Phil Lilley

Big Trout

Boswell Memorial is a private tournament held every year on the first Saturday of January. Here are the results - Today was a blue bird day, high skies and very little wind. I never imagined they'd do as well as they did... but they all had a great day of fishing. I'd have to look back and check but I believe this was one of the best average of limits (8 trout) I've ever seen at a tournament here on Taneycomo. Totally unexpected. It's not surprising to see 10 pound limits (8 trout). It is, though, when five of 27 teams came in with 10 or better and 11 teams over 9 pounds. Most were caught on jigs fishing straight line I believe but live bait was allowed in this tournament. This was the 30th annual contest. Many of these guys who fished today have been around since the beginning. They're a great bunch of guys, most from St Louis.

The first photo should be on a magazine cover.

No, we had company in town (last minute) and they wanted to go out to eat after church. Sorry I missed everyone.

If the guide drove a red, aluminum boat, it probably was Brett.

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Col 3:23 One of many things my dad taught me when I was young.

Well, this winter has been a joy so far, as far as fishing weather that is. We’ve had a few cold days back prior to the holidays and the mornings now are crisp but nothing compared to the last few years – snow, ice and cold! They are forecasting 50′s this weekend here in Branson. . . it’ll be a nice time for the trout fishermen as well as others who get out on the big lakes and small streams. With the milder weather and the lakes dropping close to normal levels, the Corp has started leaving the water off at Table Rock Dam this week for most of the afternoon at least. It’s been a little breezy but we like some wind, enough to break up the surface on the water. I would think this generation trend should continue as long as we don’t have any big changes in lake levels and day time temperatures. When the water is running in the mornings, they’ve been doing well drifting bait from Fall Creek clear down past Cooper Creek. Night crawlers have been catching the bigger rainbows but Gulp eggs using white/pink or yellow or orange is doing well also. Big numbers of rainbows are being caught but not big rainbows. We usually get a big load of rainbows from our federal hatchery in Neosho in the winter and they will run smaller than our state trout. Some of these small rainbows don’t even hit the 6-inch mark but most measure about 10-inches. Our trout from Shepherd of the Hills Hatchery average over 12 inches. You can also catch trout below Fall Creek using small to medium stick baits like Rapalas, Rouges and Pointers. Troll or cast and retrieve towards the bluff banks. Rooster tails and Cleos are also working but you may catch mostly smaller rainbows on these. Marabou jigs worked off the bottom using darker earth colors like brown, black, olive and sculpin, 1/8th to 3/32nd-ounce. If using a float, fish them 5-8 feet deep and use small weights– 1/50th down to micro jigs in 1/256th ounce. Same colors. Above Fall Creek, when the water is running, drift a scud, #12 brown or olive have been best colors with an egg tandem. Small to medium stick baits, like I mentioned before, worked against the bluff banks are producing some nice trout including a few browns. Also seeing some bass and crappie up there. When the water is shut down, fishing has slowed mid day but picks back in the evening. Midge hatches most of the day on and off but better late. Zebra midges, #16 rusty midge or red/gold head fished 12 to 24 inches under a float. Also fish that scud under a float and make sure it’s dragging the bottom. Soft hackles, cracklebacks and small woolies stripped on a choppy surface when you see trout midging. We’re seeing a bunch of small, first-of-the-year browns caught using this technique.

Nice report. Thanks

If you go- report back. Don't hold anything back... I didn't.

I was going to put in at K Dock and fish both up and down but mainly up cause I know the lake better. Go about 3/4 mile up and fish the bluff on the right to the flat. Then follow the flat / edge of channel to where it turns into snap. Then go up to the next bluff on the right and fish it. Throw at every piece of wood you see. Not sure how deep they'll be- depends on time of day (deeper in bright sun). Slow dropping jigs - red heads are best. That's what I've heard. Should be able to limit by 11 am.

Chief! Plans changed. I'll be around.

