Seasons: Lake TaneycomoWritten by Phil Lilley on July 29th, 2009
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Revised, September, 2009 Lake Taneycomo is one of the most diversed fishing lakes in the Midwest but we only interested in its rainbow and brown trout fishery in this article. We will cover all seasons of the year and how each affects the lake and its trout. January/February The trout are stocked with one of two methods — by truck off a boat ramp or by boat, dumped into the lake as the boat is in motion. Most rainbows are stocked in the middle part of Lake Taneycomo, in the Branson Landing area. One routine I’ve seen Conservation officials follow is to boat from downtown up to Lilleys’ Landing Resort while stocking rainbows. Very seldom does MDC stock rainbows above Lilleys’ Landing. In the cooler months of the year, rainbows are stocked in the lower lake including the Rockaway Beach and Ozark Beach areas. January can be a cold month here in the Ozarks. Average daytime temperature is about 42 degrees while nighttime temps average just below 30 degrees. Air temperature doesn’t affect our trout as much as warm-water species, but it does affect generation – which does affect fishing. I’m a huge proponent of running water. Insects are healthier in moving water, and that’s my main reason for liking it. In winter months, Lake Taneycomo water quality is at its best. It’s high in dissolved oxygen and turbulent from the recent turn over of Table Rock Lake, stained with silt, which lasts until late spring, early summer. Saying all that sets up the rest of my report: Cold weather, healthy lake levels and fairly heavy generation — that’s what’d I call normal January fishing conditions. To fish by boat, drift. It’s easy and fun regardless of whether you use live bait, lures or even flies. Bounce something off the bottom using a drift rig or just a split shot, whatever you like better, just so it’s on the bottom. Drop or cast a jig, eighth-ounce if the water is really moving, smaller jigs like a 1/16th-ounce if the water is not. Work it up and down, quickly or slowly, snap it or lift it; try it all and see what the trout like at the time. And try different colors such as sculpin, black, white, brown, olive, pink, and purple. Mix the sculpin colors with peach and ginger and don’t forget the orange heads. Throw stick baits around structure for browns when the water runs. Work them in a stop-and-go pattern, aggressively and slowly. Keep an eye out for shad runs. Thread-fin shad get too close to the outflow at Table Rock Dam on the Table Rock Lake side and get sucked through the turbines into Taneycomo, causing a feeding frenzy. Trout gorge themselves on the easy bites of shad, and we fishermen can cash in on the run by throwing white jigs, spoons and small crank baits. Drifting Gulp Power Eggs or night crawlers on the bottom from Fall Creek down is an all time favorite for most anglers. The key is not to use too much weight, or too little. Just because most drift rigs come with a ¼-ounce weight doesn’t mean that’s the perfect weight for the flow. Add a split shot if you’re not sinking the bait, or go to a smaller weight if you’re bouncing too hard and snagging up a lot. Stay away from the banks, especially the bluff bank where downed trees will get you every time. Use long, sensitive rods for the best feel. Keep the rod high in the air and watch the tip for the small bump-and-hold bite you’re looking for. Casting spoons and spinners to rainbows that are high in the water column can be a lot of fun. Don’t overlook the shallow side of the lake. In this shallow water trout will pick up a spoon much more quickly than in the deeper channel side of the lake. When fly fishing, remember we are always limited by where, how and what flies we use when the water is running on Lake Taneycomo, regardless of season. So it’s hard to go through all the techniques there are to fly fish on our lake. But I can say this – we still have huge midge hatches. Scuds are always favorites along with sculpin and streamer patterns, and if there are shad coming from Table Rock through the dam, white streamers are a very hot item to throw, especially right below the dam. Read about fly fishing on Taneycomo by reading this article – Flyfishing Taneycomo in all conditions March/April Boy, you never know what you’re going to get in these months. Weather can be really wild with cold spells, warm spells, storms and rain. Fronts do have some impact on trout but not as extreme as on bass, it seems. But this is the time of the year we should see more generation because of spring rains … normally. You really have to watch lake level, water conditions and generation patterns to get a feel for what you might run into when planning a trip to Taneycomo. We’ve seen shad runs up into March before, so we can’t rule that out. White jigs continue to be hot long