Phil Lilley

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Starting in June, I torture myself every couple of weeks, tossing and hoping our trout will look up and start taking my dry flies. It's different each year, but most of the time our trout don't take much on the surface till late August or September. But I start early, hoping.... Brian Shaffer texted me this morning and said he's still doing pretty good on ants and beetles up below the dam. I asked, "Why do they take your terrestrials up there and they don't down below Lookout. He still hasn't answered me. But I decided to try again this afternoon while they're running a little water. I was pleasantly surprised. I hooked 7 and landed 5 nice rainbows. I had several refusals and a couple ignores. I did see either a big brown or rainbow in the 30 inch range along the bluff bank from Lookout down lake but she wasn't interested in anything I threw. I started with a #12 black beetle and had a #8 pink hopper on a second rod ready. The beetle caught the first and biggest rainbow - one about 20 inches. He touched on both sides of my 20-inch photoarium. I did see him first and he took one of my first offerings. I saw another rainbow holding under the surface - it looked to be hunting surface candy. I ran the beetle over him a dozen times and he'd just move away from it. Then he took something off the surface that looked like a cricket or something. I picked up my second fly rod with the pink hopper tied on and made one cast. It moved and ate it. So cool! The third was another sight fish that couldn't resist the hopper. The next two were blind takes. I was just casting to the bank at spots that looked good. One was in an eddie and the other was in fairly fast water close to the bank.

Unless I'm missing something, and I'm SO open to suggestions when it comes to Google ads from someone that knows about it, all I've done is pasted a code from Google into the space provided in the backend of the forum and that's it. There's no settings, no preferences except the kind of ad which is interactive or not. The forum software and Google to the rest. I will say... it sometimes gets a little spooky. I cut my toenails yesterday (I have bad hangnails) and immediately got an ad selling "the best toenail clippers anywhere". I wasn't even in front of the computer at the time!

I've deleted the images posted. I will look into what I can do on my end BUT I believe, by my own experience and what I see on forums ads on my computer, that ads are generated by what I search and look at on that machine. I don't have time right now to do it - may be later today. But till then, you guys might search how you can either block or edit out ads you don't want to see.

Oh but there is a lot of areas to wade. Across and down from Fall Creek there's quite a bit. Public land access, acquired by FEMA/Taney County. Great water. Then you can boat up and fish almost any shallow side bank from Fall Creek to the dam. Again, real good areas that aren't crowded at all.

They have MDC's ear I understand, although I haven't talked to anyone at MDC about the subject.

Our generation schedule has been pretty consistent the last week or so. No generation in the mornings, then the water comes on about noon, building to almost three units by mid afternoon. Then it shuts down starting about 10 p.m. and on until the next day. I don't see the pattern changing because of lake levels, BUT it might change due to dropping dissolved oxygen levels in the water coming from Table Rock Lake. In the late summer months, the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers will start running water at about a 2,700 cubic feet of water per second nonstop so liquid oxygen can be injected into the water flowing through the turbines. I'm seeking more information on the subject, so please keep checking back. I've heard lots of anglers are enjoying the low water below the dam. I heard reports of "shoulder-to-shoulder" fishing like the trout parks, but those may be exaggerations. I have seen some great fish pics on Facebook of trout caught around the hatchery outlets and at Rebar Hole. Without being up there fishing myself, I suspect they're catching fish on small scuds, #16 and smaller, and gray or brown in color. I have heard beetles are working for top water. And I've heard small streamers woolies and midge film flies like cracklebacks stripped are working, too. Night time fishing has been fairly good. Strip a Hybernator or PMS, a Mo-hair Leach or a Pine Squirrel in dark colors for both browns and rainbows. From a boat in the mid- to lower Trophy Area, we're fishing a Zebra Midge under a float and doing pretty well. Use 6x fluorocarbon as tippet for most flies right now, unless you're throwing a dry fly. Then you'll need to match tippet to the fly size and use monofilament. On the Zebra, a red or green midge has been working the best in size #14 or #16. Blake and I did a night time One Cast the other evening. We caught a lot of rainbows, just not anything of any size. I think 17 inches was the biggest. We boated to the Narrows about 10 p.m.. The water had shut down at 10 so it was dropping out when we started. Staying in the Narrows, we stripped a purple/black #6 Hybernator using 2x tippet. Blake stripped it really slowly, and I stripped medium fast in short, six-inch pulls. The trout started out aggressive but later started taking the fly softly . . . you had to really pay attention on the pressure on the fly. Below Fall Creek, night crawlers are still catching some top quality rainbows including many topping 20 inches. I think a lot of these trophies are being released but some aren't. But the reason we still have so many lunkers IS because they are being released. Now because the D.O. level in the lake is getting low, we strongly suggest paying close attention how you handle big trout IF you plan on releasing. Here are some tips to keep in mind: 1. Keep the fish in the net -- in the water -- until you know what you're going to do with it. Don't bring it in the boat and have a conversation or handle it in any way. If you bring it in the boat, it should be directly to a freshly-filled live well. 2. It's best to hold the fish up with a safety net underneath it -- to catch it when it bolts out of your hands. But, of course, you need at least three people to handle this task. 3. Take pics and measurements quickly. Try not to keep the fish out of the water for more than 30 seconds. 4. No fingers/hands in the gills or gill plate, period! Gills are off limits if you want the fish to live. 5. Handle the fish with wet hands only. Anything else will take slime and scales off the fish. 6. Do not bring fish into a dock for pictures, weight and measurement -- don't transport them anywhere. Handling puts stress on a fish and recovery is greatly hampered by the lack of oxygen in the water right now. Our fishery has the biggest population of trophy trout, at least since the 1960's. Let's keep it going! View full article

