Seth

Some people avoid it like the plague and others wouldn't miss it. I think everybody should experience at least one opening day to see what they think of it.

I agree with @Ryan Miloshewski on the bigger bait increasing your odds at a bigger fish. These 20+ pound fish are needles in a haystack though. Ryan and I hung out all weekend for the Elfrink and it's very obvious that he has a lot more will power than me when it comes to throwing those big jerkbaits for trophy class trout. It shows because he has a bunch of them and I've yet to break 20" on browns. If he and I drifted from the cable to Fall Creek and he threw only his jerkbait and I threw only my jigs, I'd clobber him on numbers and possibly not break the 20" mark, but he would have multiple that break that mark. The odds are in his favor to catch the largest trout as well, but that lucky cast with a jig could always land in front of 20 pounder. Throwing big baits for browns is more like muskie fishing than trout fishing. In my experience, you fish hours for a few opportunities. Sometimes the stockers will eat those big jerkbaits and give you something to ease the boredom, but not always. Last June, I dedicated about 6 hours of early morning fishing across two days throwing a Luck E Strike RC STX along wooded banks above and below Fall Creek. I had six 20"+ browns rise and two strikes. One I broke off on the hook set and the other tail walked and spit the hook after a few seconds. I think those really big fish are just going to eat whatever is easiest. Camping out by cleaning stations or sitting in the current and letting the water bring a buffet line of scuds right to your mouth are both easy meals. Maybe I am wrong, but my guess for Frank leaving Lilley's dock after being there for so long is due to the heavy generation Taneycomo has had for so long and causing the trout guts to be washed down stream instead of sitting in a pile. It forced him to get out and actually find real food. I hope @Phil Lilley doesn't mind, but I've dubbed my inability to leave the jig rod alone as a case of the Lilley's. It doesn't take long for me to get bored and I have to pick up my jig rod and catch a few to keep me sane.

Only one of the last six record browns was caught on a "big fish" bait. After doing some internet scouting, this is what I was able to put together. Correct me if any of it is wrong. Kevin Elfrink / 24-15 / Shad Assassin jerkbait Rob Caudel / 26-13 / tube jig Bryan Chapman / 27-8 / Little Cleo spoon <----I've heard some "stories" about this one so who knows whether it's even legit Rick Osborn / 27-10 / #14 scud Scott Sandusky / 28-12 / rainbow power bait Paul Crews / 34-10 / 1/8oz sculpin jig I believe Brett Rader had a client catch a 25 pounder last year on a small baitfish jig. There is also a post about another 24-25 pound brown on the forum from a long time ago that was also said to have been caught on orange and green power bait. I think luck plays a far bigger role than anything when it comes to tying in to a fish of this magnitude. The skill really comes after the hook up and the battle begins.

Same here. Rig and fish it just like you would a fluke. If the water has less than 4' of visibility, I tend to go with a fluke. It seems like fish can pick up on the thicker bodied bait a little bit better. With that said, my personal best smallmouth ate the trick worm when there was about a foot of visibility. The fish was laying between a log and the bank in about a foot of water. I threw right on top of the fish and it came charging out and inhaled the worm after just a few twitches.

I've caught my biggest Gasconade and Osage largemouth on that silly thing. Also caught my two biggest smallies on the Gasconade with it as well. If I an see 4' or more, you can pretty well guarantee that I am throwing that thing most of the time I'm on the water.

River bass hate pink.....

Still not certain yet, but knowing me, I will more than likely be down there. We usually fish by the rear parking lot near the cleaning station on opening day. Sounds like I am going to Montauk on Saturday with some guys I know who fish it a lot. I've only fished it once in my life and that was almost 20 years ago so it will be a new experience. Here's my opening day video of the madness from last year.

I'll throw my little report in here for the weekend as well. We fished from Scotty's down to the water treatment plant Friday evening for the last few hours of light. The bridges produced a solid 1.5# rainbow and we also caught another one around a pound down by the Kanakuk docks. We were throwing 1/16oz sculpin/ginger, sculpin/orange and black/yellow jigs. None of the colors seemed better than the other except for white. They wouldn't touch it down there. It looked like it was raining from all of the fish rising down by the water treatment plant during that last hour of light. There must be thousands of fish in that area right now. Everything we caught was around 10-12". Nothing very nice down there for us. On Saturday, I decided to go fish Fall Creek down to Trout Hollow even though I knew there were some good fish by the bridges. I was really hoping we'd get that lucky 2-3# bow that seemed so prevalent in the area during the RAW tournament, but 1.49 was the best we managed. All of the fish we weighed were caught by 11am. We knew we were going to have to catch them early before the wind picked up. White and sculpin/ginger jigs in 3/32-1/8oz caught all but one of our weigh fish. One came on a white mega worm fished below a float. My partner was catching a lot of fish on a size 5 countdown rapala in brown trout that morning, but nothing of any size. There was a bunch of fish holding near the bank and just in front of the wood pile across and just up river from Trout Hollow. I'm not sure exactly how many fish we caught, but I went through my GoPro footage and counted just shy of 30 for myself and I missed quite a few due to the rain forcing me to take down the camera. My partner easily out fished me on numbers as well. I'd say between 70-80 fish is a good estimate. Fishing was almost impossible for us after the wind really started ripping so we weighed in a lot earlier than we normally would. We were the third team to weigh in Saturday and were already in third place as the 1st and 2nd place teams had also weighed in. I was happy with our weight of 8.57, but didn't figure it would hold up at that point so I went and hung out by "Frank" and missed the weigh in. After it was done we went back up and low and behold we had 4 wrote down by our name! The eddy across from Short Creek was a hot spot Saturday. We pulled five of our 8 weigh fish out of that little pocket and the team that took third said they caught their 2.25# rainbow out of that same spot right after we had decided to give it a rest and make another drift from Fall Creek on down. That was after we had just sat and beat that spot to death for over an hour straight. On Sunday, we ran up and made a drift from Trophy Run down to Fall Creek before leaving. My buddy had a 24"+ brown charge his jerkbait just below where the rocks end and clay banks start, but it didn't commit to biting. This is where Phil lost a big brown the week before on a white jig on his one cast. Fishing was pretty slow and we really didn't catch much of anything until we got below the Narrows. What we did catch was all little stockers. There is a huge school of them on the shallow flat just across and above Fall Creek.

