Phil Lilley

I've always told ppl 4 to Branson and another 4 to RB. I guess I need to change my lingo.

Beaver is coming up today after the rain and TR is steady at 916.14 feet. The rain probably added 2-3 days more heavy flow to the schedule. But with the shad coming through, I'm not going to complain.

The white bite in on this morning. Phil Stone just called and said they're catching multiples on the 1/8th oz white from the cable all the way down to Fall Creek. Much better than even yesterday's trip, he said. One over 20 inches too - released.

You can definitely get up higher and that might get you some good fish. MDC is supposed to stock today and tomorrow according to a little birdie. That should help. I caught 2 toads on One Cast dragging a white jig from Andy's to the Narrows. Three good bites - not too bad. Caught some more working the inside bank below Fall Creek to RP ramp with an 1/8th oz sculpin jig.

About 8 miles. Yes there is but I don't remember the name of the dock.

I've been hesitant about writing a fishing report for Taneycomo this week because I know as soon as I do the Corps will change the generation pattern and thus completely blow my report of out the water. So I'm going to write a short one and wait for the change which I think will happen in the next couple of days. They've been blowing 15,000 cubic feet of water per second since March 15. That's 14,256,000,000 cubic feet of water or 106,634,000,000 gallons of water in 11 days. The flow is equal to 4 full tubines running but only 3 are online so they're making up for the extra flow by spilling 5,000 c.f.s. over and through 5 gates. Water temperature is about 41 coming through the turbines and about 45 over the top. When mixed, we're seeing 44 degrees down around the resort. Clarity is pretty clear. We've seen some shad come over the top of the dam for sure but we might be seeing some come through the turbines. White jigs are doing ok but dragging white shad flies is producing a lot more fish. I've been really trying to make my jigs work but I just can't beat the numbers of rainbows mainly being caught between the dam and Trophy Run. Phil Stone's clients caught some nice rainbows drifting from Lookout through the Narrows dragging small 1/16th ounce jigs on the bottom on Wednesday. And others are dragging a double scud rig on the same drift, using a #10 or #12 gray scuds with 4-pound line. Again, I worked the bluff bank using an 1/8th-ounce white jig and only caught a couple on one drift... not the success I'd think I'd have if these fish are seeing shad. From Fall Creek down, the water is fast and it's hard to get anything to the bottom unless you're drifting from the big log cabin down and staying on the inside of the lake. Scuds, minnows and night crawlers are doing just ok here. You really need to stay down below the Riverpointe Estates boat ramp, I think, to get a good drift. The flat from Short Creek to Trout Hollow has been producing good numbers of rainbows. Drifting minnows from the bend past our place and staying middle to inside of the lake has been pretty good too. The creek downtown are the best and easiest place to catch a limit of rainbows. They're going up into Turkey, Coon and Roark Creek to get out of the current and finding warmer water. Our guides are still catching them on the Pink worm under a float, fishing it 4-feet deep, 4-pound line. I've also heard of people catching them throwing spoons and rooster tails. Table Rock is approaching 916 feet, only 1 foot over power pool. It should hit it by tomorrow morning, depending on how much rain falls today. Honestly, I'm surprised they've ran it this hard as long as they have, and I'm really not sure if they will slow it down once the level drops below 916 feet. But chances are they will back off a bit, at least shutting down the spill gates. This will slow the water down and make it easier to fish, especially in areas like just below Fall Creek where a lot of big trout are usually caught. We will see. View full article

It took 2 tickets. And they haven’t acknowledged they caused the issue. They have been awesome... up to now.

A "patch" I ran last week changed my storage settings... weren't supposed to do that. I use Amazon S3. I've changed most of the settings but not sure what all was set to S3. So if you see anything that's not here on the forum... icons, images, banners - anything, let me know and I'll change that setting.

I agree.... I'll get him to kid around more. He's a lot of fun.

Will pray... what's his first name. Easier for me... not for the Lord.

I'd like to more of these.... if I can Bill to take me fishing.

Images posted or attached/uploaded on OAF are stored on Amazon s3. My account. Those are the ones that are 404.

I use Amazon s3 storage. May be I'm not politically correct or Woke enough for them... We've been blocked!! 😮 No... I've been trying to understand this s3 bucket thing and came to the conclusion that for whatever reason my files were blocked on 3/16 about noon. Images since are fine - older images are "404". So I've submitted a trouble ticket to Amazon. We'll see what they say.

I grabbed an old pic... kinda funny.

Also, let me know where there are images that have disappeared. Please

I'm not sure what's going on here... but some images have disappeared off the server - or something has been misdirected. Personal avatar images are gone. Nothing changed. I turned in a ticket and they didn't have any help. So I'm suggesting for now - if you want - change you image on your personal page. It's not that hard.

