Saturday February 17th Report

[Seth]

My buddy, his dad and I fished up at the outlets today with our fly rods. We caught a load of them up at outlet one on fish food flies when they started flushing the hatcheries. We caught fish on tan/grey scuds, pink globalls, ginger gbugs, and one on a white jig today also.

Seen something cool today while they were flushing the outlets out. A bunch of 6-8" fingerling trout came flushing out dead from outlet 1 shoot, and the big browns and bows were in there gorging themselves. I never could get any of them to bite though, didn't have any flies big enough to imitate a dead trout fingerling. They would come up and swipe them off the surface really aggresively. We might go up to the outlets tonight and try some big plugs and see if anything happens, but then again its awful cold out there so maybe not.

Was anybody else up there today?

[Thom]

Seth:

They did the same thing Saturday. They might be cleaning out chutes one by one. I think they were also feeding on other debree (pellets etc) coming out with the dead rainbows.

[Seth]

Well this is the first time I have ever seen dead fingerlings being flushed out. I've fished it with the food coming out a few times before and it gets pretty crazy. One guy across the shoot said he seen a brown about 15LBS swimming around there. We did see one about 7 or 8 pounds was our guess.

My friends dads caught the biggest fish of the day, a fat heatlhy 19" rainbow that probably went 4 pounds.

[Phil Lilley]

Seth- when you say "6-8 inches" this isn't a fingerling. I fingerling is much smaller- 3-4 inches.

I just got a ruler out to see... I know trout 5+pounds should be able to eat a 6 inch fish- probably with some effort though.

I guess what I'm asking- could they be a bit smaller than 6-8? That would make more sense.

How many did you see? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Hundred?

Just trying to get an idea of what you saw.

[Seth]

Well maybe they were closer to 5-6", with a few 3-4" mixed in. I guess we seen around 50 get spit out the chute and ate by the trout.

The big rainbow had 2 of them half way in his gullet when it was caught. My friends brown had one half way out of his mouth when caught.

My friend and I just got back here to the Fall Creek Inn where we are staying. We went up to the outlets with some 5" minnow plugs and our spinning rods. We each hooked a fish, but didn't land either one. We met Leonard up there and shared some coffee and stories. I'm glad my friend was able to meet ya Leonard, he thought you were a good ol boy. We appreciate the flies too.

[Leonard]

Seth...

Great to met you again.. and your buddy...

Last night was tough.. but I finally got into the fish..

after throwing streamers catching a couple..

I showed a guy how to rig a dropper (midge and egg) and a glo indicator.. we went to outlet 2 and within the first 6 casts.. I had 3 fish...

then I got him to try it... HE HAD A BLAST!!.. not sure how many he caught..

I was out till about 3am this morning...

Leonard

[Seth]

Glad you finally got them figured out. We fished this morning till about 11:30 and it was slow for teh most part. There was about a half hour period where they really turned on up there by outlet 1. I guess it just proves that if you want to catch fish, go when its cold and nasty outside and play golf on the nice days like today.

[Andrew Schaefer]

trout, like most any other fish, will eat just about anything they can stuff down their throats. I'd say the average 18 inch trout could probably manage to get a 6 inch fish down. I've seen bass, which are extremely cannibalistic, eat or attempt to eat other bass that are very close to their same size in hatchery settings.

Another time on Taneycomo, my brother and I caught a limit of rainbows, they were all around 13 inches or so. We fished catch and release for a few hours before returning to the dock to clean fish, and when I opened the livewell there was a zoom super fluke floating in the water. The only way it coulda got there is by a trout coughing it up.

[brooktrout]

Seth, There is a difference between catching trout on a fly rod and fly fishing. I say what you and your buddies were doing, and that aint fly fishing.

[Seth]

trout, like most any other fish, will eat just about anything they can stuff down their throats. I'd say the average 18 inch trout could probably manage to get a 6 inch fish down. I've seen bass, which are extremely cannibalistic, eat or attempt to eat other bass that are very close to their same size in hatchery settings.

Another time on Taneycomo, my brother and I caught a limit of rainbows, they were all around 13 inches or so. We fished catch and release for a few hours before returning to the dock to clean fish, and when I opened the livewell there was a zoom super fluke floating in the water. The only way it coulda got there is by a trout coughing it up.

Think what you want. The way I look at it, beating the outlets like everybody does when the water is running isn't fly fishing. I much rather prefer the water to be off so I can go fish the gauntlet and rebar holes. Sight fishing is my favorite thing to do when the water is down.

We came down to catch some fish and that is exactly what we did by matching the "hatch" so to speak. I caught a few trout on my gbugs, scuds, san juans, and globalls but it still wasn't fly fishing since we were just "outlet beating". When the water is down, I don't even fish by the outlets because A) way too crowded and I'd rather fool trout that aren't getting pestered all the time.