Phil Lilley

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gates are off. Shut down Monday

I haven’t been on much but I did read this morning. You guys are real good about keeping it civil and away from the P word. I understand frustrations and am willing to let ppl vent once in a while. By now, most of is know where each other stand and know no one is going to change our minds. We’re in this together.

For those who are willing to take the chance, there might be some real deals on the AK experience this year.

The governor of AK declared sport and commercial fishing essential yesterday. But I'm sure the fight is not over. Then there's flight ramifications... and housing and work conditions (commercial). It's a mess. Too many people asking for bailouts too. Feds seemingly can print money but the states can't. Plus AK's income is sport/commercial licenses and tourism taxes. Pipeline is closed so not making any money on natural resources. Not sure how many ways you can say ZERO.

Tourism keeps Alaska alive.... its their #1 industry. To cancel it for a whole year-absolutely insane. But they almost did it. Thousands of cannery workers are shipped out to King Salmon and Dillingham. They’ll have to figure that out too.

My friend Sean Guffy has been keeping me up on developments up in Alaska. The villages there have tried to keep outsiders from traveling to remote areas, trying to keep the virus at bay. In doing so, it would have canceled all commercial and sport fishing basically for the season which would have been unimaginable. All hunting too. Yesterday, the Governor declared Fishing essential. Now they have to figure out how to fly out of Anchorage to these places. The main airline, Ravn Air, went bankrupt already. Plus they have to figure out the quarantine thing. Theres talk of charter flight out of Seattle to King Salmon. They’re all in quite a predicament. If you ever want to go to Alaska for an extended 2 week trip that may not cost an arm and leg, this might be the year.

I see. I saw everyone spooning in the current. Didn’t know it was walleye they were trying for. sorry you didn’t find ‘em. I really didn’t see them on the livescope either. Just would catch one here and there.

Must be high water down river... they were running a lot of water before the rain. Nice catch! Thanks for posting.

What we've learned over the years is that no one is going to change a mindset on a forum. The only thing that will be accomplished is we'll get mad at each other. So with that in mind, I'll go ahead and lock this topic. Stay safe!

I totally understand how some feel about what’s going on but let’s keep it civil. These are difficult times.

Well, they are running it at all points. BS is really letting it go so hopefully, with a little dry spell, they'll come down. No real rain in the next 7 days. We can handle these 2-inch rains every 10 days just as long as we don't get a 2-day soaker.

They're running spill gates at Beaver now. Total 11,000 cfs from Beaver and the lake is holding at 1128.8 feet. Table Rock is 918.4 feet. One thing that happened today without me knowing till the evening. They shut all turbines down and opened the spill gates to keep the same flow up. The Corps is probably working on the turbines. But with no one fishing in our group, we don't know what that did to the fishing. But we will be checking it out in the morning!!

