Had two boats on the water yesterday afternoon.  What a perfect day!  The weather was great,.  Temperatures were in the 50s, not too much wind, they turned the water off at noon, and the fish were crazy.  The only downside to the fishing was that many of the fish were small.  Looks like they recently dumped in a bunch of Federal fish. 

Stan had a couple from Gardner, Kansas out.  John and Becky Bloomer caught "bunches" on everything.  Large dry flies, Madam "X", Trude, filoplume, Primrose & Pearl Midge, and John even caught two on a  dry fly he had made out of his dog’s fur!  Becky did had a really nice fish on for a while that she hooked with a size 12, flashback gray scud.  We did catch a few in the 13-14 inch range but most were 9-11 inches.

My boat was some of our regulars, Rick & Kristi.  Between the badgering back and forth as to who had caught the most fish or the largest fish, they were catching fish or getting hits on almost every drift for most of the afternoon.  We did catch lots nice fish in the 13-16 inch range and what COLOR!  Some of them were brilliant with deep purple tones.  And, as we said, also caught lots of smaller ones.  Although I put a Big Ugly on Rick with a midge dropper, they were all after the midge.  Kristi finally retired her beat up Primrose & Pearl midge.  She wanted to keep it to remind her of her great fishing day.

How many afternoons in January can you do this?  As Rick said on the way back to the shop "we stole this day".

They go fishing.  Darrell, one of our guides, took advantage of the water being off for a few hours yesterday.  He had a good day fishing in the riffle area up above outlet 2 at the Hatchery.  He caught several fish on the Primrose & Pearl.  As he noticed the clouds moving in, he changed out to the Copper Dun and continued catching fish.  He also did real well on a size 8 weighted gray leech using an accelerated downstream presentation in this same shallow water area. 

They have been generating water pretty much all of the time for the past three days.  Hope it will be off on Saturday.  However, with it as cold as they are projecting, we might have some generation in the monring.   We’ll just have to wait and see.

When the water has been off or running low, fishing has been good.  Several people came into the shop on Wednesday and Thursday, plus we had a guide out fishing and everyone was catching fish.  Mainly up around the outlets and they were using size 14 gray or tan scuds.  Earlier in the week, the Big Ugly was working, but once we got the heavy water it was not as effective.

Much to my surprise, but should have expected it due to the recent rains, there were three generators going when we hit the water first thing in the morning.  My client, Steve, mainly wanted to gain knowledge, learn more techniques and improve his skills.  We started off with a size 16 tungsten bead head blood red midge, #1 split shot, indicator, set about five feet deep.  We rowed up to about 50 feet above the MDC boat ramp, anchored against the bank and fished out toward the seam.  After catching some fish here, noticed the seam the was moving away from us and was now out  about 15 feet.  Good indication the water was dropping.  Checked the generation, and they had shut down to two generators so the river was dropping.  Pulled anchor and rowed upstream to the Rocking Chair area, and we stripped the olive filopflume using an intermediate sink tip.  Another technique for Steve to add to his "bag of tricks".  Caught a few this way.

As the water continued to drop, we rigged up with a Copper Dun, size 18, with a #1 split shot and set at 3 feet.  We pulled anchor and drifted down to the Lookout Island catching several fish along the way.  At Lookout Island we noticed fish rising on the seam below the island so we switched to a 7.5′ 4 weight rod and put on a size 18 black zebra soft hackle using 5X tippet.  This proved productive and Steve, who had never fished soft hackles before found this was one of his favorite techniques.

After lunch we drifted a size 18 Burgundy Midge, set 5 feet deep still with a #1 split shot.  Caught fish on the deep, high bank size of the river.  Half way through the drift, changed to the Copper Dun.  At the end of the trip, we noticed another nice seam.  Anchored on the seam and changed back to the black zebra soft hackle and he caught more fish with this method.  Probably caught 30 plus fish with the largest 16-17 inches.   

