Guided Trip on Lake Taneycomo
By Bob Randall on Sunday, November 12th, 2017 in Fishing Trip, No Comments
It was a cool, overcast, mostly still day with no water running on Lake Taneycomo on 11.6.2017. What wind there was came mostly from the east. You know the old saying, “the fish bite least when the wind’s in the east”. My son, Craig Randall, and I took a guided fishing trip that day with River Run Outfitters guide Gina Leitle. Gina is also a MTFA club member. As you probably know, River Run specializes in drift boat fishing. It’s nice and quiet in a drift boat with a feel of being out west on a Montana trip. Well, not exactly, but I think of drift boats being a western floating technique.
Gina can’t control the wind, current, or soft biting trout but she did her best getting us to the right spots with the right flies. We launched about a half mile below the Table Rock dam at the MDC boat launch and rowed upstream to some steep banks on the north side that I had never fished before. She knew of some pools there and even though the water was low, they still held fish. We tried both red and black midges that were size 18 or 20. The black midges proved to be the menu of the day in those pools. The bites were soft and we failed to set the hooks a number of times. We moved into the middle of the “river” and tried something different. While Gina was changing out my fly, I picked up a rod with an olive wooly bugger and managed to land a couple. At Gina’s advice, I stripped about half a foot two or three times, then paused. It was during the pause that they hit the fly.
After a break, we went back the pools we had fished at the start and landed a few more. Craig and I have fun competing with each other for most fish caught. Once I forgot my count and when I said a number lower than the actual count, he corrected me. I think that was the first time he ever told the truth on a fishing trip. We are fishermen, after all. We caught a total of 12 fish. It could have been better if the conditions had been better. The very last fish caught was a bluegill. 
BTW, I’ll bet we didn’t see more than five other fishermen the whole time. I never saw anyone else catch any fish. One fellow said he had caught one; another guy didn’t give a number but said he had caught a few and had to work hard for them. One time I looked up and down the “river” and didn’t see any other people. We had a great time anyway, and I highly recommend a drift boat trip from River Run Outfitters with the “Trout Mum”, Gina Leitle. Bob Randall
