Phil Lilley

HUmmm... thanks

My youngest son Greg had never been up to Naknek and I thought it was time to take him. I hadn't been up in 2 years--last time was with Steve Dickey in late September when we wacked big bows. But this wasn't going to be a hard core fishing trip. Greg doesn't fish that much. It was a trip to spend with him and experience Alaska in all its greatness. We arrived at Johnson's Katmai Trophy Lodge Monday evening, a place I hadn't seen before. Jim bought the lodge at the first of the season, adding it to his fishing establishments on the Naknek. He owns Naknek River Camp at Lake Camp, located at the top of the river. KTL is miles down river located at what they call the rapids. It's a log construction lodge with 5 rooms and a great room overlooking the river. Very nice. The next morning after a hot breakfast, Greg and I headed up river in one of their skiffs, motored by a 90 hp Johnson jet. We passed boat after boat, anchored along side the river at various spots either close to small gravel bar points or drop offs where big bows lay. The river has been high all summer because, according to Jim, they had not had a cold winter and the glaciers had not stopped melting for 18 months. There were a few places to wade but very few. Most were fishing from the boat. We motored up to the top of the river where the lake met the river. There's a cabin there - Trafaunt's Cabin. The river is fairly deep and slow current, rock bottom where salmon, mainly sockeyes, spawn. No wind, mid 50's... couldn't ask for more ideal weather. But the bugs (white sox) found us. We started throwing black 1/8th ounce jigs (yes the same ones we throw here on Taneycomo), 4 pound line, spinning gear. And the rainbows loved them. We caught close to 40 rainbows, most were 18-22 inches and up to 24 inches long. And man did they pull!!! There's black leaches in the river and the jigs were the perfect lure to imitate them. We went back down river and tried a few spots, using the chuck-n-duck method and throwing flesh and leach patterns. We caught a few but nothing like the action at the top of the river. He did catch a dolly which was cool.... adding to his life list of fish. The next few days were windy and rainy so we limited our selves to short trips on the river, trying to catch the elusive 30-inch rainbow. But all the spots were pounded by the guided boats and it was difficult to fool the big ones. We did take a rid to Brooks by boat. Chad Bryson, one of Jim's guides, drove us over. I love that boat ride!! About 35 miles of bigness. The rangers were still there and took us through Bear School. I was glad because I wanted a bear pin from this year. Walked to the bridge to cross the river on the way to the falls and... bears. Mom and cubs mainly, two sets--and they weren't going anywhere fast. So we turned around and took the tougher course--through the marsh and up the river. There was only one bear on the falls. We watch him trying to catch a fish. We tried to tell him there were dead ones just downstream but he didn't listen. The crew at our office (Lilleys' Landing) were watching the Brooks Bear Cam at the same time we were there... we wanted to jump down and make faces in the camera but that would have gotten some attention from the rangers. Walking back down river, we fished the cut bank. Greg caught some sockeye on a leach which was fun for him but we were after rainbows. I finally found a pod of them at the bottom of the section but we were out of time, scheduled to meet Chad back at the boat at 5 p.m.. I think we saw a total of 12 bears at Brooks, all big, fat and happy. The rest of the week was more of the same. Lots of relaxing and some fishing. Toured Naknek (the town) and the mouth of the river at Bristol Bay. The tide was out and the flat was so far out you couldn't see the edge - probably 2-3 miles. It was a low, low tide. We didn't take many fish pictures simply because these rainbows are very hard to hold without hurting them. The biggest were the rainbows on the first day, and Greg mastered chuck-n-duck so that next time he'll be ready to catch the trophy 30-incher.

Report?

Tuesday am - fly fished from narrows down to Short Creek. Zebra midges and scuds. Fish were active and catching was good. Wednesday am - it stunk! Nothing moving. 3 small rainbows same areas. Thursday am - took a nice gentleman fishing. Started at the narrows with ZM's. #14 dark red/black bead and #16 rusty 6x fl tippet 24 inches deep. Caught 3 right off including a nice 14-incher. But then it died! Picked up and went all the way down to the last dock below FC on east side before the long, open stretch (where all the houses used to be). Shallow side, few midging. Caught a few but still wasn't happy with results. Adjusted the depth to 4 feet and told him to fish the deeper side. Started catching. Moved out to "green" water off the drop and move the depth to 6 feet. He ended with 30 rainbows, largest was 15 inches. I did switch to a p&p zebra in the bright sun and it did pretty good.

You can see the cold water form a cone at the end and get sucked through the turbines

Know what this is? The way Shane Bush described it is - the left side of the chart is the upper lake like the White River Arm and the right side is the dam. I think you can figure it out. Note: Water is running out of the lake at 130 feet deep.

