Phil Lilley

Anchorage, Alaska. You'd have to ask DD what shop.

Yes

We're keeping the official one cast in house for now. I'm afraid with all our regular guests, we'd have a major problem picking and choosing guest casters for it, since it is once a day. But we could always do a one cast video and post it here on the forum...

I have chased many fish stories in my time, mainly word of mouth stories. I don't know if they were true or not - I bet most were true reports - but I'll tell ya most of the time I don't do as well as the story I heard. May be 90% of the time. Common sense has to come into play. You take what you've learned and add a little bit of a good report and go from there. If you jump in hook, line and sinker, you're probably out of your element and you won't do well, even if the fishing is decent.

Glad you joined. Look forward to learning from your experiences.

http://www.orschelnfarmhome.com/OrschelnFarmHome/ctl16754/cp/si6612310/cl1/interlocking-ring-mat-3-x-3-ft?&query=mats&hits=12&offset=

I saw a small brown last week like this one. Very unusual. I'll call it to the attention to hatchery ppl.

You can fish off our dock. Just register in the office first.

Gotta love that dough bait. Good stuff.

There was a gigging boat out last night... they probably gigged a bunch of them.

I bought a new truck last year. First new vehicle I've ever bought. The dealer tried to put it in the resort's name first. They turned it down because of bad credit score. I had to co-sign for it. We paid off the resort over 12 years ago. We have one credit card- then there's Lowes- many other vendors we have accounts with. But no loans. I think our score is 75! I talked to my banker and she said to come in anytime and borrow. She said we'd have no problem with our bank since we have history with them. You might talk to your bank, especially if you know them personally. System is broke for sure.

A group of anglers from OAF have gone to the White River the last 2 winters for a weekend of fishing and fellowship. We'd like to try it on Taneycomo in a couple of weeks. It's the weekend of January 30-31. Send me a PM for details if you're interested in attending.

Looks like over 20 inches... hope you kept it.

Left him at the house by mistake...

I've told this story before. Years ago when BS was really, really low, we were fishing up close to Powersite Dam, walking in at Silver Creek and catching whites and walleye. Vince found a good spot, fishing/wading at night down from the creek and catching some really nice walleye. He had the place to himself. He told me, I posted it on the forum, and the next night he had company... quite a bit of company. And he let me know about it. Vince was my best friend, bestest fishing buddy. I learned a good lesson not to give spots up unless giving it up only affected me and me alone. Of course that doesn't really go for Taneycomo because it's part of my job as resort/marina owner and promoter to share all I can to get anglers into trout here on Taney. But I'm careful with what people tell me in confidence, especially during winter tournaments. I shared this story at his funeral a few years back. He died of brain cancer. Glad we all can discuss this openly without all the drama. And may be this thread will draw out a few more members to share their knowledge with others, without giving out spots... Thnaks