No it isn't! I'd rather fish Taneycomo than any trout park, but the parks are a lot closer and more convenient.

I don't notice it nearly as much on Taneycomo either. I'm sure the constant bombardment of bait and lures every few seconds plays a part. Aside from outlets, Taneycomo trout probably don't experience that too often.

Park trout are terrible for doing this, especially when fishing a wacky rigged trout worm. They will grab the worm and swim around with it and never actually get the hook in their mouth. All you can do is pull it out and let them some back and grab it again. Sometimes they will grab it a half dozen times before finally getting the hook in their mouth. Same with a full bodied marabou or even a trout magnet. When they are being that finicky, I usually have to drop down to a micro or thread jig to hook them.

Nice brownie! The best way to tell the difference between a brown and a rainbow is by the tail. Browns will have few if any spots on the tail where as a rainbow will have a bunch.

That would be me. I actually did get to personally inspect the new state record fishes mouth and I did not find a #6 circle hook in it so I can't confirm that it was the same fish. Whatever monster dad had hooked and fought for nearly 10 minutes was within a few hundred yards of where the record was hooked and landed. The way dads fish acted and how the record acted in the video of the fight were incredibly similar as well. It's possible it was different fish, but we've never fought anything that compared to how that fish felt and we've been fishing Taneycomo for nearly 30 years with trout up to 10lbs to our credit. It's such a coincidence that this monster was caught in such close proximity in such a short time frame.

I'm not sure if you are insinuating that the fish wasn't released alive or what. This fish was given the utmost care during the process of getting it weighed on certified scales before it was returned to it's rightful home. Here is how it all transpired. 1) Fish is hooked shortly after 3pm and landed around 3:30pm 2) Fish gets put in aerated livewell and rushed a few miles down lake to Lilley's where it gets put in a large aerated minnow tank being pumped with fresh water from Taneycomo. 3) It stays in there until 5:15 when Phil and his team get a large water trough filled to the brim with fresh water for transporting the fish to the hatchery where certified scales are waiting. 4) Phil, Duane and a few others put Dale Earnhardt to shame driving to the hatchery where they can get the fish weighed, snap a picture and get it back to Taneycomo. I was around to witness nearly the entire process. If Frank does eventually succumb from stress, it definitely wasn't due to the lack of effort by the anglers, Phil, Duane and everybody involved! Somebody even mentioned that Bass Pro would likely pay some good money for that fish, but Paul only wanted to see that fish released back to the waters where it has resided for many years.

He didn't realize what he had until it was in the net. When Paul first hooked up, he saw the fish swim under his boat and thought he had a 4 pound fish. Later in the fight, he said they saw a glimpse of the tail and then thought it was possibly a 10# class fish. That takes "small eyeing" a fish to a new level!

Well I tried the white mega worm beneath a float just like you would fish the power worm this weekend during the Elfrink and it worked pretty darn well! It produced quite a few fish including one of better weigh in fish. I did miss a lot of fish though. I'm guessing they were just grabbing the tail without getting the hook in their mouth.

Here is the last 3.5 minutes of the fight leading up the landing.

While I will never be able to 100% confirm this, my dad hooked in to something huge in the same area the Friday before the RAW tournament on 2/1/19 on a large minnow and I am certain it was Frank. We never got to see what it was, but whatever it was made a few trout like head shakes shortly after hook up and then it became insanely heavy and swam steadily towards the docks just above Short Creek. We chased it upstream for 100-150 yards while dad kept the rod deep in the water to keep the line from catching on the docks. At one point I was almost on top of the fish, but it was a dark and cloudy day and I couldn't see in to the water very well. Dad couldn't budge the fish off of the bottom. There is a tree about 10' of the bank about 3-4 docks up from the last long dock above Short Creek that forms an arch. That fish swam directly through that arch and then continued on up stream. We couldn't do anything and eventually broke the line. Had it swam besides the tree instead of going through the arch, I think we stood a very good chance of landing that fish. Watching Paul fight that fish and chasing it around on the trolling motor and seeing how it headed for the docks was like deja vu of how the fight went with whatever dad hooked in to.

Yes. I believe they said he was hatched in 2011 and stocked in 2013.

Same for the ones in the Osage River below Bagnell. Caught plenty of blues and channels on the same day, same bait, same everything and there was a very noticeable difference in the quality of the taste between the two.

Everything I've looked up shows the current New Mexico state record is 20lbs 4oz. This one would have surely beat it.

GIANT! Did they say if they were sight fishing or did they just blindly hook in to it?

That one looked like how I feel after eating at Lamberts! I believe Phil uses Trilene XL. I’m partial to P-Line premium cx or Floroclear.

I’m not sure on the flatheads but they sure are good. Small channel cat aren’t bad, but anything over 2# has a funny taste to me. I grew up eating the snot out of channels from local lakes and ponds, but I guess I wasn’t as picky back then or something. I’ve ate blues up to 45# and they have always been good as long as you trim off the thing layer of silver skin and red meat.

We should be getting down around the same time as well as long as there aren't any hold ups.