggressive -- and I've caught four trout in less than 30 minutes. I know that they will take a small micro jig or marabou jig under a float, too. Try the same setup with two-pound line and a sculpin or ginger micro jig or a 1/100th-ounce brown or sculpin jig with an orange head. Using two-pound line is essential, too. I use Trilene XL clear two-pound line. If you want to throw a jig, we're still doing well using a 1/32nd- or 1/16th-ounce, sculpin/ginger or brown/burnt orange jig and two-pound line, catching a lot of rainbows in our area of the lake. This setup is best to use early and late in the day, or mid-day if the wind is up. But if you're throwing it in wind, cast directly against or with the wind. The lower trophy area has a lot of trout right now. There's some good-sized rainbows, but most are in the smaller range - less than 14 inches. These trout seemed to be pretty smart and are accustomed to natural foods such as small minnows, sculpin, midges and scuds. Our brown trout make a ceremonial run up the lake in the fall for spawning. I say "ceremonial" because they don't actually have a successful spawn. Our lake conditions aren't right for either the rainbow or brown trout to reproduce. But they do move up close to the dam in September, lingering for a couple of weeks before they head back down. This spawning season tends to last into the first week of November. The main rainbow spawn overlaps just a bit into the brown spawn and continues on into January. It does seem like sculpins are a big part of brown trout's diet these days. When catching browns this spring and summer, some would spit up a sculpin or two when in the net. I know the walleye and bass are living off sculpins just below the dam , plus small rainbows. So throwing jigs and sculpin flies should do the trick when fishing for browns this fall. Guide Steve Dickey has observed that we've haven't had the big midge hatches like last summer. One reason, I know, is the lower water temperature. Last summer, the lake temperature never dipped below 55 degrees. Insects do much better in warmer water. This year the temp has been in the low to upper 40's. But trout are still keying in on midge flies like the zebra, wd40's, soft hackles, cracklebacks and chili peppers. View full article