Stan

I decided to go fishing this morning, it was 60+ degrees, sunny, and no wind to speak of.  By the time I hit the water, the wind had picked up to 20 mph out of the South and it got dark and started to cool down.

 The wind kept blowing harder and harder so I anchored the boat and set up a 5wt line with a 2.6 IPS (inch per second sink rate), and tied on an olive filopflume size 12 on a 6 foot length of 4X tippet.  My first cast resulted in a hit and miss, the next 3 casts resulted in 3 nice rainbows about 13 inches each.  Another couple of misses and I brought in a 15 inch rainbow.  It was getting colder by the minute so I decided to drift downstream to where our good friends Pete and Ellen were fishing.

I  anchored in shallow water (about one foot or less) and changed to my Favorite 4wt rod, a 7.5 foot 4 piece tip flex with a 9 foot leader and 3 feet of 6X tippet and tied on a size 14 holographic green crackle back.  All I really needed to do was get it downstream about 40 feet and they slammed it.  I proceeded to catch about 5 or six fish (one small brown of about 14 inches) and looked over at Pete and I think we both decided to give it up around the same time.

 Getting the boat back on the trailer by myself with that wind was a hoot. 

Stan

Stan took the boat out yesterday with a friend and had a good time on the holographic crackleback.  Fished best with #8 split shot, throwing it toward the ledge bank in the shallow water above the boat ramp and letting it drift out toward the middle.  Fish were hitting it all kinds of ways, hard, real soft, and just lightly tapping it 2-3 times.  Also fished the filopflume under a sink tip.  They were taking this pretty soft.  Also caught a few on the olive wooly bugger under the sink tip, drifting it with a slow strip.  I went out this afternoon and fished the holographic crackleback in shallows down below the gravel bar on the Rockin Chair side across from the boat ramp.  Had a good afternoon with this.  They were hitting it pretty hard on the strip.  Tried the split shot, but they didn’t seem to want it that way today.  Talked to a couple of our customers on my way in, their way out, and they had had a good morning on the filopflume.  I tried the filopflume but they didn’t want it anymore.  After I went back to the crackleback I started picking up fish again. 

Trip out New Year’s Eve day.  Great day on the water.  Despite the heavy 30 mile/hour gusts, they caught lots of fish.  At the Pointe, their best fly was the Miracle Scud, size 16.  On the drift, it was the Burgundy Midge with a blood worm dropper.  Caught fish on both the midge and dropper.  He had a good time and said, "as usual, learned a lot".

Glad to say they blew the horn yesterday at 5:00 p.m. to start running some water.  Water has been pretty dingy, probably because of the lake turn over and also due to the fact they have not run water for well over a week.  Should stir up the fish and make it real good.  Weather report for this coming weekend looks great.  Upper 50s to low 60s.

We have had boats on the water the past three days and fishing has been good.  Great father from Texas wanted to get his 10 and 12 year old sons started in fly fishing so they went out with one of our guides Saturday.  Real troopers as it was pretty cold Saturday morning.  In a couple hours they were getting their fly into the water, mending, and catching fish.  Had three boats on the water yesterday and they all did well.  Two couples from Georgia took 1/2 day drift trips.  they caught fish, learned a lot, had a fun time, and think they might make this an annual tradition.  Other boat out all day and boated 50 plus fish.  The consistent fly on all these trips was the size 18 copper dun.  One of the boats did catch some on the black and rusty midges.  I went out for a while in the afternoon to get my weekly "fix" and had a good time first with the sink-tip leader and the olive filopflume.  Saw fish taking emergers so I changed out my rig and threw some size 18 olive/brown soft hackles.  If I didn’t get a hit, it was because I had lost my fly.

Checked with the folks at the Hatchery today to confirm that Table Rock Lake has turned over.  We noticed dingy water for several days last week.  Also, we have been getting good reports on fishing.  Fish are hitting almost everything.   The dissolved oxygen has been bouncing around between 7.5 ppm and 9.0 ppm which is very good for the fish and fishing!