Elfrink Trout Tournament Results

[Phil Lilley]

The last few days have proven to everyone that MDC has stocked some nice rainbows here in the last couple of weeks. We started to see some of these trout last week while fishing down at the Landing and below Branson.

Friday actually was the day to be out fishing. Some of my regular anglers who fish here a lot said they'd never caught that many trout here - and the average size was quite good.

I did hear from one of the guys that Lamar at Scotty's told them that MDC's stocking boat is down, has been for a while, and that they've been stocking off boat ramps. There are several small private ramps below Branson, not to mention Rockaway and Ozark Beach ramps. I think they've been stocking off all these lower lake ramps- that's why there's so many trout below Branson.

The winning fish were caught mostly at the Landing and lower in the lake on jigs and spoons Saturday.

Big trout (rainbow) was 1.82 and was caught at the Landing on a jig. No legal browns but guys said they did catch good numbers of browns from 12 to 19 inches. This has been common this winter- anglers saying they've never caught this many browns. And that they're schooling together.

In my opinion, the fact that there's so many trout in the lake and at least in the middle part of the lake there's so many good rainbows, this really leveled the playing field at the tournament. I think that's a good thing.

One more point- we had only 2 out of 39 teams not weigh in, one of those teams fished above Fall Creek. That's pretty cool- means participants wanted to see how much their bags weighed because they thought they did well, and they did. The average weight was considerably heavier than most tournaments.

All this means we should have a very good spring "catching" season here on Taneycomo.

Next year the brown pot will increase to $1,200 and I think there's a good chance we'll see a legal brown weighed in. If not next year, the following year- definitely!

[Phil Lilley]

And yes this was a catch and release tournament- all fish went back in the lake and swam off. I only saw one dead rainbow weighed in.

The gal in yellow, last pic, is Vince Elfrink's widow, JoBeth Elfrink. With her is Shawn Pingleton and his dad Garry. They took first place.

[Sac River Jim]

i had just gotten down to Lilley's and walked down to the dock just in time to see a fella land a 21'' rainbow. he caught it on a pink berkley power egg.