Year End Fishing Report 2017

It’s time again for our cliché quote when it comes to posting on the website. “It’s been a long time since the last fishing report,” so we hope in the future to do a better job keeping things more current for everyone out there that is yearning to see what has been working and what fishing conditions we as tailwater fly fisherman are faced with in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas. What do we have in store for everyone, you ask? Finally launching a new website in 2018! We take pride in the hundreds of pages of content we have available for everyone that is currently on the flysandguides.com website for fly-fishermen and tiers alike, but it’s time to deliver a more accessible website that can really showcase the fish that are out there being caught and released throughout the year along with a user-friendly shopping cart and the same in-depth step by step tying instructions we have delivered in the past. We have had another successful and demanding year here at FlysandGuides.com. We want to thank you for all the orders that have come in over the website, Facebook, Instagram, the phone, and on the water.

Thank you for letting us be part of your journey throughout one of the most worthwhile and rewarding sports you will ever take on.

Lake Taneycomo

TANEYCOMO has been fishing very well. The fall months into the early part of December have not been the typical low fish counts when the DO drops that we have seen the last few years. With the floodgates open came warmer than normal water and with that came a variety of warm water fish that we don’t typically see on upper Taneycomo. We have brought to the boat several largemouth and smallmouth bass, brim, and an occasional crappie. The interesting thing is we are still catching these fish into the month of December. With the exception of a few days following Thanksgiving when the water appeared to be discolored and not the most aromatic, it was the tailwater to be fishing. This year it seemed that the browns moved up and we got to see them for a bit longer on the upper portions of the river. From early September we started spotting large fish and still managed to hook into several solid browns into mid-November. Currently, Taney is back to what we expect for fishing here in the winter months, the fish are happy and fighting hard. The browns for the most part have headed down stream but if your wanting to keep the rods bent and the lines tight, December throughout March have always been a great time rack up numbers. So far, this month we are getting a few hours of low water in the afternoons throughout the week and then back to the 2400-2700cfs in the weekends. Flies that are consistently working are the Megaworms in white, chartreuse, and peach. The Miracle-Fly in Oregon cheese and peach are working, midges in a variety on colors along with the Taneycomo sculpin and the Big Ugly have came through on the windy days.

White River

WHITE RIVER has been at minimum flow for what seems like months, until that last few days it has jumped back up to the 35mw through the week and then back to the 7 on the weekends. The fishing has picked up in the last couple of weeks, numerous fish are being caught farther down the river in and around Rim Shoals. The Ruby and UV red midge are fishing extremely well. Megaworms in several colors are still picking up the larger rainbows and MiracleFly’s in a variety of colors are still turning a head or two. The state park area is currently closed until February for the Browns to start their spawning process. If you’re out at night searching for that mouse eating brown remember to steer clear of this area. Let’s all be alert when wading and stay off the Redds when fishing this time of year as spawning can happen in areas downstream on the white river.

Norfork

NORFORK was hit hard this year after the flood, water clarity was the worst we had ever seen. DO levels dropped significantly and what trips we had on the books for the fall months were moved to other rivers or rescheduled for a later date. The few times we did fish the river after low water returned, the trout caught seemed undernourished with skinny profiles and some even had blisters and bumps on them. Other fish were pristine and appeared to be living a happy, healthy river lifestyle. The bigger browns are in Dry Run but the number of them appears to be down from last year. The river has started to clear up in the last month but we have reports that that has decreased again. Bottom line the size and the number of fish we typically boat have not been what is expected out of the Norfork and it is going to take several months before we get back to what we had before the April flood.