Our water situation is honestly unknown for Lake Taneycomo, right at the moment. All lakes in the White River chain of lakes have been dropping over the last week, but Sunday the area received from two to three inches of rain, and the lakes are back on the rise. Where they end up is the question. But one thing is for sure -- there will be much more generation for Taneycomo. Presently, dam operators are running three units at 9,600 cubic feet per second plus five spill gates at 5,300 c.f.s., totaling about 15,000 c.f.s. of water. Table Rock had dropped to right at 918 feet but it is climbing this morning. Beaver has been holding at 1,128.5 feet and is also climbing. If it reaches 1,130 feet, operators will open some spill gates. Table Rock will not increase its flow unless their level reaches 920 feet , which is doubtful. The U.S. Corps of Army Engineers has been working on one of the gates that leads to a turbine at Table Rock Dam this week. They have to send divers down to the intake on the lake side of the dam at a depth of 130 feet deep. At the same time they're running spill gates, they are shutting down all gates on the north side of the dam close to the divers -- to keep them safe -- and opening the five gates on the south side. This flow, 15,000 c.f.s., is equal to all four turbines being open. The magic number is somewhere between 917 and 918 -- the depth Table Rock needs to drop to for the Corps to slow the flow down. A question was asked on Facebook, "Is the state still stocking trout in to Lake Taneycomo?" The answer is yes. Agents are continuing to stock trout as scheduled. The next question could be, "Is there anyone fishing?" Very few boats out these days. It is very, very quiet. "So how is the fishing?" The answer is it is very, very good, when they're biting. Seriously, the quality of trout we've been catching is by far the best I've seen it in my 37 years of living and fishing here. And I'm sure it's because of the constant generation, the spill gates being open for much of the winter and dumping lots and lots of food (shad) in our lake. The absence of hooks in the water doesn't hurt either, although it hasn't affected the quality of the trout, rather more, the number of fish in the lake. Virtually no trout are being taken out right now. The "white bite" is still on although I'm actually doing better throwing a sculpin/peach jig than a white one. But Blake has been dragging the small floating minnow baits in shad colors and catching browns from the dam clear down to the Branson Landing. I, in turn, tried dragging a minnow from the resort down to Monkey Island the other day on One Cast and caught one nice brown trout, although I missed several other bites. Blake and Duane are both throwing the MegaBass 110+ in white or bone color and catching browns. Again, they're fishing anywhere from the dam down to Monkey Island and not necessarily working the banks as they usually do. Blake has been casting and working the middle of the lake and seeing more takes than along the banks. I do have to be honest and report that I have not talked to anyone who is drifting PowerBait or night crawlers this past week. I'm sure they would catch trout anywhere below the Trophy Area. Blake did drift a scud on the bottom the other day and caught a few but not as many as expected. We're not cleaning any trout so we're only assuming they're seeing and eating scuds. They usually do when the water runs this hard. Writing a fishing report these days is very strange. We just don't have enough boats on the water, so there's not much info to relay. But we will continue to do our best scope out our trout and pass the intel on!! Images: Credit Angler's Advantage, Captain Steve Dickey and Buster's Guide Service, Captain Buster Loving. View full article

Pat - if you go down there, walk down the bank till you get to a garbage dump- looks like someone camped there a while and left a bunch of trash. That's a good spot.

I'd like to go back and try minnows under a float around some of the trees along that bank. The crappie was a big one... have to be more of them. I just got through cleaning my fish. 12 whites, 2 were males. All the sows had been spawning, some were done. The crappie was a sow with eggs, not bloody. They were all full of threadfin shad.

Oh I didn't think about that!!!

Been going over to Swan the last couple of evenings trying to catch some whites. Found a few males where the lake meets the creek but that's all. Wednesday was hot and the whites were starting to dance at dark. Saw quite a few but few were biting. They were preoccupied. Thursday night was colder and we saw few whites, nothing moving. But we talked to a couple of kids that had been catching them below the dam so we wanted to try it up there. Got there about 5ish and found where to put in. There's actually a couple of places off the side road 160-125. You can see them to the left of Swan Creek - 2 roads taking off and heading down towards the main lake. Both these places are great to put in and it wasn't too crowded. We headed up and found may be 10 boats scattered around, most were drifting in the current and jerking a spoon. Depth was about 35 feet most places. We saw one small white caught the whole evening but they had to be doing it because someone was or had caught them that way. The 2 kids we talked to were tucked up close to the "cable" on the Powersite side throwing into a pocket close to the bank and we saw them catch a few. We tried over on that bank, saw fish on the Livescope but they were deep and we couldn't get on them. Even drop a minnow down with no luck. We worked down that bank to the trees and again saw a few schools of fish but nothing worked. Threw swimming minnows, blue rebels, marabou jigs and live minnows. Then I thought, there's a bunch of people along the bank on the Forsyth side. It was packed over there. They must be catching some fish. I know Blake said a friend of his is catching walleye off the bank at night - showed me pics. Lots of BIG walleye and frequently catching them this week. That's the only bank fishing anywhere so... we went over and started below the last bank fishermen. The water even right on the bank was 15 feet deep, dropping to 25-30 pretty quick. Was saw big schools of shad everywhere, and other schools, huge schools of something else that were too big for shad. I'm still having trouble distinguishing the size of fish on my Livescope... but Tom hooked up first, and it was a big sow white. We caught fish for about an hour. We didn't move too much, sitting out from the bank about 80 feet and casting into the bank. Using 1/4 oz heads and blue/white swimming minnows we caught about 15 whites from 2 to 3 pounds, one big crappie, a smallmouth and 2 BIG drums. I haven't cleaned the whites yet but some seemed to be partially spawned out. WT was 49. I don't know where these fish would spawn or when seeing the water is so cold. One thing, when Chuck hooked and was fighting his second and biggest drum, I put the Livescope on it. We could see it fighting on the bottom in 27 feet of water and I was amazed how small it looked. We were seeing what looked like spoonbill swimming around on the PS side of the lake... I assume there are a few in BS. If not, catfish? They were huge, much bigger and longer than the drum looked. Hope someone reads this and goes over... that was some great fishing!! View full article