Trout fishing for rainbows on Lake Taneycomo has been pretty close to "excellent" the last couple of weeks and I don't use the word excellent very often to describe fishing. I was once told to say fishing was excellent would be say everyone is catching fish. That's pretty much what it is right now. And the quality of rainbows is the best many anglers have seen it in many years. Generation is still the same with few exceptions. Running water fairly hard early in the mornings, then back down to a half to a full unit for most of the day, then harder late in the evening in to the night. Here's a graph showing flows for the past 7 days and nights: With warmer temperatures in the near future, I'd look for less generation. Table Rock's level is 909.4 feet which is five feet below power pool. I'm sure the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers is counting on spring rains to bring the lake levels up, but you never know what might happen. If you're wondering about shad being washed through the turbines, there are no reports yet. Table Rock's water temperature is certainly cold enough to cause a shad kill, but we need to see very heavy generation for sustained durations to get a good shad run on Lake Taneycomo. Below Fall Creek, anglers are catching rainbows on a variety of baits and lures. Since the water is running, most anglers are drifting bait on the bottom. One group Thursday morning said they had caught their limit of real nice rainbows using cooked shrimp. One fisherman said he'd pinch off a piece about the size of the end of his thumb and put it on his hook, drifting it on the bottom starting at Fall Creek. They're also fishing with night crawlers and Gulp Eggs. You don't need a lot of weight to drift in this current. The smallest made-up drift rig we sell has a 1/8th- ounce bell weight. This may be too much weight. You might try just tying on a #8 or #6 hook and add a split shot 24 inches above the hook. Four-pound line is perfect for a spinning rod. There's some nice trout being caught down lake, too, namely from Monkey Island down through the Branson Landing. Guests last weekend threw and trolled crank baits and caught some nice rainbows and browns. Some anglers reported catching more than 20 brown trout Saturday alone, casting countdown Rapalas against the banks. We had one keeper brown weighed in and released Saturday. I fished with a jig-and-float this week, drifting from the Riverpointe boat ramp to our place (Lilleys' Landing), using several colors of jigs and did fairly well. I caught trout on a 1/32nd-ounce brown/orange head, scuplin/orange head, scuplin/olive and a pink jig under a float anywhere from 6- to 10-feet deep. I tried to keep the jig close to the bottom no matter where I was in the channel or up on the flat in less deep water. We are also throwing jigs with no floats and catching fish, both browns and rainbows, both below and above Fall Creek. Depending on the speed of the water (generation), we're throwing a 1/8th-ounce if the water is running fairly hard but dropping in size to a 3/32nd-ounce or even a 1/16th-ounce and working it off the bottom. The best colors are sculpin, sculpin/ginger, olive, brown or ginger. White hasn't done well for me at all this month. Today I got out this evening and fished a little. While boating up lake, I passed 5 boats in the trophy area drifting and fishing with bait. I saw one boat catch and keep a slot rainbow- about 16 inches. I don't understand this reasoning, especially right now when the fishing below Fall Creek is so good. I did what I had to - I called our local MDC agent and reported all 5 boats. Although he didn't get on the water this evening, he will be out tomorrow and Saturday checking hooks and live wells. It's not worth the fine and embarrassment. Back to fishing--I boated up to Lookout and started drifting, throwing an olive 1/8th ounce jig. Nothing. Then I tied on a brown/orange 1/8th ounce jig and worked it a few hundreds yards. One rainbow. Finally I tied on a sculpin/peach 1/8th ounce jig and caught 3 rainbows but nothing of any size. I boated up. Stopped just below the Big Hole below the dam and started throwing the sculpin/peach jig. No bites until I just about got down to the boat ramp. The video tells the rest. I continued to work the jig through the Trophy Run area and caught 4 more nice rainbows before heading in.

I have not schedule any this winter.

Just have to be smart about it.... and do what you can to educate - give back - when you can. You don't have to give up "spots" to contribute. I do respect anybody decision to not post spots. i would love to see more reports though - instructional reports - WITHOUT including spots. I am thankful for everyone that does post. Period.

sssshhhhh.....

Meat is white when they're fed hatchery food and orange when they've eaten natural food from the lake so your observations are correct there. The only exception I've seen is when males are in spawning mode that tend to have white meat. Rainbows are stocked by Shepherd and Noesho hatcheries- neither stock the same strains of rainbows. I don't know about Neosho but Shepherd stocks several kinds of strains and each have different looks. Some are very colorful and some stay silver. The Neosho rainbows I've seen are all silver and stay silver. I don't eat enough of them to tell you the difference in taste.

There's no way to tell how OAF affects traffic in spots. I'd be flattered if it made that big of a difference- plus there's more than one forum on the internet talking about fishing and "spots". "First day they moved in shallow we caught 150 big crappie then 1 week later I saw posts telling every detail and even some detail on piles that many knew about but not the whole world. Next week boat explosion some from just local knowledge but many from this site and boats on every pile. We still caught 90 the next week but size was down and numbers down." You don't think catching 150 crappie would affect your numbers and size of fish alone? And don't you think those hoards of boats would arrive to fish for crappie regardless of any posts? I'd be thrilled to catch 10 limits of crappie and I'd think most people would be thrilled to catch half that number- or less. I'm not being critical of your post - just an observation. I think more and more anglers are getting MDC's lake app and finding those brush piles. Forums may be the reason - so are articles written about these apps. I admit - I'm a "spot guy". Always have been - since 1997 when I started reporting on the internet. I am, though, respectful of spots I learn from other anglers- I've learned that the hard way. But I'm with F&F - you can report all the detail you can and still ppl won't hurt do as well as you would think. I may be less sensitive to all this because of where I live and fish. I have almost got used to seeing big nice rainbows being taken out and cleaned out of Taneycomo, all the time wishing more people would throw back the 15 inchers (and bigger) and keep the 12 inchers. But I've learned there are always going to be good and bad times, and the good times will always come back- there will always be good fishing trips and bad ones, and the goods ones I look forward to.

The forum software won't let you upload images over 2 megs. So you need to reduce the image. I usually reduce them to about 800 pixels wide.