Sat Night (6/11) Fishing Report

[Dave Cook]

Sat., June 11. This one of the times when the generation schedule was in our favor and they stuck to it. We scouted the area around the hatchery Saturday evening around 8pm. The water was around 706 and 3 generators. Those fishing between outlet 1 & 2 were having luck. I watched several fish landed.

We started fishing about 23:50. At midnight they turned the water off and it dropped rapidly. Using ultralight spinning, I had a nice rainbow immediately on a heavy olive jig. It seemed that when the water went off, the fish took a little while to readjust. I switched to a light 1/48th olive jig and the fishing picked up. The only other fishermen we saw were a couple of walleye fishermen.

Here's how the fishing went. Trout, gar,trout ,green sunfish, goggleye,trout,trout,trout,white bass, trout, trout,trout, bluegill and then just trout for the rest of the night. After about two hours with the spinning, I went back to the fly rod and switched off the jig to a hibernator (olive) and I think it was about 6 fish on 6 casts. That slowed down to about one fish to 6 casts, so after a bit, I switched to a purple PMS. Bingo! I fished that until morning. Once it was light enough to sight fish, casting to objects really resulted in some good fish. My best fish was 20" on it and I lost one even bigger.

The biggest change you could see in fishing the dam area is the Rebar Hole. It is gone. A gravel ledge runs down from the island to the other gravel bar and works like a dam. There are four places where the water breaks thru this dam and creates fast runs and deep holes. One of these channels cuts deep into the island and at the far side of this gravel ledge, the water goes around the old gravel bar and then back to the main channel. They all meet about where the end of the old rebar holes hits the high bank and turns left. Still upstream of the snag in the middle of the river. With the water off, there were many large fish going up the fast runs and over the shallow gravel dam. A boat can't make it. The first fish I saw do this was a brown trout that was probably 15 lbs or more. It looked like a salmon on a spawning run. The next fish I saw up the chute was a 3 foot gar right by my legs. The next fish I saw ready to do this looked like a catfish. Didn't get a real good look but this fish appeared to be over 30 pounds. When I tried to get a closer look, the fish backed off and went back to the deep water at the end of one of the fast runs. With that, I was done for the day. With the water off all morning hopefully, there are other reports of what conditions are like on upper Taneycomo.