Phil Lilley

I did something stupid once... well may be twice. I was playing golf with some friends, one was my pastor at the time. I used to have a temper when playing most sports, including golf. Was having a bad day, missing short putts and shanking it on every other hole. One green, I missed a putt. Walked up to the ball and meant to backhand it with the putter towards my bag on the side of the green. Instead I caught it just right- nailed pastor right square in his left nut. Never seen anyone go to his knees so fast. He even said it left little dimple imprints. Oh yes I repented right on the spot- but we have a good laugh about it now. Learned a good lesson... always keep your pastor, and anything else of value, in front of you so you know where the ball is traveling to!!

I agree there should be consequences but people/the media is relentless in crucifying people for mistakes, not giving any consideration of an apology or anything. He should be fined and punished but there has to be room for forgiveness and rehabilitation and ultimately respect for the guy for doing the right thing after the fact. History says that won't happen regardless of what he does. PLUS - the media also treats killing a bird, esp an eagle, with more zeal than people getting killed. There are so many injustices in this country, this world, that we, the people, the media, have become callas to it but when an eagle is senselessly killed, watch out!!!

Using this technique with spinning gear is difficult. It's hard to put the weight exactly where you want it on every cast like you can with a fly rod. You pull out the exact amount of line to reach your spot and let it fly, hitting it every time. You can also hold a 10 ft fly rod high over the drift and lessen the line drag in the water, unlike a shorter spinning rod and mono line which sags too much, catching the water and pulling the weight and fly un naturally thru the drift. And casting this rig is much easier than a regular fly cast. Our clients in AK pick it up almost immediately and are very successful hooking fish. The technique is so successful at getting a fly to the bottom and keeping there longer and thus hooking more fish that it makes alot of fly caster jealous and they want to ban it. Others have different reason, some which I understand. But to ban a technique because it's too successful in hooking fish (fair) is ridiculous.

Me too. But I feel sorry for this guy. Rome is destroying him on his show. The media is going to crucify him because of a freak accident- and I say freak accident because hitting a bird at 75 yards in the head is a freak accident by any standard, pro or not.

Before you jump on the guy- how many times have any of you (anyone) done something stupid and the end results were or were not tragic. Everyone's done stupid stuff- in public and not. Don't be so quick to judge or it will come back and get you.... if it hasn't already.

I fish for them in June off main and secondary points, pea gravel best, in 12-15 feet of water on the bottom using crickets. We catch really big ones- good fillets. Great fishing for kids. I'm sure they can be caught at different times a year but others will have to educate us on that!

Welcome, sir. Glad to have you.

I've explained it well enough, or should I say as far as I know at present. To be honest, I don't know what I'm going to do with the site membership. But I'll think of something.

Water- high and fast. Won't slow down till Table Rock is back at 915. Roads are great here. I'm sure they are north of us too.

I don't know why email works for some and not for others... heck I'm having trouble with firefox not opening things I know should work- try it in IE and it opens fine. Close firefox and reopen it and it works fine... for awhile. There are going to be glitches in the system... either here or on your end. I just wish I was smart enough to know how to fix them all- but I'm not. I have to rely on invision to fix it and it seems they can't 100%. So I'm sorry... we're doing the best we know how to.

We have it covered in our meta tags. We also have over 2 dozen different sites linked to ozarkanglers, something the search engines look at.

I saw quite a few being caught below Cooper down to the bridge drifting Gulp Eggs. The current seems to be alot slower below Cooper.

Brian, A good question would be- is there any indicators on the internet that you watch to keep track of river levels?

I lack good quality bass pics... I won't go to google images to get them. I'd like to take them ALL myself but can't do that so I'm always open to good pics. What I mean by good- ~~Clear, detailed and not old or blurry. ~~a guy or gal or kid holding a fish is ok but what I'd like is a little creativity in the pose. ~~scenery- always like scenic pics of streams or lakes, bluffs... whatever. And again clear. The rotating header at the top is made of images that were provided my OAF members. They are the best of the best images I have, which really aren't that numerous. We are aware of the fact that the whole site is heavy into Taneycomo, trout and fly fishing, which isn't a bad thing. But it is my wish to keep widening the scope of the whole site to other venues and fisheries but we need help in doing so. Thanks for all you ALL do!

Membership on OA homepage is not the same as membership on the forum. Completely different animals. Membership on OA, though, doesn't get you anything right now, but it will in the future- just not sure at this point. We're still learning the program. So no, your OAF user name and pw will not work on the homepage. You'll have to create a new membership.

We had a few glitches changing over... lots of broken images mainly. If you're looking around and see any, copy and paste the url and post it so we can go in and fix all of them. Need to do some work on the Current and Elevenpoint yet. The frontpage will feature new and refreshed articles almost daily. I'll be posting my fishing reports there from now on- plus on the forum. Each new article will file down from top to bottom as well as being placed in the article and or home water section. You can RSS the front page articles and get them sent to your yahoo or google homepage. I have advised all our OAF contributors that they're reports and articles can be posted on the front page too if they're "worthy"... and if anyone has anything they'd like to contribute, please feel free to email it to me. As you can see, Mr Beeson has his own corner... and rightly so. Let us know what you think.

MWP doesn't patrol Taney much simply because there are few serious incidents on our lake compared to Table Rock. If they did patrol Taney more you'd see a decline in these infractions. Education, enforcement and consequences are the keys. There's very little of any I'm afraid.

Thanks for joining us. With stream fishing heating up here in the near future, you'll find people come out of the woodwork on the forum with good reports and info on those rivers and streams. Exciting!

From my standpoint, it'll look alot greener in a few days. Our water is already cleared up and looking good on upper Taney.

Where's the fun in that?!?

Sounds like a good idea.

Branson - zero But 3 inches of rain. Table Rock is shooting up big time!

Team Trout Tournament was held on Saturday, March 1 at Lilleys' Landing on Lake Taneycomo. Thirty-six boats braved the cold morning but with the anticipation of warmer temps to come. We weren't disappointed- the mercury topped 79 degrees! Trout fishing wasn't disappointing either. Most of the top finishers fished exclusively using a jig-n-float method. One team used brown jigs near Trout Hollow and another top finisher did well across from Cooper Creek Access. I know some teams traveled as far as Bull Creek while some stayed closer to home. The contest was limited to artificial only- no soft plastics or scented baits. Only 2 teams chosed to fish above Fall Creek, and those 2 teams could only weigh in rainbows under 12 and over 20 inches. Largest rainbow weighed in at a whopping 1.4 pounds with no legal browns brought in. It was caught by the Allen/Huff team. We paid 4 places. First place went to the Tutz/George team with 7.20 pounds (8 trout). Second was Hinson/Huffman team with 6.90 pounds, third- Allen'Huff with 6.68 pounds and forth- Bracy/Bracy with 6.46 pounds. Don House and Leonard Keeney

I'm going to move you over to the Powersite forum- you'll get alot better advise over there. I assume you're fishing for whites and/or walleye. If you read back in the archives you'll see stick baits like bombers and rouges are worked along the bank in slower water and eddies for walleye- also swimming minnows. At night is the best time to fish for walleyes- or on a dark, rainy day like today. Water running is a must and I think you'll see alot of that in the future after today. Gitzits also are good as well as grubs and sliders. I like light colors in the day and dark at night. You might even hook a white or two but I doubt it until the water temp warms up a bit.

I heard the White was generating hard and shad were gushing out... pretty reliable source. Graphs might not be working or I'm wrong.