Phil Lilley

Did you know that before one of the floods... may be 2007... both TR and Beaver were very low. TR was about 907 feet. I do wish they'd go ahead and drop these lake levels. TR is sitting at 917.2 feet and it's trickling through the dam right now. It is a little frustrating.

Just in... the spill gates were just closed today at Table Rock Dam after a week or more. Table Rock's level is just north of 917 feet, dropping more than three feet from its high after the last rain event. Beaver Lake is holding at 1,128.5 feet, just a foot and a half below its flood pool. There is rain in the forecast now, but it's due next week, expecting right now about two inches of rain. Table Rock Dam is now running only 1,400 cubic feet of water per second. The tailwater level is 704 feet, only about 2.5 feet high. Table Rock Lake has turned. The water coming from Table Rock is about 56 degrees, high in oxygen level but turbid. Its clarity isn't the best, but that's normal with Table Rock's turnover. This will last about a month and won't effect fishing that much. We've enjoyed a good run of threadfin shad over the spill gates as well as lots of warmwater species of fish -- crappie, white bass, walleye, blue gill, black, spotted and smallmouth bass, needlenose gar and spoonbill (I'm sure there are more species but that's what we've been seeing.) We're in for a week or more of mild weather with daytime temperatures in the 50's and 60's and not much wind. With the slower water -- and less water -- trout fishing should be very good. With the water running hard yesterday, Guide Don House reported catching very nice rainbows drifting Powerbait from Scotty's buoys down to the Fish House at the Branson Landing. We've sent anglers down there, and they've done well, too. Now that the water is slower, more people will be fishing other areas down lake and reporting back. Honestly, there just haven't been that many anglers fishing so getting a good fishing report, especially down lake, has been tough. I've been fishing down here a little, throwing white jigs along the bluff bank and doing fair, but the trout I'm catching are bigger than average. This reduction of flow has caught us by surprise. We knew the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers would close the gates and reduce flows when Table Rock dropped to desired level, but we didn't think that would mean a drop from 15,000 to 1,400 c.f.s. in just a few hours. Ryan and I went out this afternoon to try our luck. I felt like it was going to be really good, or really bad. It was better than good. Trout were rising aggressively all over the lake as we boated up past Fall Creek and the Narrows, jumping out of the water after hatching midges. Good sign. Quite a few boaters were out fishing and we saw lots of bent rods --- and even better sign! Boated past Guides Steve Dickey and John Sappington and got two thumbs up --- all right!! I tied on a while 1/32nd-ounce jig on a spinning outfit with two-pound line. Ryan had the same rig but he was using a black/yellow 1/32nd-ounce jig. He caught fish on his first two casts and I didn't get a bite after a few throws. I switched to black and yellow, started One Cast and caught one on the first cast. Steve Dickey's clients were drifting scuds and were hooked up most of the time we were up there. He told me just yesterday the trout were off the scud, not biting them at all. Today is a new day. They're liking scuds now. Now we were using two-pound line because we wanted to throw small jigs, but because the water clarity is not-so-good, you can get away with four-pound line for using bait -- just about anything. Fishing off our dock today was pretty successful. Everyone that I saw caught their limit plus some, throwing a few back. The bait of choice was orange and pink or yellow and pink PowerEggs. View full article

I wouldn't think so... no way to really know unless you did a study and use real data. It's how people perceive things... high water, low water. It's relative. Some like it high and some like it low. "Flooding" is a negative for sure and people will tend to stay away from areas that are "flooded". We get frustrated with news outlets that say Branson is "flooded" when we're really not. People will and have stayed away from Branson when it's reported we're "flooding" - when the strip and shows are not affected at all. As far as TR... I can only speculate. But high water only enhances a fishery, as far as the fish are concerned... most of the time.

