Current Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report

[Phil Lilley]

First let me qualify that our water situation here on the White River Chain of Lakes doesn’t compare to what Joplin and other tornado-ravaged communities have endured these past weeks. We pray for those who have lost loved ones as well as possessions, homes and businesses and hope to help sustain the vast outpouring of help coming their way.

The past couple of weeks have been quite a roller coaster ride for us. With five days of rain, some days we didn’t know what was going to happen hour-to-hour. Our lake level rose to 724 feet, four foot shy of the record level and releases from a month ago. Each day the water was rising, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met with their water management specialists at 9 a.m. and again at 3 p.m. to decide whether to release more water or to wait and see if the flow was adequate for that time. We waited anxiously for word, especially when the water was already high and ready to flood our lowest units again if raised further. The rumors were the worst: We were told at one point that they were considering raising the flow to a record 100,000 cubic feet per second, more than a third more than was released in April. That would have flooded the whole resort. After the meetings, we had a two-hour notice to get ready for more water.

Now the flow from Table Rock Dam has been slowed to 20,000 cubic feet per second, which is very manageable for us. The lake is now safe to boat and fish, our ramps are out of the water and we’ve restored electricity and gasoline to the dock. We are renting boats again—actually all were out today. Fishing is pretty good considering the dam is still releasing a great deal of water. Five flood gates and four units are running, so the current is fast. They will release this amount of water from Table Rock until the lake level is down to 928 feet. At that point they will back off the release quite a bit. If they do the same thing as they did back in April, we’ll see only two units running around the clock.

I did make a trip up to the dam yesterday after the water dropped from 10 gates to 5. Water temperature varied from 51 to 55 degrees depending on what side of the lake you were on. The water still has a lot of silt in it. It’s a normal green color, but it has a chalky tint to it, versus the clarity Taneycomo is known for.

I’ve always said that I loved fishing when the floodgates were opened. The water pouring over the top from Table Rock is chock full of shad, minnows and other nice morsels for our trout. Plus it dumps other types of warm-water fish like white and black bass, crappie and walleye into our lake, which makes catching very interesting. And the constant flow of water benefits the food supply for our trout -- sculpin, scuds and sow bugs.

Guests are reporting that the rainbows have been good sized the last two days and hard fighters. The trout we’re catching up close to the dam are aggressive on the take, so there’s no question when you get a hit. The color is white -- white jigs, white shad flies, white or silver crank baits are all working well. Our guides have drifted using medium-to- small floating crank baits like Rebels and Rapalas on a drift rig, getting them close to the bottom. They have also worked the banks with these crank baits as well as white 1/8-ounce jigs.

We found white bass, crappie, small mouth and spotted bass along the bank holding in eddies or slower water yesterday and caught them on white jigs. We caught more warm-water species working the bank this way than trout. We did better drifting and working the middle lake on trout, catching mostly rainbows but also a couple of browns.

I suggest drifting and using #12 gray scuds, peach egg flies and white San Juan worms from Lookout Island to Fall Creek, staying in the middle of the lake to catch rainbows. Make sure your fly is on the bottom, though.

Below Fall Creek, orange and white Gulp power eggs are working the best the last couple of days. Night crawlers have done well, but the eggs are working better. Try the mouth of the creeks for trout, too. Before the water level dropped yesterday, we were sending people down to Cooper Creek access, telling them to hike through the woods to the creek itself and fish there, the closer to the mouth of the creek the better. We saw some nice rainbows caught out of the creek during the few days of extremely high water.

[Phil Lilley]

First pics are of one of our guides, Steve Dickey, and his clients yesterday.

These are a couple of the rainbows we caught this evening. Note the red in the one rainbow.

[Dean colorado]

can't wait to try my hand and catching a few. should be showing up in the ozarks on the 4th.

Thanks for keeping us informed on how the fishing and the water release.

[gary2400]

I can't wait to try some of that but I spent the last week helping daughter digging out in Joplin. I was sad at the flooding losses over the last month around Branson but looking at Joplin I can't believe there wasn't more loss of life. My daughter's family got under the house just in time and I believe that was why they survived. The outpouring of help has been unbelievable. The Catholic church that was totally torn up is just a block from the daughter and the next day they were out giving people up and down the block money for gas/etc.....unbelievable. We pulled the lumber and trees off of my daughter's car and there was a 100 dollar bill that had floated right onto the seat.....God is merciful....