Trip Below Table Rock Dam, July 18

[Phil Lilley]

Heard a guy by the name of Tim Homesley (Tim's Fly Shop outside of Roaring River State Park) may be up fishing below the dam this morning so I ventured up there about 8:30 am. Walked in above outlet #2, looked around and didn't see him off so I started fishing.

Don't think I've ever introduced Jackson to our OA readers yet. He's a male black lab out of my daughter Megan's litter. Her dog Darby, a chocolate lab, threw 9 puppies last August and Jackson was one of the males. We've had labs before here at the resort and my dad was missing his last dog, a lab/chesapeake mix who died a couple of years ago so we went in halves. Jackson is a great fish dog--minds well.

Anyhow, Jackson was along for his first trip to the dam, on the bank that is. He's been up in a boat before.

I tied on a #24 black thread midge with a #18 tan Trout Crack (scud) using 7x fluorocarbon tippet, palsa indicator 24 inches from the first fly. I could see a number of rainbow cruising around not too far off the bank. I ended up hooking and landing a couple nice rainbows before moving upstream.

I saw Tim at outlet #1 so I walked up to say hi. We stood and talked for about 30 minutes. He and his wife come over to Branson when they want to relax. He told me he'd stay with me (at Lilleys' Landing) if we had a spa... I said no, we won't have one anytime soon either. We don't want to compete with Chateau on the Lake.

Tim was hooking quite a few rainbows. They were thick, stacked up in the outlet flow, nosed up to the flow rolling over the gravel flat and falling into a deep hole off the bank. He was using 5x. "I don't care much if I hook anymore fish and I don't want to lose anymore flies... I've had to tie on too many this morning", Tim explained. But his 5x wasn't spooking too many trout. Along with a scud, he used a white chammy worm. He was using barbless hooks... I got the feeling he used them all the time.



After visiting about Roaring River and Alaska fishing, I took off and walked back to my truck. Wanted to drive down to the MDC boat ramp before having to go to a noon lunch meeting. Lots of cars in the lot there and I thought, what the heck! May be I shouldn't report on this area quite so much. But when I got down to the water, most of the crowd were at the ramp and down. Strange! They were waded out to their waste and fishing out further. I'd rather fish 2-3 feet of water than the deep water. May be they were catching fish, I didn't notice.

I walked up a bit and started. Wind was blowing a little and chopping up the water but I still could see fish out just past the flat rock bed on the chunk rock. I used the same setup but this time I ran 8x from my first fly out to the second. Bright sun, very clear water. I talked to Chuck Gries yesterday and he said he was using 8x so I thought I'd try. It worked!

Caught some nice rainbows and only broke off once. And 8x wasn't that bad. I thought I'd have to really baby the fish but it wasn't any worse that 7x.

Nice morning. Jackson really like being out there too.

Interesting pic... just interesting to look at, nothing more.

[patfish]

Nice TR, Phil. One question, on average, how many underwater shots do you take to get a few keeper pix?

[Phil Lilley]

3-4. Tough part is having to wait for the fish to settle down. I'm not holding or touching him at all, just holding the line so it takes a while for him to stop trying to get away and just sit there. Then I have to get the light right and try to take the side where the fly will show up. Takes a lot of fishing time!! But it's cool.