Yes, the forum lists IP’s on everybody, even guests. When I ok new membership requests, the IP sometimes is the only way I know if the person is a bot/spammers or not. Of his IP says Bangladesh, I boot him.

Last time his account was active was 7/19. The IP shows Belleville, IL

Where exactly does he live?

Blake and I went out last night and attempted to do a one cast in the dark. I don’t think it turned out well… need to find a way to do better filming in the dark, in the fog. Fishing was great though. No big fish landed but numbers were good. Blake broke a big fish off and had another hooked. He’s been going to the dam and stripping streamers and catching big rainbows. I think we’re about to see our “no generation” periods go away shortly. The DO levels are starting to get low and the Corp will start injecting o2 and running that 30 megawatts again.

I’ve never felt like I needed to wear one. Of course no one likes to wear them especially in the summer. People have mentioned it and I ignored them. I guess I had an Epiphany one day. I thought I’d we wore them others may follow suit and save a life one day. Set a good example… now I find myself wearing one when I’m not doing one cast.

Did you see Blakes pic of a boot/fish the other night? It was twice the length of his boot… he wanted to show them up. They didn’t respond last i looked.

Me, Jeff @Quillbackand now Rick @Terrierman

I've had some good conversations with a couple of members here and we fell like it's time to lay down rules - again - and enforce them - something that hasn't been done in the past. I admit, I'm a softy. So I'm not going to be the one doing the dirty work. Rick has volunteered @Terrierman to enforce the rules. There shouldn't be much drama in fishing, right? Well... So here's the rules: 1. No profanity - people purposely misspell words to get around that all the time. I would give one warning and then ban the offender for a week. Next offense a month. Third offense permaban. All in the open for everyone to see. 2. No politics and/or religion on the main forum. There are only a few people that ignore that. I would PM those people, and let them know you're serious. If it keeps up after that then I would give one warning and then ban the offender for a week. Next offense a month. Third offense permaban. Again, all in the open for everyone to see. 3. Personal insults should be off limits if they're not already. With the same enforcement actions I suggested above. This is a pretty good fishing forum and it's visited by almost 40,000 "users" each month. But clearly, a vast majority do not post and have not registered. Thank you for making this a fun place to come and share fishing stuff.

We're still in experimental mode... we may try anything.

6 ready to go

Hummm still will rip a jaw if it’sa big enough trout. The smaller ones are fine. Great for controlling them. I’d rather see these than the metal bogas

No it’s 12 high. We used the cnc machine to cut the hole for handles.

First one is done 24 inches long

Had this brown brought in this morning - released. 26 inches 9.5 pounds. Caught on a scud trophy area. The adipost was clipped. So I sent a pic to Shane. This is what he said - Last stocking of trips was 2015. They were 2 year old fish. It had to come from that year class. So I'm guessing the heat treatment didn't take on this brown. I don't think it's a true triploid. The fish would be 8 years old. Thoughts?

I used a boga in Alaska on big rainbow… 30” plus. Yes they worked fine until one big rainbow bolted so hard the boga, applied the proper way in the lower jaw split the jaw. It broke the lower jaw bone clean in two. I never used one since. The lower jaw isn’t tough enough to take the weight off a big fish when it bolts. Even a smaller 20”+ trout can shake its head hard enough to break the jaw. But allot of these guides are applying the boga inside the gill plate and that causes damage to the soft tissue and gills themselves when they shake, thus the blood line.

Funny you bring it up... FB photos of guides holding big trout with bogas is driving me crazy. Blood lines down the sides of the fish signal real problems. Doty says he's seeing more and more big trout with split jaws. I haven't seen any personally but I don't see that many big trout - personally. I'm in the process of building these display aquariums for our guides. I gave one out a couple of evenings ago and it worked ok. I need to find a way to put handles on them because they're hard to hold up, esp my kids and gals. They're heavy - water and fish together. Then there's the problem with the sides fogging up - cold water and warm, humid air. If I figure it all out, I'll give one to each guide, in exchange for their bogas!