zander

Now that I have your attention, here is the question. I have a lot of hits on streamers where I miss the fish. Part of the reason for the misses is probably my fault with not fast enough reaction time, but when you look at most streamers like zonkers, bunny leeches etc, there is a lot of rear end to the fly and it seems like when the hook is on only 50% of the fly, you have only a 50% chance of the trout hitting the business end of the fly. Do any of you guys add a stinger hook to the end of your longer streamers? I have purchased some of Leonard's PMS's from Lilley's and I get a lot of hits on it but like I said I miss a lot of them. That being said Friday I had a hit so hard that it pulled the tippet right out of my surgeon's knot where it attached to the leader. A stinger hook wouldn't have helped me then.

do you guys know what time they open in the mornings?

The prettiest longear I ever saw was in the White River near Calico Rock, Arkansas. I didn't catch it but I could see him so clearly in the gin clear water deep down in a hole.

this might be a silly question, but where do you get OAF hats? Lilleys?

boy i'm jealous! that is gorgeous! thanks for the picture. Phillip

So for those of us who do not have Orvis waders, I have found a small pin hole in the side of the rubber boot portion of my waders right where the sole meets the upper part of the boot. Any ideas on how to fix this? Everything I have seen is for fixing neoprene or the upper part of the waders not the rubber boot section.

The state of Arkansas is actually spending a decent sum of money marketing their carp fishing to British anglers, they started that last year I believe. My wife is European and there they are all fanatics about it. I have to convince my brother in law to take me fishing for something other than carp while I am there. It is odd to me too since they have trout, grayling, pike, zander (European walleye) and all other sorts of fishing there.

When I was in grad school, a friend and I went to New Mexico to climb some mountains around Las Vegas, NM over the New Years break. One evening we had hiked up a trail that at point along it, was at the bottom of two steep slopes on either side of us. I remember I had an eerie feeling walking up through that because not only was it dark, but the slopes were heavily wooded and you couldn't see anything up there. One the way down a couple of hours later we found mtn lion tracks in our earlier boot prints in the snow for about a hundred yards traveling the same direction as we were. Have no idea if it was following us or it was just using the same path as it would have had we not been there at all. It didn't really matter to us. We didn't hike any more in that area!

Me and my father just got back from fishing this morning. Phil is right, they are hitting on very small size scud 16-18 and midges in same or smaller sizes. That was what the successful fisherman were using. Dark colors worked better. We on the other hand were fishing larger size scuds and lighter in color and we couldn't buy a take. Caught one small brown on an olive PMS and had a rainbow take it another time but threw it. My father had a large fish on an olive pine squirrel sculpin but 6X tippet broke. Beautiful day though and fun nonetheless.

he's right, nevermind the water generation, I have tried like the dickens to get up from Rockaway to Scottys in a rented john boat with 20-30 mph head winds and whitecaps on Taneycomo, makes you a little nervous to say the least. don't get me wrong I love john boats but they have limitations.

I can't believe they didn't show the video to the "park ranger" they mentioned. Nothing about that video resembles a mtn lion. I mean it has a short curled tail, dark spots visible on the forearms (more would have been visible had the video been shot with normal lighting) and it has the bobcat trot. I've seen a lot of bobcats while stand hunting for deer, and that is what this was. Keep in mind they can get big 35-45 lbs.

Congratulations Leonard, my psychic abilities sense many "big brownies" in your future!

I'll be there, I've been wanting to go there for a long time as well, it will give me a chance to meet some of you again and some for the first time.

Last year, I uploaded some pictures I wanted enlarged to Wal-Mart's website and then you can pick to have them mailed to you or picked up at your local store, it was really cheap and the quality was really good, I would suggest that just due to the ease of it all.

Well my brown trout painting prints are back from the printers. I still haven't done the brook trout but I'm going to try to tease you guys with 2/3's of a beautiful set you could have on your wall Truth is the initial costs of getting a painting printed (scans, set up, shipping, color remastering etc) is pretty darn expensive, so I'd like to sell some of the prints before I can do the rainbow and brook trout prints. Once again yes you can have the same number print for each of the three, they are $45 each and are on heavy and I do mean heavy weight paper with archival inks. Show your wives that you are "sophisticated" enough to purchase fine art (matter of opinion I know). If interested send me a PM.

