Fly Fishing Report – Early October – 2020

Fly Fishing Report – Taneycomo

Last weekend the generation picked up and the wade fishing was limited.  The steady one-unit to low two-unit water hung around for around 4-5 days.

The DO levels prior to the release were reported to be as low as 3.0ppm, so wade fishing or not… those fish needed a breather.  

The few days of steady generation still has the browns coming up river and several rainbows have been spotted trying to make redds in the heavily waded gravel around the outlets.  

This week has us looking at more pockets of low wadable water.  Monday, they shut the water of around 7 and turned it back on at 3.  Tuesday, they turned it off earlier and then started generating around noon.

As I look at the daily releases it looks like we are getting more and more wadable water and less generation to keep those fish happy.  

Hopefully they will go back to the short periods of wadable water. 

Over the last 6 or 7 weeks the times when the generation was off for only 6-8 hours, resulted in the best bite and the fish fought hard, ate regularly, and I was able to see rods bent up and down the river.

Taneycomo – Sept. 25th

I was able to get back out on Monday with Fred and Faith, that decided to make a short drive down from Springfield.  

They fish on upper Taneycomo were back to their normal hard fighting selves.  

The extra jolt of oxygenated water gave the fish plenty of vigor.  

The couple landed several nice rainbows, a few in the 18-inch range but the catch of the day was on the last cast going into load the boat.

Faith was able to cast to a nice sized brown moving up river and the fish turned instantly and took her white Mega worm and the fight was on.   

Flies used on this day were Mega worms in Chartreuse, White, and Peach along with rusty and root beer midges in a size 16 in areas with wind chop.

Taneycomo – October 7th

Jeremy was out with another couple that happened to be spening a little time in the Branson area.

The two happened to look up and see the bill board we had installed well over a year ago and decided to give us a call.

Both Bryan and Erika were first time fly fishers.

Jeremy had them shooting line and hooking up on trout within the first half hour.

They fished midges under a palsa indicator at a depth of 18-22 inches the duration of the trip.

Size 16 seemed to be preferred over the size 18 offerings on this particular day.

White River/Norfork October 8, 2020

Jeremy left out for a short trip on the Norfork on Thursday.

He hit the water with Chris in the late morning hours.

The bite was substantially slower than in the previous weeks.

He used all the same flies and combinations that had been our go to flies.

Jeremy noticed a rise in the water levels and heard the horn blow and decided to shift back to the White river around the noon hour.

Turns out the sudden increase in water levels was the Arkansas Game and Fish Commissions action aimed at improving dissolved oxygen levels downstream on the North Fork River.

The combined spillway and hydropower release will be around 4,200 cubic feet per second.

Water temperatures are not expected to exceed 70 degrees according to reports

They arrived on the White and were able to get a several nice bows to the boat before the day was done.

Fishing tandem rigged miracle flies, san juan worms, and shad patterns.