Week of Fishing, hard running water

[Stevent]

It feels like weeks since we were there, but I finally got a second to sit down with my coffee and write up a report / thank you.

Our normal crew grew this year and we had nine guys and a couple of Taneycomo first timers.

We were down June 12-17th and we stayed at Ozark Trout Resort with Wanda. She took great care of us and the rooms were nice as always. We rotate between there and Lileys if they have a space when we go. 

Fishing was great, probably the biggest fish we have ever seen in the 20 years members of our group have been coming down. We caught a lot of 15-20 inch heavy rainbows, one 20 plus, throw in the occasional small one and it was a good trip for everyone.

I spent weeks before the trips tying up scuds and they worked, I have to admit I was pretty excited about that, but they only worked because Bret Rader showed us how to fish them on our first day there. I have fished Taneycomo for 12 years or more with my dad, brother, family and friends and every year we learn something new. Brett taught us to drift using the slip bobber and it worked all week and was especially great for my nephew and dad to make sure they were getting to the bottom. We fished Bret's flies, grey scuds in #14-16 and peach eggs we bought from lileys the rest of the week.  The eggs seemed to out produce the scud, but Bret's fly was our best producer, until we managed to break them all off.

As always Jigs did the trick if we could manage to keep them down. Thanks to lileys fast, friendly shipping of tying materials I was able to tie jigs for the group. It sure is fun to add your own little tweaks to each jig.  I felt sad when my favorites were lost.

Thank you to everyone we ran into and lileys crew for the great conversations and help in the shop.  Jackson seemed a little lonely while Phil was out of town, but he was happy for a scratch when we walked into the shop (as long as you didnt want him to get up).

[Phil Lilley]

Great report. Glad you had a good time. Loved the part about Jackson. He’ll be 11 soon. He likes his visiting friends.