after the shad are gone. I usually do well using white jigs all the way into June, throwing them not just below the dam but all the way down to the Landing downtown. Maybe some of the early spawns of forage fish have something to do with it. But white jigs and small crank baits are a hot ticket in the spring. Don’t be scared to drift a fly in the trophy area when the water is running. We normally jump up a size or two when drifting flies like this. When drifting a scud, we use a #10 or #8 and don’t shy away from bright colors such as orange or pink. But gray, brown, tan and olive are still the go-to colors. San Juan worms and egg flies are favorites, too. Bright colors rule in both the worm and egg departments. Use tandems – tie a dropper onto your first fly. Add 18 inches of tippet and tie on another fly. Use an attractor fly with a scud such as a big egg or San Juan. Just make sure you get your fly to the bottom and keep it there as much as you can. We do have a pretty good population of crappie and white bass in our lake. We typically look for them in the mouths and just up in the creeks –- Turkey, Coon, Roark, Bee, Bull and more down towards and past Rockaway Beach. Roark Creek is a local favorite. Rainbows tend to run up into this creek within a few hundred yards of the mouth and hold during heavy generation. They hit about anything including spoons and jigs. Look for white bass and crappie here too. Just as in any other fishery, crappie like brush, and whites like open water. You will best find either early and late and on dark days. May/June/July/August As you can see, stocking numbers are the highest in the summer months, mainly because fishing pressure is also the highest. You might assume that’s your best time to catch rainbows here, but the numbers could be deceiving. For the most part, summer months are good fishing here but there always seems to be periods when our rainbows just don’t bite. It could last a couple of days or a week but they always bounce back. Lots of patience in fishing, right? Again, lake levels pretty much dictate generation. If we have a wet spring and the lakes are full, the Corp will use that opportunity to generate electricity and the water will run. To gauge the chance, check the lake levels for Beaver and Table Rock. If they are over power pool (915 feet for Table Rock and 1120.4 for Beaver), there’s a good chance the water will run. Also look at history and generation patterns. If they are running water each day at a certain time, the pattern usually holds through the week, but you can bet it may change come the weekend. There’s a better chance than not that you’ll see less generation on the weekends mainly because of less power demand. Jig-and-float fishing will work just about any time of the year under most conditions. It works best during little or no generation, of course. First I tell people, two-pound line will catch more fish, period. Tie a piece of two-pound line to the end of your line, only about two or three feet. Use the jig that fits the water conditions — a small micro jig or a 1/100th-ounce marabou jig when the water isn’t running and a heavier 1/50th- to 1/16th- ounce jig when it is. Of course, you’ll have to change your float size, too. As far as colors, there are many to try in varying sizes. Vary the depth, too, until you find out where the fish are hanging out. Start out at four feet and move it deeper if needed. To read more about jig fishing, you can go to this article on our forum – Another technique that works just about any month of the year is fishing with a midge. Insects called midges, part of the true fly family, could be our trout’s number one food source. They hatch almost every day of the year in all parts of the lake and are easy pickin’s for rainbows as well as browns. The larvae make their way to the surface from silt on the bottom, molt, emerge and dry themselves on the surface before flying away. The larvae stay in the film, or upper inch of the lake’s surface long enough to make an easy meal for a cruising rainbow. When you see rings upon rings of fish surfacing on the lake, you’re seeing trout feeding on midges. Zebra midges are one of the best flies that imitate a midge larva. We fish them under a small indicator using either a fly rod or spin rod. They are so small (#14 or #16) that one has to use two-pound line. Fish them only 12 inches deep, even in 20 feet of water, because that’s where the larvae are and that’s also where the trout are looking for them. To cast and target midging trout, cast to a ring — it really is a lot of fun when you get into a big hatch and feeding area. Also read – If there is a slow month, August for some reason is the one. Table Rock’s water stratifies and separates during the summer months with the warm water on top and the cold water forced down. Decaying debris on the bottom of the lake depletes