Oh yeah... when the water is high here, my business suffers-- in the short run. High water, though, does help our trout fishery (most of the time). We get shad and other things from TR that make us anglers happy. And it does help move gravel around which I believe helps the bug population (scuds, sow bugs, midges). But yes, when out-of-towners hear "flood gates" they think flood and cancel reservations or don't come. Also, flooded areas in KS, OK and AR - those people didn't take vacations so tourism is down. Shane Bush did tell me that the crappie on BS should be awesome this year. BS's been high 3 years in a row so the spawn should have been excellent. We'll see.

That's because the rains missed the watershed... not by much.

Hey I resemble that remark Shane told me today that they (Corps) will drop TR first, then Beaver and last BS. I can speculate why but I don't know for sure. I'm sure a hydrologist can do it for me... but it has nothing to do with JM and BP. It has to do with the volume of water is each lake and how each can release it. Many other factors too, esp when it's "live" and there's water downstream to consider (flooding). They're always going to hold Beaver at high levels as long as TR is high - above Pool. Pool for TR changes to 915 feet December 1 so we're going to see heavy release at TR well into December.

Which parade?

Couldn't get past the itchy stage this fall... no beard. They dropped the flow this morning to about 16,600 cfs. Increased turbine flow to 3 units at 9,000 cfs and 7,600 cfs over the top. Haven't been out yet today but will this afternoon.

They dropped flow to about 15,000 cfs this morning. Turn over is happening right now.

No rain in the near future... nice!!

With the lakes above us approaching the "9's", we all below Table Rock Dam on Lake Taneycomo are breathing a sign of relief at the end of yet another high water event. Beaver has dropped about 18 inches from its crest of 1,130.5 feet to 1,129, and Table Rock is right at 919 feet. Both lakes continue to move water over their spill gates and through their turbines --- Beaver at more than 8,000 cubic feet per second, and Table Rock at 21,800. But I expect we should see a reduction of flow very shortly. This has been a very different high water event. Why? Spill gates have never been used during the months of either October or November when dissolved oxygen levels are an issue for our tail water. It's one thing to release water through the turbines where liquid oxygen can be added to keep O2 levels at safe levels, but when rainfall in the upper basin warrants bigger releases, things can get real dicey for our lake. The U.S. Corps of Army Engineers was forced to release water from the spill gates a few weeks ago for the first time October, and luckily the water released was cool enough not to harm our cold water trout. We've had three big rains; the last one dumped 3-5 inches of rain on Beaver Lake and the rest of the upper White River basin, causing pretty big releases from both dams. At the same time, the Corps has taken a couple of turbines at Table Rock Dam offline for service, so spill gate releases were increased to make up for turbine release. Again, Table Rock's water temperature had dropped to the low 60's, so this release didn't bother the trout. As these releases continued, and we fished in the high flows, I expected to see threadfin shad coming over the upper gates. It's almost a given to expect some awesome fishing opportunities when the gates are open, but again, they've never been opened this time of year. They were opened once in September 2009, and that release killed a lot of trout, main our brown trout, because the water was very warm -- in the 80's. So, no shad appeared last week. Fishing was just okay. It took me several days of frustrating fishing to figure out why shad weren't coming over the spill gates. It was because the thermocline was above the gate level. Water below the thermocline is basically void of oxygen, so there was no living thing below it. It wasn't until Saturday, when the lake started to mix, and the thermocline started to dissolve, that fish were able to swim down to that level of the spill gates and be transported to Taneycomo. Yes, we saw a few shad and other fish come over last week but just a few, in spurts. But now that Table Rock has started to mix and that good, cold water is starting to sink, we should see a steady diet of bait fish flow in to Taneycomo for the duration of the spill. At the time of this writing, I don't know exactly what's going on below the dam and what's in the release from Table Rock, but I assume there are shad coming over and our fish are eating them like crazy. The shad we've seen are small, maybe an inch long. Again, I assume it's because of the time of year that they are so small. Usually, later in the winter and spring, the shad we see are much bigger. I don't think we will need to adjust the size of what we're throwing to match a smaller bait fish, though. Our white 1/8th ounce marabou jigs and shad flies should do the trick. As seen in this One Cast video, white jigs and the Bomber Fat-Free Fingerling crank bait was working Monday afternoon/evening. And I know a nickle or white spoon will also catch fish. A medium size white marabou jig under a float with either a fly rod or spin cast rig will work, too, and I don't think you'll have to set your float at 20 feet deep, which is a real pain to manage. Those fish will be coming off the bottom for a white morsel of fish -- actually they'll even take them off the surface. These reports are always hard to write, especially when I know there will be changes to flow and conditions days, or even hours after I post them. Such is the case today. So I'm going to keep adding to this report in the comment section and try to keep everyone up on these changes and how they will affect fishing conditions. But one thing is for sure -- we're in for some great trout fishing through the holiday season! View full article