Here's the powerpoint slides from Shane and Clint's talk. Also a video of the thermocline video Shane will refer to. Branson TU Presentation.pdf

Browns will be moving up gradually for the next 6 weeks so no not all are up. It's a long process.

Just noticed in the forum version, this pic isn't showing up. It's the brown caught on the bag worm jig. His thumb is where the adipose fin is supposed to be... it's probably clipped making this a triploid.

I didn't mentioned the pink Berkley's trout worm under a float in the report. Should have... it's still very, very hot.

I haven't seen any... but others have caught fish on hoppers I've heard. So try the spots. Another thing I heard is using a white chenille-only jig under a float around trees that have bag worms. I've been tying them in small 1/125th oz PJ's heads or just a very small jig head Jeremy Hunt's Miracle flies are tied on. White head. The brown in the header on the report was caught on one 2 days ago. I say chenille only - I tie in a very so small marabou tail but sparse and short.

I apologize. It's been too long since my last report. I have started writing fishing reports several times in the past weeks only to pause for a day and then see that details in the report had changed and weren't valid anymore. But excuses aside, none of us had fished enough to have had a good handle on the latest and our guides had not been booked consistently. But here goes another effort. Generation has been erratic and unpredictable for the most part. We have had more days with no generation this past week, more than we've had all year. The anglers who love to wade below the dam rejoice, but those who like to fish from boats have been challenged to locate the bite, especially when the weather's been bright and sunny with very little wind. It's been an early and late bite when the sun is low on the horizon. Dam operators have been running water some afternoons. Best chance for that is during the week, not weekends. Weekends, they're leaving the water off. If they do run water, the amount has varied from one to four units. Yes, they've ran as much as 200 megawatts, which is a lot of water for this time of year. The U.S. Corps of Army Engineers has to pump a lot of liquid oxygen into the turbines to run that much. On the subject of dissolved oxygen, our tailwater, every fall, has issues with low D.O. level in the water flowing from Table Rock Lake. It's not new. I've written about it extensively. But what I have to report is good news for our fishery this fall season. At 130 foot deep on Table Rock at the dam, there is water there with D.O. readings at two parts per million (ppm) which is great for this time of year! The water temperature is 51-52 degrees which is also very good. The colder the water stays, the better is holds O2 and keeps our trout healthy and strong. Our lake condition is nothing like last year which was the worse year on record. As mentioned before in this report, during days when there's no generation, fishing is best early and late. Our guides are reporting the bite gets really tough after 9 a.m. and picks back up after 6 p.m.. Now this changes if we have one of two conditions -- wind and/or clouds. Wind breaks up the surface of the water, and the fish don't feel exposed and will feed. Clouds do basically the same thing. But if they run any water at all, that changes everything. Moving water stimulates good feeding patterns for fish because there's food in the water moving down lake. Holding trout won't usually turn down an easy meal. First, bait fishing. Our water is pretty clear, so light line is a must. We've seen people throwing some pretty heavy line off the dock lately and bottom line -- they're just fishing, not catching. Even freshly stocked trout can see swivels attached to hooks and 10-pound line running from a glob of Powerbait. You might catch a couple, but if you want to catch more trout, you have to use light line. Two-pound is best. Four-pound is okay. Green line or clear line best. Air-injected night crawlers are catching more browns than Powerbaits. But rainbows are taking floating Gulp and Powerbait dough and eggs fairly well. The best colors have been pink and chartreuse and sunrise egg, too. Dock fishing has been fair early and late. Some mornings have really been good though with some nice rainbows being caught off the upper end of the dock. Out in boats, just below Fall Creek has been a good area for catching some rainbows that seemed to have traveled out of the trophy area. One 21-inch rainbow came in today caught just below the boundary on bait. The Short Creek area to Trout Hollow has been good and then down at the Landing. One angler reported seeing dozens and dozens of rainbows surfacing this morning at the Landing, signifying a load of trout have been stocked there in the last couple of days. Leaves are starting to fall on the lake's surface and that always attracts trout. That also creates problems for boaters. When we check out our boats in the fall, we advise the operator that floating leaves will gather on the front side of a motor as the boat is underway, creating cavitation. Air gets sucked down to the prop making the motor rev up as if the prop had spun or the motor had jumped out of gear. The remedy is to stop the boat dead in the water, then put the motor in reverse and blow the leaves out. We'll start to see trout hang around groups of leaves in the lake, picking off small