Well, the funny (and sad) thing about writing a report and then waiting to post it is that conditions change. And they have most certainly have changed!! We got another 1.5 inches of rain last night prompting the USACE to open 5 spill gates + 3 turbines to up the present release to 15,000 c.f.s.. See today's One Cast. The heavier flow will clean out alot of junk that has settle on the bottom of the lake including the algae we've been talking about on One Cast. But it will take a bit. They opened the gates at 9 am this morning and now at noon the water running by our dock is pretty nasty. This is normal, but a pain because it's almost impossible to fish without getting a bunch of crud on your hook. It will clean out by the end of the day, at least in our area of the lake. I've been asked, what will this do to our fishing. Of course, it means higher, faster water, especially on the upper lake. In the trophy area, hopefully it will mean threadfin shad coming over the top (which I did see a few in the water this morning). And I think we'll see a much better scud bite all the way down to Trout Hollow. The water coming over the top is about 3 degrees warmer than the water coming through the turbines. The trout will like that. It will warm up the water further downstream too. The creeks will be hot again as soon as the runoff from last night's rain drops off. You'll even find some trout in slower water eddies in various areas of the lake... they like to get out of fast current when they can.

Jim Johnson, Naknek River Camp/Alaska, is looking at their drifter. Anyone know about the company? Looks like a nice boat.

Rain has returned to the Ozarks. And after watching my source of future rainfall amounts, we're getting about what NOAA predicted. We received three inches of rain last night with similar amounts dropped into the Table Rock watershed, but fortunately it appears Beaver Lake was spared. That will help us in the long run. Generally, one inch of rain equals a one-foot rise on Table Rock. With the lake level starting at 913 feet, we may see a rise to about 917 feet. This will not trigger any automatic flows from Table Rock Dam, but we may see releases in the neighborhood of 11,000 cubic feet per second, or four units of generation. Table Rock's level has to crest above 920 feet before spill gates come into play. So for Lake Taneycomo we're looking at moderate generation for the next couple of weeks. Drift fishing will be the norm for most anglers, although as soon as the creeks clear out, I'm sure there will be big numbers of trout taking shelter in the warmer and calmer water. Salem Kellenberger 16-inch brown - Released The creeks to target would be Bull, Bee, Coon, Roark, Turkey, Cooper and Short creeks. Really, any side water that's fed by ground water will be warmer than the 42 degree water coming through Table Rock's Dam. Yes, trout are coldwater fish, but 42 is chillier than they like. They would prefer 50-55 degree water over 42 any day. So would their food. A spring rain like this one will wash worms into the lake . . . lots of night crawlers. We should see a lot of worms in the bellies of trout below these creek mouths. Minnows and night crawlers will be the bait of choice after a good rain. And if you're fly fishing, the San Juan Worm would be a good fly to try. I drifted a minnow on Friday out in front of the resort and had three good bites. The first, I had a large minnow on a #8 hook. The bite was a good one, but I evidently didn't let him take it long enough -- although I missed the fish, my minnow showed scars of a fish with teeth. It was almost bit in half, which means my bite came from a brown trout. I sure hate missing those bites! But I did nail a few rainbows on Saturday late afternoon including a nice 18-incher in front of Lazy Valley Resort. This week, we've been hammering the upper lake, using white jigs and shad flies, hoping to find evidence of any threadfin shad coming through the turbines at the dam. So far I don't think we've seen any shad. We're catching a few trout on white, but that's pretty typical all during the year. Table Rock's surface water temperature is starting to warm up, but the water below the surface is still in the low 40's. Threadfin shad don't do well in this cold water so we should see shad dying for most of the spring. Hopefully some will make down to 130 feet deep at the dam and get sucked through the turbines. With the low flows this winter, the green algae we see on the bottom of our lake has been pretty thick. We haven't had enough hard flows to kick it loose yet. But with this rain, I'm hoping the heavier flows will dislodge and clear out some of this stuff and at the same time roll some gravel and move some scuds out of their safe places into our trout's mouths. In the spring, we usually see our trout beefing up on scuds, and drifting scud flies on the bottom becomes the number one technique of choice for plump catches. We will see! Conner Walker caught this 20” Rainbow in the trophy area using an 1/8oz. white jig - Released Way too windy Saturday at the dam but boatloads of anglers were out trying. White jigs were reportedly hot in the morning, but they had cooled off by the time I arrived. Ended up finding some rainbows and did One Cast showing how I caught them. Basically I had to fish a scud under a float, keeping it from dragging on the bottom. There's too much algae to drag a fly across the bottom. I used a spinning outfit with a weighted float and a split shot about 20 inches from the scud. I fished a #12 gray and a #14 rainbow/dubbing scud and both caught fish. We had a 25-inch rainbow come in, caught on an 1/8th-ounce white jig in the Narrows area Saturday afternoon. Released. Anglers are also catching trout drifting orange Gulp Power Eggs from above our place at Lilley's down past Cooper Creek. Also white is doing pretty well, too. But remember night crawlers and minnows -- they have a much better chance catching a trophy brown or rainbow. View full article