Phil Lilley

Spammer... I deleted the post and the quote - so that the links are not live on the site. Thanks for the heads up.

So that was you guys I saw a little while ago... sorry I didn't recognize you all. I actually thought it was another guy, a local. I struggled out there this evening.

Megaworm... I'm really not the one to tell you cause i haven't fished it that much. I did today though and while I was fishing it, I thought "I need to write or video something on this thing". Confirmation! Today while the water was coming on, I fished a white one under a float 8 feet deep and fished along the bluff bank across from Short Creek - caught 2 rainbows and missed another. Jeremy Hunt is probably the best to say and I'll ask him next time I talk to him. He catches a lot of trout on it here and in Arkansas. I've sighted fish for trout using it, throwing it in shallow water and twitching it back, watching for it to disappear. I'll get on this and try to have something before I leave next week on vacation.

Yes I do. I have them on a 220R hook as well as the 3769. I wrap a small copper wire over the dubbing too.

First - temp and DO levels. Note the rise and fall (blue lines). It correlates to generation and daylight. Night time is the lowest and rises when they turn the water on. It also heads up after dawn. This is down by our place. Note the drop AFTER they started running this hard generation. It basically pushed the colder but low DO water down from the upper end. I caught a couple of rainbows yesterday that didn't fight well but only 2 out of 18. The rest fought well. Why are they running it like this? I have no idea. I did ask that question a couple of weeks ago when they were running 35 mw 24/7 and didn't get an answer. Scuds are king in the trophy area. Brown, or mink, has been the best color the last couple of days. And bigger ones - #14's or even #12's. And using 6x tippet again... ditched the 7x. I fished late morning today from above the dock to almost the bend up lake on the shallow side. Started throwing a sculpin/burnt orange/orange head 1/16th oz jig, 2-pound line and caught some real pretty rainbows. Did One Cast. Then I got the fly rod out and fished a mink scud, #14, under a float 6 feet deep and caught 6 rainbows - missed several others. Switched to a brown #16 zebra midge under a float 5 feet and caught a couple. Then I tied on a medium mega worm, cream. It's not the big fluffy mega but a medium (thinner) worm tied at the head only with a nickel bead, not a jig hook. I bought them from a guy who sells a lot of flies to the trout parks. They worked real good! Fished them deep enough to get to the bottom. Missed more strikes than I connected with though. I think they were taking them short. One rainbow I caught had a half dozen brown and gray snails in its mouth. I noted most of the trout had big bellies... are they all eating snails now!? Interesting.

Just for fun, sit and watch the "fishing" in outlet #2 for a while. Note the ratio of legal hookups verses foul hooked hookups. Fouls will win. But what I noticed is that these were "normal" drift-stop-set hookups and not throw-and-jerk (for the most part). The guys using 2 flies snagged fish almost every time. So it's not necessarily the fault of the angler foul hooking fish... it's the nature of the beast - fishing the outlet. So many fish there that you can't help but snag. Keeping a foul hooked fish... that person lacks a moral conscience. He's gotta believe it's ok to do it and block out the fact in his own mind that it's illegal plus it doesn't take much skill to run a line of hooks over a back and catch a fin.

They've always been around. Actually don't see as many as I used to years ago. Duane said he saw fish busting on minnows at Fall Creek the other morning... that's unusual!!

It's amazing those nice ones get by all the bait in that area to grow that big and beautiful! Nice!

Some old scud videos.

Actually a lot of them are sow bugs.

