My shooting friend Jeff has been threatening to teach me fly fishing for ages.
He’s just had his Bass Boat fixed up ready to sell, and he invited me to join him for the boat’s swan song. We went down to Lake Taneycomo putting in at Cooper Creek Access (Branson Missouri) for an afternoon of fly fishing lessons.
The Table Rock dam at Branson was letting a lot of water through, which meant the lake was quite high and the water running fast – not good conditions for fly fishing. However, I wasn’t here to catch fish, I was here to learn how to do it. After a couple of disastrous attempts at fishing with a bait caster, I thought fly fishing was going to be beyond me. Fortunately, that was not the case after several hours of practice I could almost get the line to go where I wanted it. We spent most of our time in a backwater tied to a stump, which promptly broke loose as I unfastened the boat. If it had broken loose earlier it could have made for a fun few minutes. leaving our sheltered spot we managed to get the boat swept onto a tree, damaging the front running light. Oops! Did I mention that the water was running fast?
Checking the pictures, I noticed that I had caught the viewpoint at the top of the bluff, where I had taken a picture of Taneycomo and the dam a few years ago.
Before giving up for the day we tried a couple of other spots, unfortunately to no avail, though I did have a couple of bites that I missed.
Going back to the put-in we noticed several jetties had been quite badly damaged when the water was running really fast after the recent rains. One upturned pontoon had several boats jammed in it. So, no fish, but I did learn the basics of fly fishing.
Many thanks to Jeff for a great afternoon and evening on Lake Taneycomo. I now have lots of different casts to remember and practice – I’m going to have to buy myself a fly fishing rod and reel.
Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.