Fishing Report

[Phil Lilley]

Fished with Vince Elfrink this morning- got to the tailwater at 6:30 am and walked in to below the rebar hole and started drifting egg flies and scuds. Vince joined me about 7 and quickly started showing me how to do it. He was using #20 tan or ginger ostrich scuds and kicking my butt. So I switched and started doing better. We caught about half rainbows and half browns- Vince had one brown pushing the trophy limit and I caught a brown with the biggest brown spots (pics). Vinced hooked 2 trout- one rainbow and one brown- that would have gone over 25 inches each but the hook pulled out of both. Before we quit at 1!:30 we fished between #2 and #3 along the bank using the same flies and caught some nice rainbows and saw some real big trout. There are still ALOT of browns below the dam and tons of rainbows- just lots of trout. It was definately better later in the morning.

I'm going to write an article on presentation very soon. More and more I reallize it's not the size tippet, it's not even the fly but it's presentation that catches fish. If that fly doesn't look right in the water, if it's not in the right place or moving naturally, it won't get bit.

Did see 2 things that didn't make my day. An angler fishing in the rebar shoot early hook and fight was appeared to be a fouled hooked big fish, land it, hold it down on the gravel for the longest time, it looked like he was digging something out of it's side, holding it up for a pic, dropping it on the gravel, putting it back in the water and working with it maybe for a minute (tops) and watching it float downstream. Later I fished in the hole below the shoot and found a freshly dead rainbow, still limber, about 18-19 inches. I kicked it up where I could pick it up and found the gills still pink. It was the rainbow he had killed. I believe he was a local so if he reads this- congrats! You killed a nice fish for what??!! You should sell all that fancy gear you had on and go back to school- learn how to be a real angler.

#2 - this one I'm not going to be quite as tough on simply because I didn't go up and ask to measure the fish but... A guy carried a rainbow out of the stream #3 outlet and cleaned it, bagged it and carried it to his car. It looked to be short of 20 inches. Vince thought it would have been close- I didn't think so. He came back to the stream and continued fishing. He saw me look at him... and again, I'm not swearing it wasn't 20 but I'd bet a bunch of money on it. I thought it was 17-18 inches. But that brings me to my soap box and fishing #3 outlet. I'm going to start another thread on that point.

[Phil Lilley]

Fished again last evening- this time for supper. I boated up to Riverlake Resort (my motor got hot so I started there) and worked back down to the resort. Casted red #16 zebras under an indicator 12 inches to surfacing rainbows and caught a dozen before it got too dark to see the indicator. 3-4 rainbows were small- 5-6 inches! They didn't look like Neosho fish and it's too early for their stocking- that usually happens in December. So Shepherd must have had to dump some small ones.

They really like to come up around the trees this time of year. But they still love the zebra!

No surface action this am in front of the office but at the dam the last 2 mornings, midge hatch hasn't come off till the sun gets up over the water.