the water of oxygen throughout the summer and fall. Taneycomo gets its water from Table Rock at 130 feet deep, so as fall progresses, we see dissolved oxygen levels plummet to the point that the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers has to add liquid oxygen to the water released just to keep aquatic animals alive, namely trout. The low oxygen condition continues until Table Rock literally turns over, which usually happens about mid-December. This inversion mixes the water levels in Table Rock, sending good quality water down to the bottom of the lake once again. For more information, see this article - September/October/November Water flows generally diminish through the fall simply because it’s our dry season, plus the Corps is restricted as to how much water runs due to low oxygen in the water released. If we do see generation, it will be one to two units, and flows will be nominal or fairly slow — not the heavy flows we see in other seasons of the year. So you could say that anchoring the boat and tossing out a night crawler or Power Bait is the norm for an angling outing. A jig and float works well, too, or fishing midges. In the fall months we see midge hatches every morning and every evening. One technique I like to use during the fall months is targeting rainbows in and around the floating leaves in the lake. The leaves, after they’ve fallen, form a line on the lake’s surface from wind and boat traffic. Trout target the insects inside the leaves. You’ll see rainbows midging or dimpling the surface near the edge of this leaf line. Use either a micro jig, a small marabou jig or a zebra midge under a float and only set the float about 12 inches from the jig or fly. If you see a trout midge, cast the rig close to the rise and watch the float closely. Use a small Palsa float if fly fishing. It’s small and light and won’t make a splash when it hits the water. It’s also easy to see a strike using a Palsa, being so light the trout usually takes the float completely under. Fly fishing below the dam draws lots of interest in the autumn. Taney’s world famous brown trout begin their annual run to the upper reaches of the lake to spawn. They start showing up as early as mid September and stay as late as late November. Unfortunately, the run lures trophy-seeking anglers, too, who crowd the first mile of the lake during the spawn. The crowds affect how the fish move and feed during the day because there’s no place to hide in that first mile of the lake, few holes or bends. Trout are herded around, pushed here and there by wading anglers, which is not conducive to their biting. But they do get caught, most of the time by the person who watches his movements and is careful not to wade out too deep too quickly. Here are a couple of articles that cover brown trout fishing, both at night and during the day. Night Fly Fishing December/January You’re probably wondering why I lumped January in with December since I start with January already. I think of these two months as the best months of the year to fish Taneycomo. I get asked a lot, "What is the best month to fish?" People are always surprised at my answer, especially those who come only in the summer. We witness the least traffic all along the lake in December and January. Fewer anglers wade below the dam, and fewer boats buzz up and down the channels of the lake, which lowers the disturbance for catching great fish. I believe our trout are pretty tolerant towards us humans invading their space. They were raised by people, hand-fed (by tourists) and handled several times in their short life at the hatchery. But I see patterns develop, especially over a summer weekend when fishing slows down, and I equate them with the increased traffic. If you’re in a boat, there’s not much you can do about it, but if you’re wading, there is. Just think about it next time you’re wading below the dam, especially if you want to catch bigger trout. Move in short distances and watch closely even before you enter the water. I believe during the last part of October, November and on into December, trout populations build up, and by the end of December, there seems to be a large number of fish in the lake. I feel these trout are "ripe for the pickin’" and this is usually proven out by the catches seen the first week or two of January. Rainbows raised by our Shepherd of the Hills Hatchery spawn at various times of the year on Taneycomo. Actually, they go through the motions, but according to the MDC, there is no natural reproduction occurring on our lake due to water temperatures and varying water flows. But the trout do try, and with this attempt, we see them moving up lake to the dam area, building beds, etc. They color up beautifully — the males turn dark and the females blossom into reds, greens, whites and golds. Here’s an article on winter trout fishing on Taneycomo – |