I don't know of any guides who walk in there but i don't know everything... haha Could have been Bret Rader http://charteredwaters.com or someone from River Run. Or could have been any guy who moonlights as a guide.

My guess is that very few people fish down there and of those, very few are on this forum. Or it could be that good. Look at Upper Bull Shoals... I've heard crappie are jumping in the boat down there right now and you don't see many reporting it. I'm going tomorrow and I will report back.

Very nice account of your trip and helpful for those who may think about a trip to Alaska. You'd love KodiAK too. Should check that out if you're thinking of retiring up there. Mild winters.

Bill and I put in here a couple of weeks ago- first time. We couldn't figure out where to park! It was only when we pulled out we saw the parking lot up at the top of the hill.

2 units and you fished the gauntlet? They must have shut it down, right?

The Corps of Engineers has been running generators around the clock for the past month and today was no different. There was one running and the lake level was around 704 feet. We fished a couple of hours from fall creek to Lilleys’ Landing and caught a few rainbows and one little brown. Most of the fish came on an F6 silver Flatfish using 4lb mono. The rest of the fish were on orange, chartreuse, and white Powerbait. Most of the fish were only about twelve inches with a couple around fifteen inches. We also managed to see a Bald Eagle just across the lake from the Acacia Club boat ramp!! We also fished above Fall Creek in the trophy area of the lake. We started all the way at the top by the Shepherd of The Hills Hatchery and worked our way back down to Fall Creek. We started out with Miracle Flies on 5x fluorocarbon tippet about four feet under a Palsa. We fished the south bank across from the hatchery and did very well dead drifting. Most of the fish came from just above the island on that side of the lake. We also used sculpin/peach 1/8 ounce and 3/32 ounce jigs and did very well with those. We did catch a few small crappie on jigs along with the trout. Darin, Lilleys Landing

It would depend on water level of Bull... if it was low, it'd be quicker. But I'm not a hydrologist. Good question though.

Trout seemingly are not affected by fronts as much as warmwater fish, in my experience. Water is off... I'd fish.

<img class="alignleft" style="margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px;" title="John Neporadny" src="http://www.ozarkanglers.com.php5-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/girls_gone_crappie-2929-1.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="250" />Blowing snow stings your face and the wind pierces through gloves to numb your hands. Even though the frigid temperatures turn your rod tip into an ice cube after nearly every cast, you tolerate these inconveniences in anticipation of catching the bass of a lifetime. While the lakes in the northern half of the state freeze over during the winter, Lake of the Ozarks usually offers an ice-free spot to catch lunker largemouth bass throughout January and February. Heavyweight bass in this central Missouri reservoir reside along main lake structure and feed on dying shad that succumb to the cold water. A lure resembling the fluttering action of a dying shad, such as a suspending stickbait, works best during this time of year. Fishing pressure will also be minimal since fair-weather fishermen hibernate in their warm homes. Anglers willing to bear the cold for a chance to catch quality wintertime largemouth should pack the thermal underwear and insulated coveralls and head for the lake. Try the following tips for catching Lake of the Ozarks bass during winter. Channel bends in the clear-water stretch from the dam to the 14-mile mark hold schools of big bass during the winter at this reservoir. Any time bass have a channel bend they can move up from the deep water onto a flat and eat shad. Lake of the Ozarks bass tend to congregate below schools of shad in 12 to 20 feet of water. The shad usually suspend 8 to 12 feet deep and bass hang right below them. The fish usually stay 4 to 5 feet under the baitfish so they can follow the shad school around. Even though bass feed on baitfish during this time, some anglers avoid areas loaded with schools of shad because they believe bass have too much food to choose from there. So these local anglers try channel bends with sparse numbers of baitfish where they can work a weighted stickbait without much competition from the natural forage. A 5 1/2-inch medium-diver Rattlin' Rogue or a Luckycraft Pointer 100 in the clown color produces bass during this time. With four or five turns of the reel handle you can make the stickbait dive down to a depth of 4 to 5 feet. If the lure is properly weighted, it will suspend at the same depth or sink slowly. Let the lure sit for about 20 seconds and then twitch it once or twice. A word of caution: the more you twitch the lure, the smaller the fish you will catch. Even though the lure usually only dives down about 5 feet, its action imitates a dying shad, which draws bass out of the depths to strike it. When the weather turns nasty, key on chunk rock points. The worse the weather, the better the fishing so when the wind blows real hard and it's snowing, the fish will come up on the rocky points. If you can stand the cold, this is the best time to catch a 9- or 10-pound bass at the Lake of the Ozarks. This pattern usually lasts until the end of March when the water warms and bass start chasing crankbaits and spinnerbaits. For information on lodging and other facilities at the Lake of the Ozarks or to receive a free 162-page vacation guide, call the Lake of the Ozarks Convention &amp; Visitors Bureau at 1-800-FUN-LAKE or visit the Lake of the Ozarks Convention and Visitors Bureau web site at funlake.com.

