Phil Lilley

We have it covered in our meta tags. We also have over 2 dozen different sites linked to ozarkanglers, something the search engines look at.

I saw quite a few being caught below Cooper down to the bridge drifting Gulp Eggs. The current seems to be alot slower below Cooper.

Brian, A good question would be- is there any indicators on the internet that you watch to keep track of river levels?

I lack good quality bass pics... I won't go to google images to get them. I'd like to take them ALL myself but can't do that so I'm always open to good pics. What I mean by good- ~~Clear, detailed and not old or blurry. ~~a guy or gal or kid holding a fish is ok but what I'd like is a little creativity in the pose. ~~scenery- always like scenic pics of streams or lakes, bluffs... whatever. And again clear. The rotating header at the top is made of images that were provided my OAF members. They are the best of the best images I have, which really aren't that numerous. We are aware of the fact that the whole site is heavy into Taneycomo, trout and fly fishing, which isn't a bad thing. But it is my wish to keep widening the scope of the whole site to other venues and fisheries but we need help in doing so. Thanks for all you ALL do!

Membership on OA homepage is not the same as membership on the forum. Completely different animals. Membership on OA, though, doesn't get you anything right now, but it will in the future- just not sure at this point. We're still learning the program. So no, your OAF user name and pw will not work on the homepage. You'll have to create a new membership.

We had a few glitches changing over... lots of broken images mainly. If you're looking around and see any, copy and paste the url and post it so we can go in and fix all of them. Need to do some work on the Current and Elevenpoint yet. The frontpage will feature new and refreshed articles almost daily. I'll be posting my fishing reports there from now on- plus on the forum. Each new article will file down from top to bottom as well as being placed in the article and or home water section. You can RSS the front page articles and get them sent to your yahoo or google homepage. I have advised all our OAF contributors that they're reports and articles can be posted on the front page too if they're "worthy"... and if anyone has anything they'd like to contribute, please feel free to email it to me. As you can see, Mr Beeson has his own corner... and rightly so. Let us know what you think.

MWP doesn't patrol Taney much simply because there are few serious incidents on our lake compared to Table Rock. If they did patrol Taney more you'd see a decline in these infractions. Education, enforcement and consequences are the keys. There's very little of any I'm afraid.

Thanks for joining us. With stream fishing heating up here in the near future, you'll find people come out of the woodwork on the forum with good reports and info on those rivers and streams. Exciting!

From my standpoint, it'll look alot greener in a few days. Our water is already cleared up and looking good on upper Taney.

Where's the fun in that?!?

Sounds like a good idea.

Branson - zero But 3 inches of rain. Table Rock is shooting up big time!

Team Trout Tournament was held on Saturday, March 1 at Lilleys' Landing on Lake Taneycomo. Thirty-six boats braved the cold morning but with the anticipation of warmer temps to come. We weren't disappointed- the mercury topped 79 degrees! Trout fishing wasn't disappointing either. Most of the top finishers fished exclusively using a jig-n-float method. One team used brown jigs near Trout Hollow and another top finisher did well across from Cooper Creek Access. I know some teams traveled as far as Bull Creek while some stayed closer to home. The contest was limited to artificial only- no soft plastics or scented baits. Only 2 teams chosed to fish above Fall Creek, and those 2 teams could only weigh in rainbows under 12 and over 20 inches. Largest rainbow weighed in at a whopping 1.4 pounds with no legal browns brought in. It was caught by the Allen/Huff team. We paid 4 places. First place went to the Tutz/George team with 7.20 pounds (8 trout). Second was Hinson/Huffman team with 6.90 pounds, third- Allen'Huff with 6.68 pounds and forth- Bracy/Bracy with 6.46 pounds. Don House and Leonard Keeney

I'm going to move you over to the Powersite forum- you'll get alot better advise over there. I assume you're fishing for whites and/or walleye. If you read back in the archives you'll see stick baits like bombers and rouges are worked along the bank in slower water and eddies for walleye- also swimming minnows. At night is the best time to fish for walleyes- or on a dark, rainy day like today. Water running is a must and I think you'll see alot of that in the future after today. Gitzits also are good as well as grubs and sliders. I like light colors in the day and dark at night. You might even hook a white or two but I doubt it until the water temp warms up a bit.

