Feb 16 - Report

[PerfectDrift]

Loaded up Thursday night for a trip to Lilley's with a full day of fishing planned on Friday. Left under frigid conditions from Kansas City with the promise of a nicer day Friday. Went with a couple old fraternity buddies so there was plenty of bulls...er stories flying on the way down. Good trip down and checked into our clean comfortable surroundings at Lilley's. The two other travelers were in hopes of getting some fly fishing experience. I had contacted Jeremy Hunt, who I had purshased some flies from before, to get a couple others for the day. Jeremy spent way more time with us the next morning than he had to and made some recommendations. I tied 4 rods with flies and droppers outside the room which took awhile for a guy that struggles tieing droppers and then doing it with steadily numbing hands. We finally headed up from Lilley's in the boat about 8:45 and it was cold. My two buddies both former college football players didn't look quite so tough on the way up huddled in balls with watery eyes.

Finally to the fishing. In all honestly it was tough for us. With four generators running we landed 11 fish on this cold windy day. As Jeremy had predicted the San Juan worm, red, was the fly of the day as we tied that as our dropper below several differnt attractor patterns. We did not catch any on the attractors, maybe not deep enough?, but did land fish on a pink jig and a large bead head scud also. Not much traffic on the water. Tended to have our best stretch starting at the cable away from the chutes and working that bank down. The best fish was a 16" rainbow on the worm. We stayed on the river straight through until 5:00 before calling it a day. We donated several flies just trying to run three fisherman on the boat with that much water running really worked us hard. The trip back brought snow just north of Springfield which made for a long trip home but it was a safe one.

Thanks for the forum.

[Phil Lilley]

Sorry I missed you... drove to St Louis and back and didn't get home till 6:30ish. Glad Jeremy could help.

[PerfectDrift]

Thanks Phil. Would have been nice to meet you. We enjoyed our stay and thank you for the opportunity to stay at such a reasonable price. All this water should make for great spring fishing and overall health of the fishery (just wish we didn't have it on our trip:). Take care.