Lilley's Lake Taneycomo fishing report, November 2-3

[Phil Lilley]

We have a new generation patterns here on Lake Taneycomo, after almost 7 inches of rain over 6 days last week.  The good news is that it was a cold rain, cooling Table Rock's water by 20 degrees.  Every year, as many of you know, our water here on Taneycomo is low of oxygen because the water we get from Table Rock (at 130 feet deep at the dam) is almost void of O2.  Liquid oxygen is injected into the turbines when they run water to keep levels up to standard (4 parts per million).  Table Rock's surface temperature must drop below 57 degrees (the temperature of our water coming through the turbines) for Table Rock to "turn over"  When Table Rock's water mixes, we get good oxygenated water again until Table Rock will again stratify. 

Stratification occurs as a result of a density differential between two water layers and can arise as a result of the differences in salinity, temperature, or a combination of both.

Table Rock historically doesn't turn over until early to mid December but we may see it turn early, depending on our weather in November.

Beaver, Table Rock and Bull Shoals all 3 rose about 3-4 feet last week.  Generation at Bull Shoals and Beaver Dam all but stopped but at Table Rock Dam, generation began and has been running constantly through this past weekend.  The flow has varied between 2,600 and 4,100 cubic feet per second, which is between a half unit and a full unit.

Well.... gezzz!  They just opened 8 flood gates Monday afternoon, plus turbines equaling almost 15,000 c.f.s.!  That came out of left field!

They did do this last November, opening gates when they needed to drop the lakes.  But understand... they can only do this because Table Rock's temperature is at a level (about 60 degrees) that's ok for our trout in Taneycomo.  The only thing is the water flowing through the turbines (about 6,000 c.f.s.) is very low in oxygen (2 parts per million).  That means the water flowing down the north side of the lake has low O2 and the south side (flood gate side) is high in O2. 

The waters mix somewhere downstream but till then, I hope the fish find the oxygen.  But note -- the hatchery outlets do add good water on that north side so I believe all will be well with the fish.

Now for the hard part.

Fishing?  I know what we will do this week.  Boat to the cable and throw white jigs, drift shad flies and scuds.

I'm sure we have gotten a new crop of warmwater fish - bass, white bass, crappie and walleye.  And of course gar, spoonbill and lots of gizzard shad.  But hopefully we'll see lots of threadfin shad get washed over presenting our trout with an early Christmas present!

New news.  Guess one guide, Capt B, came in today and said they caught big rainbows on white jigs at the dam.  Fish were puking up shad.  They didn't see any in the water though.

Table Rock has dropped almost 6 inches since they opened the gates at 3 p.m. yesterday so I'd say these gates will stay open for a couple of days.  I don't think they'll be open much past Friday.  After that, we should be back to the schedule in which we should see some down water (no generation) for part of most of the day.  But we will see.

 

[Travis Swift]

They are shutting them down at 4pm today.  If your going up you better hurry.