I heard the White was generating hard and shad were gushing out... pretty reliable source. Graphs might not be working or I'm wrong.

Fly-fishing: Traditionalists should approve of DEC 'chuck-and-duck' ban Thursday, February 28, 2008 Morgan Lyle http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/feb/28/228_FlyFishing/ Beginning Oct. 1, you may start seeing something along the fly-fishing-only zones of the Salmon River that, so far, you haven’t seen very often: back casts. The Department of Environmental Conservation is poised to rid the fly zones of “chuck-and-duck” fishing, which employs large amounts of split shot or similar sinkers, and basically converts a fly rod to a kind of plug-casting rig. Only true fly-fishing — casting the line, not the lure — will be allowed. Generations of anglers after steelheads and salmon on the Lake Ontario tributary have considered heavy sinkers necessary to get their flies to the bottom of deep pools where the fish lie. The split shot also enabled an alternate way of casting: You gather in your slack, raise the rod tip over your left shoulder, snap it forward, lobbing your sinkers and fly into the current. This works even when you’re pinned up against a wooded bank with no room for a back cast, or when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with other anglers, which are both fairly common occurrences on the Salmon River. Of course, if a pool is ringed with anglers lobbing “slinkies” — three-inch lengths of parachute cord stuffed with split shot and clipped to the leader — then real fly-fishing is going to be difficult, if not impossible. Getting a fly near the bottom of an eight-foot-deep pool, even when using a sinking fly line, requires casting well upstream of the target lie. That’s not possible in crowded conditions. Chuck-and-duck fishing leads to crowding, and crowding makes chuck-and-duck necessary. And, of course, all those flies dragged to the bottom by all that weight cause lots of foul-hooking. For a significant percentage of chuck-and-duck anglers, that’s the whole idea. They’re convinced salmon and steelhead seldom, if ever, bite, and believe snagging them is the only way to catch them. All that ends in the fly zones on Oct. 1. You’ll still be allowed to use weighted flies and weight on your leader, the way you would nymph-fish a trout stream, but you won’t be allowed to use weight to the extent that it becomes “the primary means of propelling the cast.” In other words, you have to cast the line, with the fly going along for the ride, which is the basic defin­ition of fly-fishing. At first, I imagined an uproar in the parking lots when anglers who drove all night from Pennsylvania or Massachusetts are told they can’t use their slinkies. Indeed, there have been a handful of complaints to the DEC about banning chuck-and-duck from the fly-fishing-only water. But overall, the trend on the Salmon River’s fly zones has been toward traditional fly-fishing, back cast and all, according to Fran Verdoliva, the Salmon River program coordinator for the DEC. “You see less and less people in that particular section using the running line, strip-casting technique,” Verdoliva said. “You see people using some weight, but still able to roll cast or overhead cast.” I wondered about how the rule would be enforced, since the new regulation doesn’t say specifically how much weight is allowed. Verdoliva said DEC law enforcement officers know the difference between chuck-and-duck casting and trad­itional roll casts or overhead casts. As he noted, the difference in the two techniques is pretty obvious. What about the catching? Is it possible to catch bottom-oriented salmon and steelhead with traditional fly-fishing gear and tactics? You bet. There has always been a small group of Salmon River anglers who fish that way. They catch their share of fish, and while they probably hook up less often than chuck-and-duckers, they probably find the fish they do catch more rewarding. “There have been a couple of people who’ve contacted me through the department and said, ‘I won’t be able to fish anymore,’ ” Verdoliva said. “To put it bluntly, that’s kind of stupid. If that’s the only way you can fish, you’re pretty limited.” And as Verdoliva, a former Salmon River guide who still enjoys chuck-and-duck fishing sometimes, pointed out, if you simply must chuck and duck, you’ll have 12 miles of river on which to do it. Meanwhile, those of us who really want to fly-fish will finally be able to. By the way, during the summer, weight will continue to be banned altogether from the Salmon River’s fly zones, in order to provide fair chase for summer-run steelheads and Atlantic salmon. Most people think of the Salmon River as being a fall, winter and early spring fishery, but the summer species are becoming more common, and people who know how to fish for them are having success, Verdoliva said. “It doesn’t sound like much, but we had 20 Atlantics here come to the hatchery this fall,” he said. “We’ve never had any at all before.”

