Taneycomo fishing report, February 26

[Phil Lilley]

We've had lots of excitement on Taneycomo the last few days.  Here at Lilleys' Landing we have had a fun time keeping up with all the social and news media coverage and comments about "Frank," the new brown trout state record caught by Paul Crews of Neosho, MO, on Saturday.  I know Paul, a quiet, mild-mannered person, is not accustomed to all the attention, calls and interviews, but he's handled it all with great grace, knowing the publicity just comes with the territory of breaking an almost 10-year record, especially with a fish that many have sighted but never enticed.

This fun fish story has so many facets that it's hard to cover them all at one time.  Paul used one jig -- all day -- including the last fish he landed, the state record brown.  The wind was gusting up to 40 mph that afternoon.  Catching anything by throwing a jig  should have been nearly impossible.  I could go on and on

Of the trout brought in for the weigh-in on  Saturday, the brown, of course, took the spotlight.  As for the other trout, we didn't see any of the good two-pound-plus rainbows that have been caught in previous contests this winter, only one weighing 2.25-pounds.  But the rest were  solid one-pound to 1.5-pounders.  Even the Crews/Rayfield's seve-rainbow weight was impressive at 7.84 pounds (minus the brown trout).

Most of those fish were caught on spoons and jigs.  And most of the teams fished down lake, from Monkey Island down past the Branson Landing.  For two weeks  now, the area in front of the Branson Landing has been holding a lot of trout, most of which were probably recently stocked either down at the Missouri Department of Conservation ramp/dock or by boat in that area.  These stocker rainbows are good sized, most approaching a pound each.

Some of our guides have been fishing down there, throwing the Berkley's pink Powerworm under a float five- to seven- feet deep.  Again, that's one of the best lures used to catch rainbows on this lake in years.  They're using four-pound line.

Anglers are drifting Powerbait and doing very well, too.  Use the smallest weight to get to the bottom.  We're suggesting an 1/8th- ounce bell on the drift rigs because dam operators have only been  running two units all the time now.  That's pretty slow current, especially down towards the bridges downtown.  Night crawler and minnows are catching fish, too, and you'll have a better chance catching a bigger trout using natural baits like these.

I fished yesterday with local Pastor Richard Marks, boating to the dam and throwing jigs, straight, with no float.  We used white and white/gray for the first drift from the cable down to Lookout Island and only caught a handful of trout (and one smallmouth bass.) We made a second drift and switched to darker colored jigs, a black and a sculpin/ginger 3/32nd-ounce jig.  The fish liked these jigs better!  We caught quadruple the number of fish and missed many more strikes.  The difference was amazing!

So with only two units of water running, we're not seeing any shad come through the turbines, no sign of any fish eating them.  It's been my experience that shad come through when four units are running rather than with less generation.  I think the power or flow of the current on the topside of the dam pulls more baitfish into the intake, and that's why we see shad during heavy generation rather than during slow generation.  So will we see shad when they crank up the flow from Table Rock Dam?  I hope so.

Fly fishing has been pretty good.  A group here now from St Louis are fly fishing out of our boats, drifting mainly in the trophy area and doing pretty well.  They are drifting scuds, San Juan worms and egg flies under an indicators four- to six-feet deep, staying on the inside bends and drifting over shallow flats, trying to stay away from the deeper channel.

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[Seth]

I'll throw my little report in here for the weekend as well.

We fished from Scotty's down to the water treatment plant Friday evening for the last few hours of light. The bridges produced a solid 1.5# rainbow and we also caught another one around a pound down by the Kanakuk docks. We were throwing 1/16oz sculpin/ginger, sculpin/orange and black/yellow jigs. None of the colors seemed better than the other except for white. They wouldn't touch it down there. It looked like it was raining from all of the fish rising down by the water treatment plant during that last hour of light. There must be thousands of fish in that area right now. Everything we caught was around 10-12". Nothing very nice down there for us.

On Saturday,  I decided to go fish Fall Creek down to Trout Hollow even though I knew there were some good fish by the bridges. I was really hoping we'd get that lucky 2-3# bow that seemed so prevalent in the area during the RAW tournament, but 1.49 was the best we managed. All of the fish we weighed were caught by 11am. We knew we were going to have to catch them early before the wind picked up. White and sculpin/ginger jigs in 3/32-1/8oz caught all but one of our weigh fish. One came on a white mega worm fished below a float. My partner was catching a lot of fish on a size 5 countdown rapala in brown trout that morning, but nothing of any size. There was a bunch of fish holding near the bank and just in front of the wood pile across and just up river from Trout Hollow. I'm not sure exactly how many fish we caught, but I went through my GoPro footage and counted just shy of 30 for myself and I missed quite a few due to the rain forcing me to take down the camera. My partner easily out fished me on numbers as well. I'd say between 70-80 fish is a good estimate. Fishing was almost impossible for us after the wind really started ripping so we weighed in a lot earlier than we normally would.

We were the third team to weigh in Saturday and were already in third place as the 1st and 2nd place teams had also weighed in. I was happy with our weight of 8.57, but didn't figure it would hold up at that point so I went and hung out by "Frank" and missed the weigh in. After it was done we went back up and low and behold we had 4 wrote down by our name! The eddy across from Short Creek was a hot spot Saturday. We pulled five of our 8 weigh fish out of that little pocket and the team that took third said they caught their 2.25# rainbow out of that same spot right after we had decided to give it a rest and make another drift from Fall Creek on down. That was after we had just sat and beat that spot to death for over an hour straight.

On Sunday, we ran up and made a drift from Trophy Run down to Fall Creek before leaving. My buddy had a 24"+ brown charge his jerkbait just below where the rocks end and clay banks start, but it didn't commit to biting. This is where Phil lost a big brown the week before on a white jig on his one cast. Fishing was pretty slow and we really didn't catch much of anything until we got below the Narrows. What we did catch was all little stockers. There is a huge school of them on the shallow flat just across and above Fall Creek.