Phil Lilley

Warmer today... so very little water running this morning. Already off.

Generation has been fairly consistent lately. It's been geared toward temperature and power demand. The colder it is, the heavier generation is at night and during the morning hours. With it getting warmer the last few days, generation has been light in the morning. It's been off almost every afternoon for a couple of weeks. Water temperature has dropped to 46.5 degrees. This is a 10 degree drop since Table Rock turned over in early December. Our lake water has cleared considerably too. The lake looks great! December is the month we get a bunch of rainbows from the Neosho hatchery (federal). These trout are usually smaller than we get from Shepherd and this stocking is no different. I'd say the average rainbow I've seen is about 10 inches but they're really pretty rainbows and will make beautiful fish if they get to grow up. This is what we call a "silver bullet". It's a rainbow from Neosho. The Boswell Memorial tournament was this past Saturday. Lots of trout were caught. About everyone said they caught a lot of small rainbows but of the 44 teams who participated, I saw over a dozen rainbows that I would consider very nice trout - over 18 inches. There were quite a few teams who came in with one good rainbow and the rest average. One rainbow just under or just over 2 pounds with no good trout to go with them. There was one keeper, 20-inch, brown weighed in but there were 3 brought in to be weighed on Friday by the group. All browns were released. Some were caught on stick baits and others on jigs. This is a good sign of things to come. The winners boated all the way down to Powersite Dam, our lower lake, and threw black rooster tails. Who knew?! I was told pink was a hot color for those throwing jigs. I wouldn't mention it but there was more than one person who said pink was their color. I got out and fished on Tuesday afternoon. Boated to Lookout and started throwing a 1/16th-ounce jig, 2-pound line. The wind was out of the west so it was pushing me towards the bluff bank. I kept the boat towards the shallow side and threw to the middle. I also had a jig-and-float rigged up with 4-pound line, a float and a 1/50th-ounce brown jig with an orange head, 4-5 feet deep. When the wind was blowing too hard to throw the jig, I'd pick up the jig-and-float and use it. The brown jig/orange head did very well but when the wind died, so did that bite. I tried a couple of new color combinations on the 1/16th-ounce jig -- black and burnt orange/orange head and an olive and light olive/orange head. The olive did much better than the black. . . actually it did very well. I did the best on bigger rainbows out in front of the tennis court. As I worked closer to the Narrows, I started to see big schools of small rainbows chasing everything that moved. I tied on a #16 black/copper Zebra Midge with a float using my spin cast (didn't' take a fly rod). I set the float about 18 inches and they liked that! But there had to be just a slight chop on the water to get bit. I worked through the Narrows. There was a fairly good current there which seemed to keep the trout aggressive. I caught 7 trout in a row off one of the downed trees in the channel. The first one was a brown, my first of the year. The next6 were all rainbows all colored up in their spawning colors. All these fish were between 16 and 20 inches in length and fighters! I caught them on a white 1/16th-ounce jig. I saw one guy throwing a small silver Cleo and he was hooking fish too. Others were throwing jigs and fly fishing probably with a small jig or Zebra Midge. Guide Tony Weldele reported they did very well throwing Cleos in the Branson Landing area this week. Steve Dickey was out this morning and said his clients were catching them on a small 1/100th-ounce ginger jig under a float. Guys fishing yesterday caught them on yellow Power Eggs. They said they tried all the other colors and yellow by far was the best color. They said from Fall Creek down was the best area for them, especially with the water running in the mornings. View full article

Sean lives near Rolla.

This is the real deal... right from Bristol Bay!

Fixed. Thanks

Collins and Mazdra Joe and Vicki Whelan Schmidt and Mazdra Williams and Mullinax

Mixed results today. Most caught fish but hardly any of the bags were consistently good. What I mean by that is a lot of teams had one or two nice rainbows in the 14-16 inch range plus small stockers. Some had even bigger rainbows but real small rainbows to go with. There were 2-3 teams with consistently good rainbows and they placed high in the standings. There was one keeper brown caught (Mazdra - Collins). The 1st place team boated all the way down to the lower dam and caught their fish on black rooster tails with a gold spinner. It was their first trout tournament. I think one of them said he was a bass fisher and never fished for trout before. Lily's first weigh in, our newest granddaughter.

4. Never ever talk about your tactics. You figured that all out on your own and nobody needs to know that. I know this list was done in a slightly "tongue and cheek" manner but I would hope this rule would not be followed here. I hope tactics and techniques would be shared/taught/written about to a certain extent. I know it is now (a little), and I, and many others, do appreciate it.

Forty-seven teams are participating on this year's Boswell Memorial Trout Invitational on Lake Taneycomo. Some people think they're crazy... but it's been a tradition for the past 36 years.

That would be excellent, Brian. Would love to fish with you again up there. Again, there is still room for others. Looking forward to a good sockeye/kings/rainbow summer!

Looking forward to it.

I could go over and help him set up his iphone as a hotspot.

https://internet.hughesnet.com/

Well, he'd have to get Becky's permission first.

I bet if someone were to GO TO Bill's and fix this issue, he'd give you a night free in his lodge.

He's talked to his carrier lots of times... I can't figure it out either. He's the only one that I know of. If I knew someone else that uses that carrier, it'd be interesting if they could access the site.

https://bluebonefishbelize.com/ My friend who has the place in AK has this place too. He prides himself on being the cheapest around but good place and good services.

Good football yesterday... hopefully Geogia has something left to battle Alabama.

Thanks for sharing, Al.

Looking forward to seeing you guys on Taney...