Lake Taneycomo Fly Fishing Report
February 10, 2010

Low Water Opportunity…

Days like today are why some of us have thrown convention to the wind and devoted our lives to fly fishing the White River Basin. I checked the updated schedule, and much to my surprise, the water was going to shut down at 11am. If you don’t take advantage of these “windows” when you are a local, much of the year’s best fishing may be missed out on.

It took me a bit of time to get myself together and drive to the dam, so I did not wet a line until 2pm. Since the water has not been low in awhile, I was not sure how the fish would react – it can go both ways. I’ve had incredible fishing and frustrating fishing on that first day of reduced flows after long periods of constant releases. The fish were ‘on’ in a major way, and I pretty much had a bite on every cast using a Rusty Midge set about 20-inches below a stick-on indicator. At one point, I landed a trout on twelve successive casts. There was steady midge activity happening all over the place. All in all, I touched around twenty fish in less than two hours. The water came up at 4pm.

The biggest fish landed was a 17-inch ‘bow that I have a picture of posted, and like most of these trout I had the pleasure of hooking up with, this creature was going to fight his hardest to get free. I did do some scouting, and I was not able to see tons of big fish, but the dark color of the river bottom this time of year can make it tough to spot trout. It is hard to figure out exactly why the water was shut off today. Perhaps, there was a technical issue at the dam, or maybe, we will start to see lower midday flows. Only time will tell, at this point. I will be putting out a nymph article early next month that details the type of fishing I was doing today.

These are bread and butter techniques for guides, so this article will probably only be presented to newsletter subscribers. This is just one more reason to sign up – you just don’t know when I may send out an exclusive article. Last week, subscribers received a dry fly article that has garnered positive reviews. This piece can be found on my blog, but most articles will not be posted there.