Phillip called me and asked me to post that he sold his boat.

What store you you have?

Wanted to take the kids fishing, crappie fishing. My son is here from the Boston area and Megan and Greg live here. So we four, the son-in-law, Jimmy, and my nephew Levi headed to Aunt's Creek Access this afternoon. Slid both G-3's in the water about 1:30 pm and headed out and up the James. Hit 3 of the docks me and Babler caught our crappie on a few weeks ago- nothing. One dock though had a big ball of shad-thing going. It was pretty cool and the kids got a big kick out of it. We hit 3 more docks- nothing. Fish a little bluff/structure- nothing. Watched 2 pair of eagles buzzing around the bluffs which was cool. Thought that might have been the highlight of the afternoon. Headed back to the ramp and decided to stop at a dock very close to the ramp for one last try. 50 feet of water and found them 10-15 feet deep. Fished with 1/16th oz white or pink or chartreuse jigs (all 3 colors caught fish). They wanted the jig dead still and it took them 3-10 minutes to take it. We caught 10 nice slabs in about 40 minutes and called it. Good thing we came home with something... we were planning a fish fry, which is usually the death of a fishing trip.

Ah... I see. I merged the wrong topics. Here's Itomczyk's post. Not going to try to fix this- I'd mess it up more.

http://ozarkanglers.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30209 Aeronikl posted this: The SWPA generation schedules web page shows the potential for each dam/powerhouse in their system. I don't pretend to have any inside knowledge - but while each "unit" can run up to the 80 MW, they normally run multilple units at lower outputs - like now, they are running 2 units to only get 30-40 MW's, or down to less than 25. The only things that matter if you plan on wading are the CFS flow rate (directly tied to the MW's being generated) and the tailwater elevation - directly . Since "0" flow elevation of the tailwater is just over 701', subtacting from the current elevation available on the Taneycomo realtime web page or on the computer generated message you can call - you can get the additional depth of the water you will be wading in or around. The flooding this year really changed the river at the top end. Phil Lilley, Leonard and many others have documented this very well - but I will only add that it is definately wider, flatter and more shallow - and I find it very accessable and fishable at 1-2 units - up to 704.5', with flows below 2800 cfs. That doesn't mean you can wade everywhere, but you can get away from the bank in many places and strip streamers or nymph with lighted indicators and not be limited to banging the outlets at night. If you look at the report closely, you will see they change the flows every hour - up and down, as they need to match the power requirements - and you can see and feel the difference. I've never seen so many people wade fishing in so many different locations with the flows we are seeing this weekend. Apologies to the fellow who asked about wading during generation- started a post earlier this evening and I tried to merge it with this topic... it must have deleted it. Never had a problem before. Sorry. But this should help. As for wading the past few days with this generation - I'm not expert but there are those who wade below the dam and they should chime in a give some advice.