By Silas Gray

sports@joplinglobe.com

I arrived at the pavilion near the hatchery several minutes early and began preparing my equipment.

Leonard Keeney and I were meeting at 9 p.m. for a night of trout fishing on the upper end of Lake Taneycomo at the tail waters of Table Rock Lake.

Leonard is a friend of mine who operates a fishing guide service called Taneycomo Nights. He recently sent an e-mail bragging about the fishing and saying that I should join him soon for a warm weather night trip. The last time we’d fished together it had been 15 degrees.

It wasn’t long before Leonard pulled in right beside me. He was grinning as he climbed from the truck waving a foil-lined cottage cheese carton and a box of toothpicks.

“You are in for a treat,” he said as he thrust a pick into my hand and peeled back the foil on the container. This was my first chance to try his famous bacon-wrapped jalapeno walleye chunks. I put my equipment aside while we sampled the dish along with some of his special coffee. After all, it takes awhile for the fish to begin biting after the sun goes down.

The Table Rock dam flood gates were open, so the water was high and running fast. There are only two spots that can be easily fished while wading in high water, and both are water releases from the hatchery called outlet No. 1 and outlet No. 2.

After finishing off a good portion of the walleye snacks, we tied a scud-patterned fly beneath a large float with an activated glow stick in it, followed by an egg pattern a few inches below. We walked the few yards over to outlet No. 2.

It was dark as we peered over the bank, and we could see the bright green glow of the float of another angler as he made his next cast. At night and with the water so high, there’s only room for one person to safely fish, or two if they’re chummy.

So we got comfortable and watched as the other angler caught several fish. He soon declared that he was ready for a break and invited us to take over the spot.

We had used our headlamps to get into position, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust before I made my first cast into the rush of water pouring in from the hatchery. My cast was long and the bobber swung wide and ended up too far out into the current. Leonard used a red lamp and pointed out that the fish were just inches from the shore.

My next cast was much better. The flies dropped in just at the inside edge of the moving water and moved slowly, staying near the shore. The glowing bobber soon went under, and I had my first fish of the night, a nice little rainbow trout.

In less than two hours I’d landed 25 fish, all without moving more than a few feet from our original spot. The area was stacked with fish. It was a nice little warm-up, but we were ready for more of a challenge, so we moved on to outlet No. 1.

Leonard wanted me to try the Hibernator, a pine squirrel streamer fly of his own creation.