With the weather looking hopeful and the day off Friday I decided to break out the seven-weight and the clousers and head South to Truman Dam where I hoped to get lucky enough to tie into a hybrid or two.
The generation chart showed several days of daily generation and the same scheduled for Friday so my gut instinct told me I might have a shot , that is to say in my eyes the conditions looked good.
I was lazy and didn't get out of bed until 7:00 and then I fucked around the house long enough that I didn't actually get on the road until about 7:45. The day was georgeous and as usual this prompted me to push the speed limit laws as much as I dared in anticipation of getting on the water , somehow I ran the gauntlet successfully and pulled into the parking lot on the West side of the dam right at 9:30. It quickly became obvious that I wasn't the only one with the day off and fishing on my mind. No mind , it's a big tailwater and it wasn't hard to find a spot with respectable distance between myself and the nearest person.
I tied on a chartreuse and white deciever style fly to my type 4 sinking line and began casting out into the fast water.
I consciously kept an eye on the other fisherman , hoping to at least see a fish or two caught thereby validating my assumptions that there were some fish to be caught. The pelicans and gulls were obviously having no problem finding dead or dying shad so that was another good sign for my chances I thought to myself. There was definitely a wide array of fishermen out today , it was obvious some were targeting catfish others crappie , walleye or maybe even hybrids like myself.
I moved twice before lunch , both times only after I'd fished the area pretty well with both deceiver and clouser style patterns of varying colors.
One foul hooked catfish was all I had to show for my effort up until that point , I'd seen a few small crappie caught as well as a white bass or two but no walleye or wipers.
Lunch was quick buffet style on the hood of the truck , then on downstream to try another hole. I was fishing the water as well as I knew how , trying to work both the bottom and top water columns with different fly patterns. Seemingly the only thing I was accomplishing with any level of success was leaving a trail of deep clousers hung in the rocks that litter the riverbottom in that area.
I did manage to land two small crappie , so I guess I can say I avoided the skunk , but technically I didn't catch what I went in search of so in my mind it was a skunk. Not that surprising , it's still early and although I'm not sure what the water temp was Joe looked cold as hell standing in the water , still trying to grasp the whole flyfishing thing outside of being for his sole entertainment of chasing and occasionally barking at the colorful line floating on the water.
Even so he's still my favorite and most agreeable fishing partner and just spending a nice spring day throwing some flies around (away) and hanging with him was as good as it gets.
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