This report is pretty photo heavy, short on text fishing report for Lake Taneycomo. You'll see why. As of Monday morning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was running 5,000 cubic feet per second of water over five spill gates and about 10,000 c.f.s. of water through three turbines. This is a reduction of 5,000 c.f.s. of water because Table Rock's lake level dropped below 920 feet. Beaver Lake is still more than eight feet above its seasonal power pool, but officials are running water through their turbine, and it is dropping but very slowly. Bull Shoals has risen more than 20 feet since the rains started over a month ago, but operators there are now running between 17,000 and 21,000 c.f.s. of water so may be they'll drop it to decent levels by summer time. The lack of boats on our lakes is so very strange. Marsha and I were on Table Rock around Clevenger last evening and watched one single sail boat out to enjoy the lake alone. I'm sure they were amazed, too. No wakes, just smooth water. Some days here on Taney, we don't see a boat go up lake until mid morning. So you'd think we wouldn't have much to talk about or to refer to for reports. But that's not the case. We have lots to report. Last week when the Corps opened five gates three feet wide to accommodate divers diving on the lake side of the dam to make repairs, it sent a lot of shad into our lake. Some were stunned and floating down, but there were a lot that came over live. We believe these huge schools of shad made their way down lake while our trout ambushed them as they swam by. There are a few guides out and other anglers, as well as Blake and Duane targeting these fish, drifting a variety of shad flies, jigs and lures in areas that we don't usually fish. And the results are eye-opening. Almost every day, it seems, someone sends us an image of a trophy brown or rainbow -- and that's with very few anglers actually fishing the lake. I'm not sure we've seen this many big browns caught in one week, let alone within 24-36 hours. The only other thing I can report is that the fish some guides are cleaning, coming from below Fall Creek, have been packed full of scuds. Now we've tried drifting scuds and San Juan worms and haven't done that well, but with the slower flow we might start having more success with them. While we are sure missing our spring anglers, we appreciate everyone taking the needed safeguards to curtail the virus so that everyone can enjoy health -- and some great fishing memories in the future. Credit Captain Steve Dickey for images. https://www.facebook.com/www.anglersadvantage.net/ View full article

I haven't been following for a while... $290 per test but my nephew said they only do a throat swab so I'm not sure it's the same... This is on the strip in Branson. We were approved for a SBA loan yesterday. Our accountant applied for us. If we qualify, we don't have to pay it back. Otherwise, we'll pay it back later this year after things start back up... may be. Not sure if I posted on here, we are closed. Several reasons but the bottom line it was for my employees. Our neighbors are still open though. Lazy and Ozark. The lake is baron of boats and trout fishing is very good. I'd love to see more news items posted on the latest info - that's what this thread was started for, although I like the discussions too. https://www.foxnews.com/media/immunologist-possible-cure-for-the-coronavirus This was interesting yesterday.

I like it all... except the spider thing. But I've never done it.