Bite Before The Rise

[Phil Lilley]

We got out yesterday from 1-3 pm-- in between storms-- and did real well. I took a pontoon with my uncle Jerry, his son Abe and his grandson Jonah plus Abe's father-in-law Billy up to the trophy area to see what we could do.

No generation yet, the water coming out of Short and Fall Creek, as well as some of the other runoff outlets, were running brown so the areas directly below these spots weren't places I'd stop to fish. There was a flotilla of boats right at the mouth of Fall Creek trying to fish the clearer water above the creek outlet. They were doing pretty good. We went up to the tennis court area and started there. The water was off colored but not bad at all.

Started them off using micro jigs under a float 4 feet deep, olive half micro with an orange head. About as soon as the jig hit the bottom of their drop, the float was down and catching began. Jonah, I was told, didn't like to sit and NOT catch fish. At 4 years old I guess that's normal. But he didn't have to sit long and had a blast running from one end of the boat to the others either to reel a fish in or net another rainbow. It was pretty much non stop for 2 hours.

For something different, I tied on a 3/32nd oz sculpin jig and threw it out on the shallow side, crawled it on the gravel bottom and as soon as I hopped it alittle, wham! I had a rainbow. Most of the rainbows they were catching with the micros were around 11-12 inches. The rainbows on the sculpin jig were nice ones- up to 18 inches. So Abe and Billy switched to the straight jig and started catching nice ones.

We ended up with 20 - our limits of small 11.5 inchers and got back in before the rains started again.

It looks likes we've had 5 inches here so far with alot more rain coming. Table Rock has come up over 2 feet and the level of rise looks like it going to go over 920 by tomorrow. If it keeps up this pace, I predict we'll see flood gates by Wednesday. In the past, the Corp will start flood gates when the level of Table Rock approaches 922-923. Two more days of rain like this and Table Rock will easily reach those levels.

We've gone from very low lake levels for spring time to flood conditions in just a few days.

[Phil Lilley]

Fishing for others in the trophy area was very good too. One guest here at the resort caught a 25 inch rainbow on a jig yesterday. Haven't seen pics yet but heard it was a beautiful trout.