mo_bowhunter

Attending a get together with a group of firends in late April. They have aleady booked the several rooms down at Ozark Beach, I have not fished down in that area of the lake in the last 15 or so years. Most of my experience in the last 5 yrs has been from Phil's place and on uptowards the the trophy area. My question is, how is the fishing in that lower portion of the lake? Would I be better off running up to the dam to have better fishing? I appreciate your thoughts and advice. Thanks.

Bill - thanks for the report. We are on vacation staying at the Stillwater resort. I am thinking about pulling the boat out and driving down to Taney tomorrow morning to see how we can do. Is the fog really bad at 7am? Thanks, Jeff

SKMO, thank you very much! I am tking the kids down to the Rock and Taney in a couple weeks. When we hit the Rock I thought Gills would be fun to go after - but I have never fished for them like Bill and you mentioned. Most of my experience has been off the dock - but the kids love being in the boat so we will give it a try. We are going to be staying up near Kimberling City.

Bill - thank you. I was just reading down the forum topic list and saw the new Bluegill topic - and I thought to myself what perfect timing. Then I read your first post, laughing. Thanks for your help! I appreciate it!

We are considering taking a vacation down in Branson during the middle of July. A couple families have time shares in a condo resort that have to be used by the end of July. I would like to know how the fishing is and how crowded Taney is during mid July during the day. I will be down there with my family, fishing with all three kids (4, 6 and 9), I plan on drift fishing with the Gulp eggs - I think that might be the easiest way to fish. That or possibly with bobbers and worms or gulp eggs. I appreciate your guys thoughts and experience for that time of year? Thanks, Jeff

First off - I want to thank everyone here for all the advice and help with reports, recommendations and shared knowledge – I really appreciate it, and so did the guys fishing with me. It really helped us catch a ton more fish this year. We fished Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. The temperature was pretty good, ranging from the low 40’s to around 50 – cloudy the entire time with pretty strong rain on Sat from noon till early Sun morning. I do not have the generator schedule - but the water seemed very low Friday afternoon with maybe 1 generator running. The rest of the time it seemed like two generators were running with water staying around the 705 level. We tried just about everything – drifting, casting a few stickbaits, jigs and in-line spinners. The fish seemed to be hitting them all, size was very respectable with several fish over 18”. I was not specifically counting but I would guess we caught over 100 fish with half dozen are so being brown trout. Drifting minnows, worms and Berkley eggs all produced very well from Fall Creek to down past Cooper Creek. We did not have as much success with the Rapala’s, In-Line spinners and jigs – although we were not very patient with trying the jigs for very long. The olive/brown 1/8 oz. jig worked best - the black jig got little action. I cannot believe how few boats and other fisherman were on Taney this weekend, sometimes it seemed like we had the lake to ourselves. This morning we saw less than a handful of boats out fishing from 7 till 9. Thanks again for everyone’s help prior to our trip – we had a great time and had very good success.

As of a few minutes ago SWPA had not updated the anticipated generation schedule for later this week or this weekend. But it looks like Beaver has been running at capacity for the last couple days starting the draw down.

my bad, I am very bad with the national holidays. Maybe it will be updated today.

Cabelas has one of the strongest warranties - like drew mentioned, they have a lifetime guarantee and they will exchange them at anytime. I did not know it was a lifetime guarantee until I guy in front of me at the Service Counter at the Hazelwood, MO store was exchanging a pair that was over 10 years old - he still had the receipt.

I tried to call earlier today and the automated service gave a statement about the data not being available. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Beaver Lake draw down.

I am not very familiar with how Beaver, Table Rock and Taney are all combined relating to draw downs and water level. Is this something the corp does for a couple days or will it effect Taney for weeks? Thanks, Jeff

I just received the forecast for Taney this weekend - are you kidding me. Mostly Sunny and a high near 60 both days!! How could you have any better in mid January...

Congrats! Man it does sound like those jigs are the key to success in running a team up the tournament ladder board. Good Fishing - working a jig correctly is not an easy art...

