Fishing Report

[Phil Lilley]

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Generation patterns remain the same as last week, the same almost each day. They are running what amounts to be 1/2-turbine or 30 mw of power for most of the day and night and double that late afternoon for a few hours. Oxygen levels seem to be holding nicely and the trout we're catching are fighting pretty hard. It doesn't seem like the Corp will change these patterns anytime soon.

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I've been out several times this week with mixed success. Earlier in the week, I spent quite a bit of time up in the trophy area trying to catch fish on the fly rod. Had some success stripping a soft hackle (#16 red or black) below the Big Hole. There's dead water on the north side of the lake and the seam towards the middle where the current starts. Rainbows were holding close to the surface taking small midges off the surface and in the film. I also got them to take a small WD40 (#20 cream) as well.

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Drifting from there down to Lookout, I tried several colors and sizes of scuds and didn't do well. May have been middle-of-the-day blues, don't know. I did catch rainbows on an olive or sculpin jig 1/8th oz pretty consistently. That's my fall back. From Lookout down, I threw a dry- #4 sofa pillow and a #2 big ugly along the banks and got nothing- no action. Felt like the current needed to be faster along the bank. Too many eddies and lots of fallen leaves. Again, the jig worked, but nothing of any size. No browns.

Darin said he got out the other day and they drifted his white shad fly on the bottom from the cable down and did real well. His first fish was a 20-inch rainbow. I did see a big school of small fish in the Big Hole. They weren't shad and they were not trout. Not chubs. Long and slender like trout. But they were just the right size to be eaten my a big rainbow or brown. I do think there's still threadfin shad up below the dam and I still hear of people catching crappie, white bass and black bass. . . just not that many.

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The 1/8th oz sculpin jig did real well working the bluff bank from Fall Creek's dock down one evening this week. I didn't catch that many rainbows but what I did catch were good sized ones. Today, this evening, they were running 30 mw when I got out but I think they increased it while I was fishing but not by much. I started above the River Pointe Estates boat ramp 4 docks up. I'd planned just to fish a jig and float and drift lazily down till dark. But some midging trout caught my eye over in the shallow water on the south side. They were up real close to the bank and then out further but still in less than 18 inches of water. I tied on a black zebra midge #16 and pinched a half-palsa on the line 8 inches above the fly and proceeded to catch 4 small rainbows and one small brown. Then tried a soft hackles with no takers.

I was still determined to go to the jig and did, tying on a 1/125th oz marabou jig, sculpin with an orange head, 2-pound tippet and a float I set at 5 feet deep. I kept to the middle to shallow side of the lake and drifted down past Short Creek, picking up 8 rainbows between 9 and 12 inches. Caught 3 more before hitting the tree field goals above Trout Hollow. Wanted to fish the water up and in front of the resort before it got dark so I headed down. The have been midging consistently so I knew I'd have some luck and did. I think altogether I caught 16 rainbows and a small brown in about 90 minutes of fishing, much better than I thought I'd do. And gosh, what a gorgeous evening!

Fishing off our dock has really picked up the last couple of days, mainly on Power Bait and night crawlers. Curtis said some guys went out mid day today and weren't out very long and came back from the Trout Hollow area with their limit of rainbows caught on Power Bait.