Lilleys' Landing Resort will host it's first Spey Casting Clinic featuring John McCloskey from Griffin, Georgia as the instructor. John McCloskey has had many adventures along his path, from fighting on U.S Karate teams to fighting fire. He was a technical rescue and high angle rope instructor for the state for many years as well as an E.M.T., and he served his community well. John has always instructed in some form or fashion but his real passions are found in the outdoors. Adventure has escorted John to vast destinations and landed him the trophy of experience and lifelong friendships. His time on the water is spent in Alaska through the summer months, then back south chasing monster browns fall through the spring. “No matter where I go to fish from the Naknek, South Platte, or the Cumberland, the Chattahoochee is not far from my thoughts. It’s a challenging river with great rewards and broken hearts. These waters truly haunt me.” When not guiding, John can be found fishing, hunting, or with his family. He loves flint knapping and working on survival skills. John is an excellent instructor and loves sharing the knowledge he has attained through many years of experience. Ask him about his flies and he’ll be happy to share his boxes which include a list of originals like “Lost on Bourbon Street,” “Sexual Chocolate,” and the “Suckerpunch” to name a few. One thing is for sure, if it’s adventure you seek, the Tattooed Pirate is your man. I personally witnessed a short clinic John put on for a couple of clients on Big Creek this summer (Big Creek is a tributary of the Naknek River in SW Alaska). He started with the basics and had the men casting a 2-handed spey rod by lunch time. The class will begin Friday morning with class instruction on spey casting basics including all the tools needed including lines, heads, flies and rods. Friday afternoon we'll move right in to casting and more on Saturday. Included with the clinic is lodging (2 - 4 nights), all meals and entertainment. Also all equipment such as spey rods for casting. Not included would things like waders and outer gear if weather is disagreeable. Cost: $400 per person. Class size is very limited. Like I said, this is the first time we've tried anything like this so we're working out the bugs...

Well autumn is finally arriving here -- at least we hope we all are done with summer high temperatures. We've received good rains lately and everything is green again. The trees are starting to show a little color on the bluffs, and the fall flowers are in full blooms along the lake. Trout fishing on Taneycomo stayed pretty strong all summer. We usually see water conditions deteriorate as fall approaches -- the dissolved oxygen drops, and water temperature rises -- but we haven't seen hardly any of that yet. The lake temperature is holding at about 52 degrees, and the water is very clear. Generation has varied; weather and temperature seem to dictate how much and how long dam operators run water. Since its grown cooler, they've been running water for two to three hours late in the afternoon and only running one to two units. Our brown trout move up in the lake in fall months to spawn. They actually don't spawn successfully, but do go through the motions. We are seeing a good number of browns already up below the dam, some being caught up near the hatchery outlets. Guide Chuck Gries told me clients are hooking most browns when wading and fly fishing below the dam. Most of these browns are on the small side, but several in the 22 - to 26-inch range have been brought in. Guide Tony Weldele has been seeing some very large browns moving up, staging in the Narrows area. These browns are almost always on the move and won't stay in one area for very long. Browns and rainbows are being caught on scuds, sow bugs, egg flies and sculpin streamers. I know other flies are good, too, including cracklebacks, WD40's, san juan worms, mega worms, soft hackles and woolybuggers. Night fishing has been very good throwing big streamers, as well as the miracle fly and scuds under a glowing indicator. Thursday morning I fished the Narrows area with no generation. Since it was almost 9 a.m., the sun was already up over most of the area. Struggling for most of the morning, I tried larger scuds (12's and 14's) in gray and brown with no takers. I stripped a sculpin woolybugger for a while with not even one chaser. It wasn't until I changed to 7x tippet and a #18 gray scud that I started picking up trout. I also tried and caught a few on a #18 primrose -n- pearl zebra midge under a float 30 inches deep. It was sunny with hardly any wind, so conditions were tough. When fishing the bigger flies, the fish would come and look, then turn away. But later when I reduced the size of everything, I was able to target feeding rainbows, especially close to the bank and on the shallow flats. This is why they are digging around in the gravel and along the banks: Scud flies come in lots of sizes, shapes and colors. We tie most of them using natural fur of various kinds -- squirrel, rabbit, mink, muskrat, dog and cat . . . even kangaroo! Each one has a different texture and ties differently on a hook. They also act differently in water. The shape depends on the style of hook used, whether long, short, curved or straight. And, of course, the size depends on the size of hook. We add weight using very thin lead wire wrapped around the hook or thin brass or copper wire wrapped around the fur to give the fly a segmented look. Once the fur is applied and the fly is done, a small wire brush is used to comb the fibers down, creating the legs under the bug. Excess fibers are trimmed on top -- although my example scuds aren't combed and trimmed very well. I observed scuds in tan, gray, olive and brown colors while raising them in an aquarium several years ago. In the evenings when water has been running, I have been jig fishing, mostly in the trophy area. Wednesday evening I started up close to the dam, looking up in some slack water pockets for staging brown. I did find a few medium-sized browns in what I would call outlet #4 -- where the water comes out of a pipe about 150 yards below outlet #3. I hooked one of these browns for a few seconds on a chartreuse mega worm under an indicator, but the hook pulled out. I tried a few dry flies in this area because I've had luck in the past picking up both browns and rainbows, but they weren't interested. I moved on down the bank throwing a 1/8th ounce sculpin jig, brown head and caught a few decent rainbows. Skipping the Trophy Run area, I boated on down below Lookout Island. That's where this video starts. I was hoping to luck into one of the browns that our guides had been telling us about. This was a big female. Its adipose fin had been clipped, identifying it as a triploid brown. Triploids are rendered sterile from birth. Eggs from brown trout are treated with hot water just after being fertilized, making them sterile. These browns are thought to grow faster because they supposedly don't go through the motions of spawning like other browns. The Missouri Department of Conservation first stocked triploids in Taneycomo in 2011. They only make up a small percentage of the total number of browns stocked. Jig fishing has been fair to good. We've been using smaller jigs when the water is off and heavier jigs during generation. Tony Weldele told me his clients were catching a lot of rainbows below Lookout in the mornings on the 3/32nd-ounce sculpin/ginger/brown head jig, four-pound line. (I'm guessing this is up closer to Lookout in deeper water and early before the sun gets up high overhead.) We've been pretty successful throwing smaller jigs with two-pound line down around the resort area, up closer to Fall Creek but still out of the trophy area. The area from Fall Creek up to the Narrows has also been profitable with sculpin/ginger, sculpin/peach and straight sculpin or olive in 1/32nd -and 1/16th-ounce jigs. Before the sun hits the water, work your jig close to the surface, especially if the trout are midging, and fish them deeper as the sun hits the water. During generation, we're using four-pound line and heavier jigs -- 3/32nd and 1/8th ounce in the same colors. Duane has been drifting with the Berkley's Pink Powerworm during generation and doing the best down lake around the Landing. Note how he threads the worm up the hook and line: This is a #8 short shanked hook we sell on our drift rigs. Salmon eggs are still doing very well when the water is off, fished from our dock and other locations on the lake. Also Powerbait paste in yellow and orange as well as PowerEggs when drifted with the current. View full article