Has it been a year?!?!? I had to go back and check the archives.... just to make sure you were cheating and taking a second special day... Thanks Tim for all you do for us here on OAF. Phil

Was looking at some old posts and found this - Tuesday March 6, 2007 James R. at Galena 49 degrees Beaver Cr. at Kissee Mills 53 degrees White River channel at Shadowrock boat ramp 51 degrees Spring River OK at Hwy. 10 57 degrees N. Fork White R. at Tecumseh 45 degrees (actual 3/5/07) Interesting to look almost a year back and see how far behind we are of last year. But this is really what I'd call a normal year.

Your love for fishing is shared by everyone who signs up or not... types or not... just the fact that you registered and made your first post- that's more than most who register. Don't worry about a thing... just go fishing and if you feel like it, tell us how you did.

Nice report. We worked on your boat most of today... tough getting all the varnish off but we did. One side has a new coat but it got too late for the other side so Jim and Phyliss will finish it tomorrow, I think. Depends on how fast the coats dry.

Thanks for signing up... looking forward to hear how you do this spring.

Boy there's alot of color variations and conditions- it'd take a book to list them all. Blue is always good for whites. But the standards are smoke, chartreuse, motor oil and purple. The latter two for walleye, with red specks.

I only do this report every 4 years so listen up! Generation has slowed all during the week. Today is no different, starting fairly heavy early and dropping all during the day but never going all the way off. Tomorrow may be more of the same or none at all. I'm guessing none. Our trout are revidalized from the running water. Good and strong and always hungry... well almost always. There's been a fair amount of pressure on them last weekend and even during the week this week but still people seem to be really good, drifting in front of our place using power eggs and gulp eggs and catching rainbows. I've seen some decent ones and some small ones. If you get lucky and the water is running, remember to drop the weight size as the water drops and you won't get hung up as bad. Down past Cooper to Monkey Island, rainbows are keying in on spoons pretty good- little cleos in nickle and gold with alittle red or blue mixed. Also your spin-a-lures. From Fall Creek to Short Creek, jig and float using the regular colors- olive, brown and black and of course sculpin mixed with colors like ginger and peach with an orange head. Fish it 4-6 feet deep. If they're running water, use a 1/32 and if they're not- 1/50 to 1/125th or a micro. 2 pound line always catches more fish. Might try throwing a crank bait up around the docks drifting down. Above Fall Creek, white jigs if the water isn't running is still doing well. If not, back to the old tactics like jig and float, throwing a straight jig or fly rodding it. Flies- scuds and midges should be a killer this weekend. 6x tippet and a scud fished on the drop off and on the bottom- try gray shades as well as brown, tan and olive. They don't seem to be real picky on the color or size. #14- #16 is good. Also Zebra Midges fished shallow on the flats and deeper in the channel. If there's a chop- strip a soft hackle or a wooly.

Knew you'd find an excuse to come down again this winter... glad I could help.

Any of the low-end Shimano do fine- $29- $39. Rainbow, brown, gold or silver F-7's or 9's work well, as well as your regular Pointers and other stick baits. This time of year, creeks are good too.