fishing report

[Jeremy Hunt]

One of the guy's from the tying class had this to say...

From the field...

I was pretty surprised that there weren't more people taking advantage of the good weather on Tuesday. It was extremely sunny with the temperature holding at around 60 degrees, there was a slight breeze, but it wasn't quite enough to put a chop on the water. I started fishing below rebar and worked my way down to big hole. I was casting a size 18 soft hackle to the opposite bank and letting it sink by mending the line before starting the swing. I tried different retrieves, letting it swing and then stripping it once it was below me, and using small strips while it was swinging. I received a hit almost every cast when I used small strips and about every other cast when just allowing the soft hackle to swing with the current. I landed several nice fish this way, but it just wasn't producing many large fish.

I could see some actively feeding about 15 to 20 yards off the bank above me. I tried using the soft hackle, but it wasn't any use. Casting up stream didn't allow for a good presentation, or enough time for it to sink. I switched to a size 16 bead head zebra midge followed by a San Juan worm in worm brown. I fished these flies about 24 to 30 inches below a pinch on indicator. The midge sunk the flies pretty quick, the San Juan was set to where it would skim the bottom, and sometimes cling on to a rock. Fish after fish fell to this combo. They attacked the San Juan pretty hard. The best was to allow it to sit on the bottom above several feeding fish and then give it a little bounce to pull it off the bottom, it seemed like several fish would actually fight over it. After catching several nice fish just above the big hole I noticed that no one was fishing rebar.

This is one of my favorite places to fish when you can have it to yourself. After walking up to rebar I realized why no one was fishing this hole, the water was extremely low and the fish were holding primarily in the lower part of the hole- with several large rainbows and two nice browns holding in the slow water below the last set of rebar. I took several fish by standing at on the bank at the middle rebar and drifting the midge and San Juan down below the last set of rebar, but for the most part the fishing was slow to what I had encountered earlier.

I decided to pack it up and head over to Lilley's for fly tying class. It really doesn't matter how the fishing is, although it was great on Tuesday, class is an excuse enough for the trip to Branson. I always learn something new, and it has helped my tying tremendously.

Nathan Fitzgerald