I was wondering that too, and I was glad I WASN'T down there, I was too cold in my house the the heater on.

I went down hoping for generators running so I could try to do some stripping and hook into a big brown after dark. About 2ish maybe they turned on 2 generators and they ran maybe an hour and then they were off, I left at about 7:45 PM and as of then still nothing running. I used a two to three fly setup most of the day. All but one fish was caught on a scud, the exception being a decent rainbow on a crackleback. Ended up with 3 rainbows and two browns and a sunburn.

I'm heading down in an hour or so. I'll be fishing until 9:00 or 10 tonight. I'll be wearing maroon sleeves with a gray Oklahoma State t-shirt over it (no comments please, Les Miles had been our coach) I'll have a gallon of Red Diamond sweet tea in the cooler. Phillip

It was nice meeting you too. Unfortunately didn't get a chance to talk to you guys much as I was heading back to Springfield when y'all came over to outlet #1 but I'm sure we'll meet again before too much longer. Phillip

So yesterday afternoon we got the results of my wife's MRI's on her pancreas back. After a week of preparing ourselves for the worst possible news, we recieved the best possible news in that the MRI showed everything was perfectly normal and definately not cancer. Thanks to God and all of those on the board that prayed for us. In the previous week to get my mind off of all the potential bad stuff that may come I decided to spend lots of money getting into fly-fishing at BassPro. Unfortunately they don't sell "skills" at BassPro so when I headed down to Taney last night at sundown in a celebratory mood, I quickly found out how totally different fly-fishing is than regular angling. After catching my pole several times, a couple bunches of moss, and a couple of three second fights with ghost fish I was wondering how much longer before I was going to pack it in. Just then a fellow came down the steps at Outlet 2 and asked if he could fish next to me. After watching him fish almost the same place I had been for thirty minutes and catching 6 fish, I realized this guy knows what he's doing. Turns out it was Leonard and I really can't say what a nice helpful guy he is. He helped set me up and even showed me the infamous PMS fly and watched him catch a 21 inch brown on his first stripping cast. I ended up with some beginning skills, caught 2 rainbows and a little brownie, and had a fantastic time, eventually calling it quits around 12:30 AM. Thanks to Leonard and the other folks from this board I met last night at Taney. I'm sure everyone reading this has had one of those kind of really great days fishing and last night was definately mine. Phillip Taylor

All good stuff to hear. The day after my cousin gave it to me I took it to Lake Springfield and caught a couple of bluegill and a tiny bass on it. And to tell you the truth they fought pretty good on it. I guess the fight on a flyrod and on a regular pole are two different animals. I'm glad to hear that it is a good pole though as I need all the help I can get sometimes.

Thanks for the input Dan. I took it to BassPro today and the guy there was so helpful. You hit it right on the head. He said it would be ok to put 8 wt line on it and I bought a Hobbs Creek large arbor reel. Lots of little things to learn doing a new kind of fishing. I bought a couple little bass flies and I'll pratice at Lake Springfield before I go down to Tanycomo with it. I'm glad you told me to cast slow though, I probably would have tried to whip it around like I was a lion tamer.

A couple of years ago my cousin gave me an old looking flyrod and reel that he had found in the attic of his recently purchased house. I have been wanting to get into flyfishing for years so I went ahead and took it and it has been riding around the Ozarks with me in my truck ever since. I recently took it out to figure out how to use it and I realized I know absolutely nothing about fly rods, rating, or anything. It is a brown Garcia Conolon 2537-D three star eight and a half foot rod. On it, it says dryfly action, fast taper. Below that there are a few letters "G" "A" "A" "something?" "D-maybe" From what I have seen on the net this fly rod is maybe for bass but not trout? If anyone has half an idea please let me know as I am totally ignorant of flyfishing stuff. Thanks in advance. Phillip Taylor

me and my dad have done really well between Rockaway and Forsyth trolling silver and blue and brass and orange little cleos. They had been hitting them like a hammer, all in the half pound to three quarter pound range.

Please pray for my wife Anita as she has a MRI on Friday and pray for us to not worry about what it could be in the meantime. Thank you guys, Phillip Taylor