Not very often... but more than you think, esp in the evening. 15 here this morning with a breeze. Haven't got outside yet... Going to take the lake's temperature and see if it's dropped some more. We may get a huge shad deposit before this is over. Haven't had one of those in many years.

Didn't know what to title this topic... Taney's not turning but Table Rock is. Temp was 61 a couple of days ago. 58.9 this morning and 58.3 at 4 when we did One Cast. Fishing was dead this morning... now, shad in the water this afternoon and fish are killing it. Debated to just do OC from the dock and not go out in the wind and snow... glad we ran to the dam. Excited for the next few days. Hopefully it's not another flash in the pan like we had on Saturday. Fishing got hot, saw a bunch of shad... then it dried up. Tough bite. No shad. But with this cold front and wind, TR's temp should drop on out and the lake should mix.

Came from over the top. That’s their first stop, resting I bet. Should be an interesting next 30 days or so.

3-5 inches

I don't think this will change much... not big enough flow. The big flows do move gravel around some but even then not much. May see some change at the Narrows. Seems like that's the spot that gravel moves the most.

Duane just sent me a pic of threadfin shad he's seen up below the dam this morning. That means Table Rock is starting to mix. The water temps were 59 from under and 61 from over and dam. Cold nights, wind I'm sure has dropped the surface temp down even more so it's going to happen real quick, seeing temps aren't going to reach the 60's starting Tuesday in the near future. Teens at night and 30's and 40's daytime. The shad will trigger some fantastic feeding and catching now for quite a while. The scuds are already booming. TR turning almost 30 days early... man it's going to be an incredible winter season here.

Catching today wasn't too good, at least for me. Too much junk in the water this morning and just tough this afternoon. But the 2 rainbows I caught, both below Lookout and caught on scuds, were fatter than a tick, probably with scuds.

I'm expecting an email any minute... from the Corps telling us about the 4 inches of rain that fell in NW Arkansas and SW Missouri and the plan to release a bunch of water from Beaver and TR Dams. Beaver is rising but not as fast as Table Rock which is at 918.4 feet. They've already increased flow at Table Rock but it's hard to tell how much. Taney's level is at 709.6 but they're only running 4,800 cfs through the turbines. I got an email yesterday saying that the Corps was starting to work on the head gates which means they can't run some turbines. So almost all the flow is coming over the spill gates. Yesterday I took water temps. The water coming over the dam is 61. The water coming through the turbines is 59. DO is over 10 ppm which is excellent. The 2 degrees difference between the two means Table Rock is very close to turning over. Next week's cold snap should start the process. When Table Rock hits 920 feet, the Corp will start releasing 20,000 cfs. That's the equivalent of 5 units. If you don't mind the flow, fishing should be excellent, fishing with shad flies, white jigs and scuds.

Shane Bush, Missouri Department of Conservation Fisheries Biologist for Table Rock and Taneycomo, sent me this PDF file of a presentation given last week by Gabe Knight. Gabe works for the Little Rock Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It has some good straight forward information on how and why releases are made, encompassing all of the White River Water Basin. Water Management Overview Knight_2019.pdf