First fish of the day - a scrappy smallmouth caught on top
He promised beautiful scenery and if it was anything like he remembered there would be plenty of smallmouth to cast our lures and flies to. Whether or not we caught any was not guaranteed of course, but it never is. And that's why I've always enjoyed fishing (and hunting) with Mike. He's not one to get bent out of shape if we don't catch anything or if things don't go as planned. I've fished with guys like that before. I try not to but somehow every once in a while I do. I always wondered why those guys fished in the first place. I figure if you're going to get pissy about your recreational activity not going right you might as well have a hobby that's worth getting pissy about when it doesn't go as planned... like skydiving for instance.
We wanted to take only one truck so we got a local canoe rental company to shuttle our vehicle. We couldn't get them to shuttle the truck until after 9:00AM, a little late for starting a fishing trip especially this time of year. They obviously weren't as excited about our kitchen passes as we were. But the weather was actually very pleasant... high's were in the low 80's and off and on overcast. My thermometer showed the water was a cool 76-78 degrees depending on how close to one of the many springs we were standing. Can't ask for more than that in early September around here.
The river was full of these crayfish
Mike was right. It was one of the most beautiful streams I've been on in middle Tennessee. And it was the PERFECT smallmouth river. It had clear, cool water full of crayfish, and goodlooking runs, riffles, and deep holes one after another. I don't think anyone could have made a better smallmouth stream from their imagination.
Most of my fish were smallmouth just like this one
I started out on top water with a foam gurgler type fly. Did OK with it for a while but we started getting into deeper runs and I wanted to get down to the fish so I switched to a cayfish pattern with heavy dumbbell eyes. That fly fished well until I lost it on a log across a section of stream that was too dangerous to cross. It's funny how you contimplate those things. You start looking at all the ways to get your fly back, most involve dangerous and crazy stunts. Then finally you come to your senses (sometimes) and remember, it's just 2 dollars for crying out loud! Let it go! So I did... and tied on a slumpbuster in colors as closly matching the crayfish in that river as I could. Caught a few but ended up going back to the crayfish pattern that worked well earlier. Thankfully I had more than one with me.
This was my best fish of the day - It doesn't look it in the picture but it was almost as big as Mikes... No really, it was.
Towards the evening the fishing started heating up again. We found a long, wide stretch of shallow riffle water where fish were feeding. As we canoed through we could see smallmouth dart from out in front of the boat. We anchored, got out and started fishing. Mike found a small deep impression along the bank. Didn't look like much but evidently the fish liked it. I don't remember how many redeye and smallmouth he pulled out of that one small spot but it was a lot; including one nice smallmouth that had his ultralight spinning rod bent almost double.
We timed the trip just right and got to the take out at just about dark. I threw a few "last" casts right there where we were taking out and was able to pull one more smallie out of the river. We didn't exactly slay 'em but as always we had a great time. It was an awesome day on a beautiful smallmouth river with a great buddy.
Mike with the best fish of the day
