Lilley's Lake Taneycomo Fishing Report, March 1

[JestersHK]

Phil you mentioned MDC is going to tweak stocking? Do the guys at the hatchery think there is a problem?  Curious their views on how things are going.   

One things for sure the next shocking results should be pretty eye opening.

[Phil Lilley]

We have their ear... they really don't "see" anything.  The only way they see anything is through their shock survey.

Missing 60k fish is something they see.  Just not sure how they can do anything about it now.

[mwfischer]

We had our annual trip last weekend and certainly caught less than a typical weekend but the quality was definitely a notch up.  Caught and released my PB rainbow at Taney, 6lb 4oz, didn't get a length as I wanted to get him back in the water quickly.  Super fun fish, Lilley's brown/sculpin 1/8oz hooked just up from Fall Creek and landed about at the FC docks by the time he was done.  Wish I'd have gotten better photos holding him for scale.  

 

[fshndoug]

please look up safe ways to handle trout.  You could have weighed the fish in the net and the subtracted the net weight without risking damage to the fish.

[snagged in outlet 3]

11 hours ago, fshndoug said:

please look up safe ways to handle trout.  You could have weighed the fish in the net and the subtracted the net weight without risking damage to the fish.

Probably wasn't going far after a trip to the parking lot anyway...  He coulda ate it though I guess.

[Phil Lilley]

Healthy fish for sure. Congrats

[mwfischer]

Apologies was in a hurry to get him back and didn't think of that.  No intention to harm at all or offend, fish was released from the dock, assured it was strong in the net and swam away healthy.  

[snagged in outlet 3]

4 minutes ago, mwfischer said:

Apologies was in a hurry to get him back and didn't think of that.  No intention to harm at all or offend, fish was released from the dock, assured it was strong in the net and swam away healthy.  

That's a nice one!!

[Phil Lilley]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:23 AM, fshndoug said:

I think you are starting to see the effects of the conservation dept stocking 300,000 fewer trout per year .With all the harvesting of fish that has been going on the last couple of years combined with the lower stocking numbers and the improper handling of fish by almost everyone what you see now with far fewer fish being caught is going to be the norm in the future. You can stand in one place around the upper end and see very few fish compared to past ,which I mean 4-5 years ago. I would bet there are at least a million fewer fish in Taney than a few years ago. I am sure that some will disagree with the above commentary but I am just throwing out my observations with over 50 years of fishing on Taneycomo. 

Just to be clear, the figure 300,000 is not the number of trout missing from last year’s stocking numbers. 

[Travis Swift]

In having a good convo with my brother about this a lot of it came to light.  They did the survey several years back when taney wasn't quite as popular.  They cut the stockings down around the first year of Covid I believe.  Which to no fault of their own Taney and fishing became even more popular.  In our unscientific opinion there are probably 25 to 30% more boats fishing Taney the last couple of years that we can ever remember, perhaps even more (it's been stupid at times).  So the perfect storm created  where you have say (guessing) 20% less fish being placed in the lake and 30% more people fishing it with the majority of them keeping fish and or bait fishing and we know the mortality rate of bait caught fish and the picture of seeing why the number are so low in the lake right now lie.  I think they put less fish in but none of us knew the "Covid effect" would mean that much more pressure and hence why they will need to look at numbers in the future.  If they had a crystal ball they might of almost left stocking numbers the same knowing the "taking" part of the put and taking was going to increase drastically.