On Friday I made a pre-fish check of Lake Taneycomo as I was in Springfield, MO. I arrived at Lake Taneycomo and fished the Pointe Royale area. It was tough fishing as I couldn’t figure which fly would be the choice of the trout there. The flow was slow but moving (the charts showed the flow at only 20 cfs. But I did find some areas where the flow was maybe 50 – 75 cfs. That’s awfully slow considering that Montauk is usually around 100 – 200 cfs. I decided to fish noticeably light tippet and small flies. I caught a nice Brown Trout (15 – 16 inches) early in the morning and thought that just maybe I found the right fly combo early but not so. I pulled in four more trout the rest of the morning and had to stop around 1pm when the water was turned on.

Taking this knowledge, we planned a trip for both the STL FATC guys and the Springfield FATC guys. Matt McClure and Jim Craig drove down to Branson, got a condominium, and decided to fish three days if possible. George Wong represented the Springfield guys and brought his good friend Barry Smith to fish on Wednesday. I, Kenny Klimes, also drove down from Springfield to fish just the Wednesday. I was talked into staying Tuesday night with Jim and Matt which turned out to be a great idea.

Jim, Matt, and I started fishing around 7am on Wednesday and were joined by George and Barry around 8am. We caught fish but overall, the fishing again was tough. Most had anywhere from 5 – 10 fish in the net. The top flies seemed to be the crackleback (blue and red), the black and red zebra midge and the scud. With the water moving slow the guys found stripping the crackleback with a sinking leader or small split-shot to get it down was most effective.

The water came on around 12:30pm and we were off the water by 1pm. We had lunch at Dana’s BBQ and of course, we had a few laughs. Matt and Jim went back out in the evening and hit on more rainbows by using cracklebacks and sinking leaders. Jim even caught a White Bass???

The Browns will be moving upstream in a few months. Maybe a LT trip again to follow???

Tight Lines

Kenny Klimes