Phil Lilley

Thanks for making the trip...

He still hasn't visited the site since July 19

I remember those days... I need to get back down there this fall. Would love to find the whites on top.

Not sure. I'm sure each fish has its own growth rates.

I have been seeing some huge swirls/takes the last few evenings while the water is still running. Huge. This isn't one of them though, if they caught it below the narrows.

Looks like a triploid. Fin's clipped.

I'm seeing less ads between posts today. I guess deleting that set helped. It was disabled... but not really.

I've gone to settings and tried to get rid of some of these ads before. Just tried again and deleted, not disable, and still got ads between posts. I don't understand. I may turn in a trouble ticket and ask them what's going on...

Hey Bob... glad you're still here. Hope you did your floats this summer.

Post a picture of it.

Duane would be THE person to take advice from on this subject. He's one of the best by far, here or anywhere else.

C. would be the answer I was looking for. You have to like people. You have to be super patient with giving the same instructions a dozen times. You have to be ok with failure. Most guides I see here do not fish unless it's to figure out the bite and then lay the rod down. Some fish... but we've had people come back and say, "Well we enjoyed watching "Joe" catch fish..." And what happens if the guide hooks the big fish ahead of the client? I've often wondered that... Right now there is more demand for guides on Taney than guides. You could guide 2, or even 3 times a day. I'm not sure how long this will last though. Hiring a fishing guide is a luxury and it seems like people have a lot of disposable income. There are people guiding here who live as far away as Harrison and Springfield working here. Finding an affordable place in Branson right now is almost impossible. Your best bet is to live in the bigger markets and commute unless you happen to find something down here.

Why do you want to be a fishing guide?

Our generation pattern has been, well, fairly consistent. Most days, the water is off until early to mid-afternoon, then there's some generation. The difference mainly is the amount of water operators run late in the afternoon. But each night the generation stops at 9-10 p.m. and is off the rest of the night. The dissolved oxygen levels remain good. The lowest I've found is 6.0 parts per million Monday morning at our dock. With the hot sun, the water temp is reaching into the low to mid-60s before generation starts. But even with this fairly good DO level, we're seeing some of our trout become lethargic when caught and struggle to s off strong. So take care of fish that you plan to release. Think about how long you have them out of the water and handle them very carefully. This morning's One Cast shows just how important finding a little chop on the water is to catching fish -- plus, going to small tippet. I don't like using 7x tippet because I have to fight the fish too hard most of the time, but right now if you want lots of bites, light tippet is a must. I like fluorocarbon because it allows my small flies to sink faster than mono. As you can see, I had really good luck using a #14 reddish/orange zebra midge with a nickle head under a float about four-feet deep, working middle to the channel side of the lake above the Narrows. If you're working the shallow flats or the Narrows itself, you'll have to move the indicator down and fish shallower. It's best to fish the zebra midge fairly deep, especially as the sun hits the water. Most of the trout I saw were moving around about two foot off the bottom. I also fished a white mega worm under the float with the same setup, same tippet, although I think you can get away with using 6x since it's a bigger fly. The trout were eating it just like the midge, but these rainbows were bigger than the midge eaters. I saw several big rainbows run up to the mega worm only to stop short of taking it. They were definitely interested. Mega worm rainbow. Sunday mid day I boated to Lookout Island when an unscheduled one unit was running. I drifted and worked the bluff bank for top-water fish. I had two fly rods rigged up and ready to use, one with a #8 pink hopper and the other with a #10 black beetle. I started with the beetle and had a take almost right off the bat. Turned out the biggest catch of the day, pushing 20 inches. This is my 20-inch photoarium box. The next rainbow was a tough one. I saw it working an area along the bank, close to the surface. I held the boat with spot lock and floated the beetle a dozen times over his head. He saw it but made no move for it. He started trying to avoid it, so I was going to move on when he moved aggressively to the side and took something much larger than my beetle off the surface. It looked like a cricket or something like that. He took it down, chewed and spit out a couple of times before finally downing it. I picked up my pink hopper rod and made the cast. It didn't hesitate -- took it first drift. That was fun! The next three rainbows were blind takes--working the spots were I thought one might be. And all came on the pink hopper. The Berkley's pink worm is catching some fish. The guides are fishing the worm on a small jig hook under a float, the depth depends on the time of day and depth of water. Early, they're setting it from four-to five-feet deep. Then as the sun comes up, they're moving it deeper, up to nine feet down. There's a good school of rainbows at the Branson Landing as well as the Cooper Creek flats. They're hitting the pink worm well in those areas. Also, when they are generating, drift them on the bottom using a drift rig. Levi and Blake did well with this set-up the other day while videoing One Cast. View full article

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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