Fishing Bull Shaols Dam 6-13,14-07 REPORT

[Jeremy Hunt]

6-13-07

I must say, another two great days fishing down on the White River right up at Bull Shaols Dam. Since Taneycomo is running so much water I had to cancel my last two trips due to high generation. I was getting tired of sitting home tying flies from being rained out the previous days before. I had to go fishing. One of my clients called me and wanted to know if I wanted to fish so I said the only way I was going to was to head down and fish the three units they had on at the White. The last time Doug and I fished it together which was a month ago we had a phenomenal day catching three fish that were close to 20 inches long with a ton more. We got a late start arriving at 1:30pm with only two other boats fishing it. I was thinking to myself, I wonder if the trout have seen pinky lee today. Probably not in awhile so I figured we would hook some fish right off the bat if everything goes as planned.

To make a long story short, we caught fish, but the bite was slow and I think it had to do with steady generation for two days in a row and being the middle of the day probably didn’t help anything either. However I did get to catch a brook trout that was in the 14 inch range that made the trip worth while. Pretty fish I just wish there was more of them around and especially up here in the catch and release. I will say that was the first one I’ve caugt this year up there.

June 14th 2007

Now the next day was a different story. I decided to stay the night and fish the next day with Summer. So she met me down there that night and Doug dropped me off at my buddy Eric’s house while I waited for her to drive down. We arrived at the dam around 9am with not a parking spot at all. There were boats everywhere and that’s the first time I’ve seen it like that in a while. They still had three steady units on so I thought it should be better then the day before because it was early and we all know getting there early could be the key. I’m sure with all those boats up there this morning would give a few trout lock jaw, but I still knew those trout had to eat.

I would say after being there for an hour or so we probably caught six fish and then lucky Summer (I would put a picture of Summer with this trout, but she said she looks ugly in the photo so she won't let me post it) hooks into this fish that didn’t move at first when she hooked it. And then all the sudden it took off up stream like it was running a quarter mile. I told Summer that we would probably have to chase this fish or she would lose it if it got into her backing. I like to call it, “ the fight on the white”. It’s ten times harder to land big fish in high water because if they make a turn on you and create all that slack it’s a lot easier for them to shake it out of their mouth and get off. The funny part about this whole trip was I forgot my camera and here we are with this 23 inch rainbow that was in the net and thinking to myself, why didn’t I bring my camera. It always works out this way. One thing I had on my side was I knew a few people fishing up there that were guiding so I called Jimmy Traylor and asked if he could come down stReam and take a picture of this fish. I was lucky and was able to get about five good pictures. I should have them posted in a day or two when he can get a round to sending them. One more thing to mention about this fish, he was a little skinny for being as long as he was. I personally thought it was a couple of pounds under weight he should’ve been at. That makes me wonder about the didymo in the water. I believe iF they can leave the water off for awhile and let that sun get rid of it; it will solve some of the problem.

But wait, it’s not over. After Jimmy left on the very next cast Summer caught a brown that was 19 inches fishing the bank across from the boat ramp on the golf course side. Both fish were caught on pink san juan worms. All I can say is those things work and work extremely well right now.

We didn’t get a picture because we didn’t want to bother Jimmy again so we released it. After we caught that fish we realized that we had cameras on our phones. The only thing with camera phone is the picture isn’t all that good for the web, but it beats not having one at all and also backing up the stories is the only way you get people to believe our fish stories. Right? We all know that.

So after catching two nice fish in a row I decided to go downstream and fish this one stretch that I knew the fish liked to feed on zebra midges. The day before, Doug and I went down there closer to the end of the trip and caught several fish throwing zebra midges having the most luck on black. The funny thing was they would only hit a midge that had a gold bead. Copper wouldn’t work at all, but at Taney the trout won’t leave it alone. So today while we were down there I saw a ton of fish and a few big ones like we saw the day before. I did things a little different today. Yesterday I anchored and casted to them and could only get a short drift. Today I wanted to just float down stream and really make my drift count. I also kept my distance from the fish so they didn’t know I was coming. I threw a little down stream from the boat and made a long cast. I knew that one of these bigger fish had to be fooled by this type of stealth presentation and I was right. After catching a few smaller rainbows I got rewarded with a beautiful brown that was every bit of eighteen inches. When we were taking a picture of this brown he spit up everything he had been feeding on and it was all midges with most of them still alive. I was able to get a good look at the coloration of this in the pupa stage and found out that they do have a flashy sheen to them. Kind of like a holographic look with tubing like segmentation. They were all colors with a grayish black being the most in his mouth. Although olive was right up there with being a popular color for the trout as well. It’s really funny that gold or copper beads have anything to do with the way these midges heads look like. I understand why wrapping copper wire to make segmentations, but the head looks nothing like a bead and it sure doesn’t have gold or should I say, a bling to it. That just goes to show you that beads are more of a attractor then what it actually looks like to a trout. That’s just my two cents.