July 27 Fishing Report

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Generation patterns are still fairly consistent here on Lake Taneycomo. The U.S. Corps of Army Engineers has been shutting the water off about 10 p.m. and leaving it off all morning the next day until early to mid afternoon. Then officials are running quite a bit of water, up to four units, until it is shut down again at 10 p.m.

Fishing after the water comes on has been difficult, so your best time to catch trout is definitely in the mornings.

Our lake water is very clear this time of year, and our trout have become somewhat finicky, so we’re having to drop to two-pound line, such as when fly fishing and jig and float fishing. When using bait and lures we’re still using three-pound line. But even if you are fishing bait, this is something to consider if you’re not being as successful as you’d like to be. Consider dropping to two-pound line and see if you get more bites.

Injected night crawlers have been catching the best trout lately, much better than Power Bait. Injecting air in the night crawler makes them float off the bottom, allowing the trout to see your bait much faster and thus drawing more strikes overall. We use what is called a blow bottle, available at most bait shops. The best areas are around Short Creek down to Cooper Creek and then down by Monkey Island.

If you like using Power Bait, Gulp eggs using one pink and one white egg on a #8 hook has been best.

Our guides have been catching some really nice rainbows and a few browns up in the trophy area – above Fall Creek – this past week on several lures. Of course, you can only use flies and lures between Fall Creek and Table Rock Dam, and you have to release all rainbows between 12 and 20 inches in length. Also, the water at and above Fall Creek, when the water is off (no generation) is shallow. If you don’t know the channel, you can hit bottom very easily, and very often.

Jig and float technique using two-pound line, a float and a small micro jig or a small marabou jigs has been very productive until the water comes on after noon. We’re setting the jig four to five- feet deep and fishing the channel dropoff or main channel. The best jig colors have been tan, olive, sculpin, black, brown and white. Special colors are brown with an orange head, sculpin/orange with an orange head and ginger with a brown head, 1/125th-ounce marabou jigs.

Also throwing a jig using no float, or straight line using a 3/32nd to 1/16th-ounce jig, working it, but you can get away with four-pound, especially if the water is running. If it is running, go to an 1/8th-ounce jig. Colors are sculpin, brown, white, ginger, olive, olive-black and purple.

Fly fishing from a boat you can use a jig and float with the same rig that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I was out the other day when the wind was really blowing, which is a little strange for July. I tied on a chili pepper, an oversized crackleback basically, and stripped in up on the flats above the Narrows, probably in no more than a foot of water. The rainbows really liked it. I bet a wooly or a soft hackle would have drawn the same attention. They like moving targets when the surface of the water is choppy.

They’ve also liked a scud fished on the bottom in the gravel—a #12 or #14 gray scud. They’ve also been taking a tan or olive scud. If you catch them rising on midges, try offering them a #16 or #18 olive or black zebra midge under a palsa indicator about a foot deep. Also strip a soft hackle over the top of their heads when they’re rising. They can’t stand that!

Night fishing . . . has been nothing short of great lately. If you’ve never done it, it’s best to hire one of our guides to show you the ropes. It’s truly a different experience. I did venture out the other night in my boat to fish with a friend who happens to write for a Kansas City news publication. It was only the second time I’d ever tried this—getting out at night in a boat in the fog. I’ve night fished many times from my boat but always in the spring or fall when there’s no fog. Fog just isn’t fun to maneuver in and it’s, well, wet and cold. But our results cause me to wonder whether I should put up with the wet and cold more often! We caught trout often. And nice ones. We put in at the dam and drifted down to Fall Creek, then fished at Short Creek before heading back to the resort. We fished black 1/8th-ounce jigs exclusively, but I believe they would have hit other colors, too.

There wasn’t any guessing when you got a bite—they really hammered the jig. Gauging how far we were from the bank and trees was the only difficulty we had, but we mastered that pretty well.