dgames

What were you using to get the browns?

Another piece of info, I think most of the times I have fished Watts when they started up units, they started with a single unit. If they immediately start with 2 units, I am sure the water would reach me faster. Since you don't know what how many they are starting, I am pretty much continually watching for the first signs and sounds of rising water after the horns sound.

It seems to take about 30 minutes for the water to come up at the lower end of Watts. My experience is that you can hear the horn there. It seems like they sound the horn once as a warning that they will be starting up. About 5 minutes later, they will repeatedly blast the horn for what seems like several minutes. I think this is when they are actually starting up. From this point, I make sure I am on the same side of the river as my car and in a place where I know I can escape when the water comes up. Once I am in a safe location, I usually can fish about 30 minutes before the high water reaches me. Once it does, it only takes a minute or two before it is really rocking and rolling along. I would guess that Marval might be another 20-30 minutes downstream from Watts, but I don't have any experience to verify that. Bottom line, the entire tailwater is pretty short (similar to Norfork in length) and the entire length of it would probably be high within an hour of the start of generation. Best to stay on the safe side and make sure you are in a spot that you can escape once generation has started.

Regarding Daddy'os original question, I believe that is just the remnants of the massive influx of muddy water from the Easter weekend deluge and subsequent smaller flood in mid may. The lake saw over 100,000 cfs inflow for a day or two with the Easter storm and the lake went from an empty flood pool to full in a matter of days. I think the volume of incoming muddy water just overwhelmed what was in the lake at the time.

We may not have trout left by the middle of July. Water temps have been getting up to 75 degrees at the gore gauging station when they aren't generating.

So did you catch fish all the way down the back side of the island?

I fished from about 4 to 730 this afternoon. I caught a bunch in the first hour and a half or so and then they just totally turned off. Only caught 1 fish in the last couple of hours. The fish I caught seemed in pretty good condition.

What were they hitting? I really liked the way you filmed this. This was better than most fishing shows because you can see the fly and the fish take. I hate it when you watch a fishing show and they make most of the footage a front shot of the person fishing and you have no idea what is actually going on in the water. This is much better. Good job.

I understand that the owners of T&M closed the access due to vandalism on the property.

I went yesterday. Water was cappuccino colored as others indicated. Did well at the bottom end of the island by the gravel lot below the dam. Caught 30 or 40 on various stuff - brown wooly bugger dead drifted, olive soft hackle, red copper john. Caught a few on midges, but did better on bigger flies and in dark colors. Didn't catch anything really big, but caught about a dozen fat ones that all ran around 16". Also caught a channel cat about 2lbs on the dead drifted wooly bugger. Main change to the stream that I saw was that there are lots of trees down in the water in the channel on the back side of the island.

This is three weeks old, fished the White on Sunday April 10. They were running 2 units, so the water was kind of high. In general, fishing was tough, but the ones we did catch were pretty nice. FIshed a little while up by the dam on the golf course side. I caught 3 there, one of which was a 15" Cutt. I tried to download a pic, but can't seem to get the file attached. I guess the file is bigger than 2 meg. Is there a way to posst pics bigger than 2Meg? Next we went down to rim and fished off of the island. Only caught a few in several hours, but one was a brown about 18" or so in the picture below. Everything we caught was on caddis larvae patterns. Threw other stuff, but couldn't find anything to really work.

My food fix that have to get when I travel up through MO on fishing trips is a Burrito Enchilada Style at Mexican Villa in Springfield.

I use rio and have been happy with it. I do most of my fishing with a dry fly & dropper rig, usually with some kind of bead head midge. I use mono with 5 or 6x tippet to the dry fly. I use 7x fluoro from the dry fly hook bend to my midge. I occasionally have breakoffs on the hookset (like maybe 1 out of 25 fish), but I chalk that up to the fact it is 7x and have never attributed it to any inherent problems with RIO. I also went through a spool of seagar 7x fluoro last summer and really liked it as well. Fear that the fish can see my tippet is not why I use 7x. I go to 7x because I feel that the lightest and most supple tippet practical gives me the most natural drift and allows the fly to sink quickly. I will say that when using 7x, you need to be gentle on your hooksets. You asked about tippet in relation to fishing taneycomo. Most of my fishing is on the lower Illinois river in OK, but the method seems to work pretty well on any tailwater at low generation where fish feed on midges.

Have also caught several of those little browns in the last 3 weeks. There seemed to be a bunch of them at the upper end of the car body hole two weeks ago when I was there. I caught one just above the watts parking lot this past weekend and the guy I was fishing with caught several there as well. What dry do you use above your dropper? I use the dry/dropper rig there most of the time with a stimulator as my dry, but almost everything on the dropper and very few on the dry.

What color Sammy 100s are favorite for medium sized streams like the Big Piney, Big Sugar, Elk or Illinois River (in ok)? Do many people use spooks or are sammies so superior that everyone uses the sammies?

Good thing you didn't step in it.

I just cut off the length of dropper I want and tie an improved clinch knot to the bend of the hook of the dry with one end and the other end an improved clinch tied to the dropper. This is a pretty straightforward method but works well. What issues are others trying to solve by doing more complex methods?

I second the stimulator suggestion. A stimulator is a good high floating attractor dry fly. About 90% of my fishing these days is with a stimulator with a bead head midge dropper. I catch most of my fish on the midge, but usually get some action as well on the stimulator.

I played around a little in the late 70s but was pretty bad. Took a couple of years of lessons about 10 years ago and learned chord theory pretty well. I have been playing rhythm with a jazz band at church the last 8 years. I own a Mexican Strat and a Simon & Patrick acoustic.

Of the vises carried as Bass Pro, I would get the Peak Rotary with Pedestal base or the Griffin Spider vise. You will also need at least 1 bobbin, good scissors and hack pliers, I would also recommend a whip finisher. Scissors - this is one area where you might want to get something that isn't available as Bass Pro. The Dr Slick micro-tip scissors (17.99) are the best fly tying scissors I have seen. Hackle Pliers - I like the tear drop style - I see these for 2.99 on the bass pro website Whip finisher - the 7.99 rotating whip finisher from Bass Pro would be fine.

My main rod is an old sage RPL II 9' 3wt and I have always used a 4wt line on it. This line upsizing was done at the recommendation of the owner at K & K in KC where I bought it. I have always loved this outfit.

I think the guy that won it caught 9 fish.

Does is drive anyone else crazy when watching fly fishing shows that they almost never show where and what the person is casting to and the drift? Instead, the just show a front view of the person fishing, but you can't tell what is going on in the water.

Most of the fish I catch there are 10-12".

Zach, I am guessing that is an understatement. I would put my money on you over pretty much anyone else fishing the LI! I am guessing you are pretty proficient in your major practice ground. Are you able to do pretty well Czech nymphing when the water is down? I would think it would be challenging when there is little current.