That is a tasty cooler^

Lots of fish landed this weekend. I stuck with my clouser minnow and fly rod and caught plenty. All white seems to be what they usually prefer these days down there. Usually pretty even distribution of sandies and walleye with bonus trout, crappie, bass, and catfish in the mix.

Huh?! I have never caught anything but trout at the LMF, and nothing on a Clouser. The only streamer I've found to be effective is an olive Bugger or leech. If you don't mind, can I ask you where-abouts you catch that mix? The Powerhouse fishing area, or something? Zone II? I hear there's walleye and stuff in both of those areas, but I've not been able to locate them.

After the last time they open the spillway walleye are throughout the spillway creek as well as Crappie and everything else you can imagine I caught a long nose gar on a pheasant tail when we were there last.

this^ they're from the base of the spillway to where the trout waters end. Find a deep pocket and you'll get walleye. I caught a 24" walleye in the bluffs back in May. a lot of these fish are 16-22" and can probably eat the trout they're stocking right now.

With Spillway creek being blown out, its wider and full of new pockets everywhere. These fish don't sit in the same pocket all the time. They will move up the rapids to the next pocket. A lot of it is reading water like you would for "wild trout". Sometimes they will be in 1-2 ft of water.

Deeper the pocket, more fish should be in it. River suckers are at the fly shop bridge waiting for the stop logs to come out. When they move up to spawn it will be harder to visual fish for them. Thier profile looks the same but the white spot on the tail is a dead giveaway, it's a walleye or sauger. If no fly fisherman are at the bluffs, we will fish there till people start showing up and then start power fishing upstream by fishing each deep pocket for 10 mins and move. Not many people venture further than 1/4 upstream, so there is a lot of water that no one hardly casts a line in. It's definitely not a numbers game, but the outcome is a heck of a lot tastier than the trout and they are double and quadruple the size of the wild stockers. Having a buddy park and the Spillway and driving another car to cold Hole is best way. Then we just walk all the way to the dam and get the other car and go back.

The big walleye I cleaned had an 8 inch trout in its stomach. The others had shad and baby blue gills.

No kidding, I had no idea all of those other (than trout) fish are in there in that quantity. I've mostly had no luck in SC since the flooding, but I've been targeting trout with heavy weighted pheasant tail nymphs and such. I'll pull out a larger streamer and fish those now endlessly deep holes next time I go. I have some white clousers. Thanks, guys!

Are you throwing sink tip or floating line?

I think I'd be afraid to throw sink tip in SC unless I was sticking just to the deep pools. Seems like in the shallower sections it would tend to hang up.

I'm throwing a sink tip in the really deep pockets.

What about the last 75 yards of spillway creek to the rock pile. Full sink with dumbbell eyes? LOL

you talking about the new cold hole which is basically a lake?

This past weekend was slow compared to usual, due to it being so crowded. Still caught plenty of fish. Tons of 10-12" stocker rainbows. Crappie and Walleye were pretty spooky. They would follow the bait to the surface, and then turn away. It took a lot of work to get them to bite. I did get one hefty walleye on my fly rod that made my weekend. Black bass seemed to be all over as well. Caught a few largemouth, quite a few spots, and probably 20-25 smallies. Biggest of all being about a 2lb smallie. I'll be back soon, hopefully less crowded.

Fishing is going to do nothing but get better as it gets colder. If you wanna get in on the action, and learn what it's all about, give us a shout. We'll give you a trip you'll remember for a lifetime.

Didn't get an exact measure before she was cleaned, but she hung off my golden ruler by a few inches. Ruler tops out about 22.5". Smaller walleye in the second picture was the 2nd biggest caught all weekend, and it was 20.25". 18" cutting board. Heck of a way to break in the new Sage rod.

Monster LMR Walleye.



Minnow this time. But shows y'all there are some big girls in there. Even bigger ones too. Saw the Drum below Evening Hole Bridge. 10 plus pounds is figure.

10 inch trout got shedded by a 5+ lb walleye while reeling in on the fly rod. These things are aggressive.

But they are great eating too!