The water was off when we arrived at Taneycomo around 5 am and we excitedly ran down to the water. Elliott brought in a 16 inch brown on his second cast on an olive wooly bugger. Our excitement of catching fish was quickly shot down when the horn blew and the generators were turned on. All four generators were on until we returned later in the afternoon. I caught a fat 12-inch rainbow right away on a wooly bugger, but fishing turned slow. After switching to a tan scud I caught three more rainbows between 12 and 16 inch, really nice looking fish. Later that day near the first outlet, I hooked into a nice fish, but lost it in the current. I did manage to get one small rainbow in. Elliott and Rob had better success at the third outlet fishing Scuds trailed by red San Juan worms. That night we each caught a couple of rainbows on different colored wooly buggers and gray shad flies. Drew finally caught his first trout of the trip below outlet 2, a nice rainbow. The best flies were the wooly buggers especially olive and white. Scuds, miracle nymphs, San Juan Worms, tungstens beadheads, and egg paterns also worked well. The bigger rainbows tended to be holding in the faster moving water above the rebar hole in the chute.

January 29-30, 2002