insects that come off the leaves. We target these fish using small Zebra Midges under a small indicator, either fishing with a fly rod or spin rod. It's fun! Black has been a good color for us either with a black or copper head, size #14, #16 or #18, 6x or 7x tippet. Fish a couple of midges 12 inches apart, with the first fly only 12 inches deep. Anglers are reporting that most of the time the "bite" is very, very slight. The trout are coming up and "tasting" the fly, taking it in their mouth without moving with it. This only vibrates the indicator. You have to watch the indicator closely, and if it moves, be quick to set the hook because the trout will spit the fly as soon as he realizes it's thread and metal, not organic. Zebras can be used anywhere and everywhere on the lake, not just in the trophy area. Fly fishing below the dam has been so limited all year because of constant generation, so the only areas people have had to fish are around the outlets and a few other small spots. But that's changing, and anglers are responding in big numbers reportedly packing in from the cable past Trophy Run. But I'm hearing glowing reports of nice quality rainbows and browns being caught on a variety of flies. My friend Brian and his wife waded in below outlet #2 and fished a Harvester Midge and caught a few big browns. Brian said his wife landed her best brown trout to date, about 19 inches. Brian landed one about six pounds. Those are some nice trout and a good indicator of what fishing might be through September and October. Brown trout are definitely starting to move up in the lake. Anglers up around the outlets are seeing more and more show up plus people fishing the lower trophy area are catching a few good ones. We'll see browns move up and out for the next 6 to 8 weeks. Since I couldn't sleep past 3:30 this morning, I walked down to the dock office to get some work done. There was a slight fog on the lake which tempted me to go out. After a few tasks, I headed up lake in the Grizzly with no trouble seeing where I was headed. Some guys who fished with guides yesterday told me they'd seen a couple big browns in the Narrows, so that's where I wanted to at least start. I figured I had two hours all to myself, and I was close -- the first boat came through at 7:30 a.m. which gave me three hours. The full moon was hidden by clouds, but I could see pretty well. Thinking brown trout, I tied on a tan sculpin, then a big articulated streamer. I had two hits on the streamer, but they were small fish. Not until I tied on a purple, beaded Mo Hair Leech did the action start. I caught a dozen rainbows up to 16 inches on the leech, casting it at a 45-degree angle downstream. There was a slight current most of the time I fished there. The strikes were fast and solid -- I didn't miss many bites. But no browns. The streamer bite subsided as it got light, so I switched to a Zebra Midge under a small indicator. The best one was a #16 red with a dark head fished about two-feet deep in the channel. I tried to cast to some feeding trout in shallow water, but they were too spooky. Next was a #16 tan scud, but nothing was interested. I had to try a jig, so I tied on a 1/16th-ounce sculpin/burnt orange with a brown head, two-pound line and caught rainbows pretty consistently for about 30 minutes. I worked on down towards Fall Creek fishing the scud, then back to the midge, but couldn't scrounge a nibble. I pulled out the jig again and caught four rainbows before heading in. Yes, I filmed this morning after it grew light enough for the camera, and I planned to edit a compilation for this report. However, when I returned to the dock, a young man was fishing with his family and wanted to see us do One Cast. I even videoed him catching a trout off the dock using a pink worm under a float. I was setting everything up, adjusting the camera on the mount when the GoPro came unscrewed and dropped into the lake. Straight down. We thought we could retrieve it with a net, but there's a lot of sticks and leaves down on the lake bottom. Matt, from our office, repeatedly dove down and tried to retrieve it, too -- even without a wet suit at first, but . . . as of publish time, no camera. View full article

Don't know for sure except they measure length and weight and use a formula.

Look at the >16 rainbow numbers... biggest number in the history of the survey. And that's after a fish kill in November last year. At the meeting, it was mentioned that the good number COULD be due to 17% less trout stocked this year. Less fish, more to eat, better growth rate? They are thinking...

2016 Lake Taneycomo Trout Sampling Summary.pdf Here is the annual report for Lake Taneycomo. Shane Bush gave a very good presentation at last night's Branson Chapter of Trout Unlimited. He explained this report as well as telling us why Taney experienced a fish kill last fall, in the lake and at the hatchery. I should have and will post that information on the latter report soon.

Brown lab got lost.... Busted that decoy! Loved it!! Did the brown lab go get more ducks to your right?

Glad you're ok.

I got a notification on my smart phone saying the Corp app is having difficulty... I think it may be related...

I thought they needed to send a pic to Trump's election campaign...

Don't think they'll mind me copying the pic. It is really pretty. Male.

How about now... not sure what happened. Showing up for me now.

What area did you fish?