@Johnsfolly you have my permission to elaborate What would you call them?

Let me spain a little. Michael Maples married Bill Medley's daughter, McKenna. She sings with her dad at Harrah's in Vegas, along with Bucky Heard who has taken his original partner's place, Bobby Hatfield. Maples used to live in Branson and owned a gym where I met him about 11 years ago. Bill Medley and I share birthdays - 9/19 - so I text them to wish him a happy birthday every year. So Maples does this video yesterday... thus "Bill's cake" and then Bucky asking me to send him 2 bucks... Made my day... along with all the other activities. It's great to have awesome friends.

Just had a couple of guys bring in 3 big walleye they caught with a guide this morning- they needed to clean them. They measured 24-26 inches. Said they were fishing for bass... night crawlers in 20-25 feet and straight west of Moonshine - my guess on the long, main point there.

Anyone have any recommendations for sealing asphalt yourself. I've looked at Lowes and Home Depot products and am not impressed. I think I'd like to use a petro-based product. I don't think a water based sealant would work - ever. Years ago we rented a trailer with a hot mix sealant to seal our church parking lot but that company is no longer in biz. Thanks

Start about noon and go into the night. We'll light the firepits.

Sure I love cheesecake but it’s not on my list of approved foods... but it is my birthday 🎂

In the span of eternity, hours, days, years are all a vapor in time. We are allotted just so much time here... spend it wisely.

Yea I’m still in Boston...