This is a little off topic in regards to a Hot Spots Map of Taney - but what about a good topo map from Map Create 7 or something along those lines. This would be a GPS type map showing the depths and structure of the lake to some detail. Finding the hot spots takes time on the water with a rod in your hand. I would bet there would be plenty of interest for a electronice topo map that could be uploaded in a Lowrance type GPS unit - marking the lower unit dangers, large boulders, main channels, etc. I thought this was in the works a couple years ago... Thoughts?

Duckydoty - thanks for the numbers, those will be very helpful and I will be saving those numbers in my mobile phone as well.

I have been searching for a post that I found in a search a couple weeks ago. It talked about the different months of the year and how the fishing was during those months at Taney. I cannot seem to find the post anymore - if I remember correctly October/Novemeber were pretty good as well as end of January/February - those were the best months to fish Taney. Does that make sense? Is anyone familar with that monthly fishing type report - or maybe it was on Lilley's Landing website? I just found the location for the article I was referring to - it was in the ozarkanglers articles portion of the website, here is a link if anyone is interested. Very good info. http://ozarkanglers.com/index.php?option=c...5&Itemid=48 Thanks.

Bill/Phil - have you heard anything more about Hot Spots making a map? I forgot to grab one of your maps when we were down at your shop last week. I followed one of the guides all the way up to the wire with my GPS tracking my path - so I could save the safe path back up their for the rest of our three days of fishing.

Thom, That sounds like a great plan - I live off of Belleau Creek road near Fort Zumwalt South High School.

This report is a little late but I have been out of town traveling all week, sorry. I made my first trip down to Taney last weekend. Thanks to you guys here on the forum – our fishing trip was a great success. Phil – thanks for coming down to your shop and meeting us, I appreciate all your time and help! Saturday and Sunday they were running one or two units most of the time. We had a wind shifting NW to SW throughout the weekend, around 10 – 15 mph. I do not know what normal boat traffic is on the lake, but Saturday seemed pretty crowded to me between Fall Creek and Lilley’s Dock. We would boat upto Lookout Island or the Narrows – drifting back down stream to Lilley’s. We had our best success just down stream of Lookout, right around that private ramp upstream of Short Creek, the bank opposite Trout Hollow and the shallow side just upstream of Lilley’s. I was fishing a Jointed Rapala sz 11 Gold and a Lucky Craft Pointer 78 Aurora Gold on drift rigs. My partner was fishing a Rapala Floater sz 8 Rainbow in the restricted area – and would switch to the Gulp White/Orange and White/Green on drift rigs from Fall Creek on. We caught 20+ fish each day. I caught 3 browns from around 12” to 18” – and a couple good size rainbows at the 18” and 20”. All in all, I had a blast and I am very anxious to get back down to Taney. Next time I will have to try going down the lake a little more – we were having great success up where we were so I did not want to move much. Thanks again for all your guys’ help and advice – it definitely paid off!

RPS - That makes perfect sense. Thanks for your advice and sharing your experience - I appreciate it.

RPS - I have never read that article before thank you! Have you ever fished with the P-Line Fluoro products? I have had pretty good success with them bass and crappie fishing - they look like they did pretty good in the testing. It would be interesting to see how the new Trilene Maxx line would do - that is the new Trilene line that combines the best of both worlds between XT and XL.

Paul - I totally agree with you, it is pretty awesome when we can have that kind of conservation facility and effort in our own backyard. I think the local conservation groups have really done a good job here in the last several years - from working with the waterfowl marsh areas, to the deer habitat and food plots being planted all over the MDC grounds, sunflower plantings for doves and the hatchery upgrade that Phil highlighted in his article.

Very interesting - this is my first year making a trip down to Taney, so I will be a novice. But does the boat traffic slow down during the Jan - Feb months - I thought those were the two best months to fish at Taney!

Phil - with a higher output of brown's from the hatchery, will that increase the number of brown's in Taney over the next few years or are they doing that to move more brown's around the region? Thanks. Jeff

I shoot a Mathews as well - all I can say is go out and shoot as many bows as you can get your hands on and figure out which one feels the best to you. I was almost deadset against a Mathews because all the marketing hype - but at the end of the day and shooting it three different times, to make sure I was making the right decision, I went with the Mathews and have been very happy with it for over 5 years.