Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Ozark Fly Fishing 10-22-2012

Trip Summary: Dan and I had a very enjoyable fly fishing trip last week to the Ozarks. We
were able to fish several places in 4 cool water streams, mostly for rainbow and brown
trout. This included 4 days at Taneycomo, White River (below Bull Shoals Dam), Norfork
tailwater, and the North Fork of the White River. It was all wade fishing, and we had to be
very flexible, as the water release predictions were way off, making us change plans
several times a day (once they release a huge amount of water, we can no longer wade
fish). The weather was actually very nice, and we hit that cold front on the way home which
dropped the temperature 30 degrees. See more technical detail below these pictures. Her is a link to all of the trip pictures if you're interested:

Click here to see all the pictures

Terry






 
Detailed Report (for you die hards). Dan and I stopped at Taney on the way down on Monday, as they had predicted no generation all day. Well, as we both stepped into the stream, you guessed it, the siren went off. Fished a little bit but did no good. So we went on down to Mountain Home, and stayed at the Comfort Inn. The next day they had shut off Bull Shoals at midnight so decided to try the dam area. Water level was down but we didn't manage to catch any fish (although Dan had one on to the backing). We moved on down to the state park area and caught tons of fish. Then we ate lunch in the park and then on to the new parking lot at the Narrows. We did okay there and caught some fish, and then called it a day. The next morning they were running at Bull Shoals, so we went to the Norfork dam, as they had turned it off this morning. We did very well there, and I even caught a white bass. We checked out the pipe for minimum flow (see separate video) which they were currently working on. Also checked out dry run creek. Then when they turned on water there, we decided to leave and try the North Fork River up above the lake. We went to Patrick bridge and saw a beautiful area and no other fisherman. Quite spectacular. We found a spot there where we caught a 15" rainbow, 16" brown, and a 19" brown, along with a few other trout and suckers. We think we'll be going back there some more. Then we called it a night and drove to Springfield in hopes of fishing Taney the next morning. We had a not-too-pleasant stay at a Super 8 but were able to fish Taney about 3 hours before they sounded the horn. We did very well there, in particular at the lower end. We tried a large number of flies on this trip, but I think we caught the most on little midges (in particular the zebra midge 20), and also good luck on sow bugs, scuds, prince nymph; and a little on Woolleys, soft hackle, bedspread, and egg pattern.

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