Caney Fork with my brother... Finally!

My brother came up to Tennessee from Florida for my son's first birthday party.  To sweeten the deal I told him I'd take him fly fishing on the Caney if he came up. He's fished the small streams of east TN often but hasn't fished tailwaters much at all.  One of his first questions was if we'd catch fish that were bigger than the wild trout we catch up on North River.  I promised him we would.  I called my good friend and guide, Jeff Barrett, to see if he could take us in the drift boat.  With a little schedule rearranging it was set.  Since we only had one day to fish I wanted to make the most of it.  I wanted my brother and I to worry about nothing but fishing.  And that's what we did.  Yeah, OK, there was a little bit of selfishness on my part too... with me getting so little fishing time in over the past year or two I wanted to make sure that I got some time to fish too instead of being a "guide".  Not that my brother isn't a good fly fisherman - it's just that this is a totally new kind of water for him.  Yeah, I wanted to fish and let Jeff do the guide thing.   HEY, to make up for my selfishness I did give my brother the front of the boat ALL DAY.  Jeff is a great guide and the drift boat is the the way to go. 

The fishing was good in the morning with many strikes and a good number of fish on zebra midges dead drifted under an indicator.  But once they started generating mid-morning it slowed way down. We threw some streamers during the high water but didn't have sinking lines so it was pretty much in vain.  So we ate our lunches and waited it out.  Once the water dropped (which seemed to take forever) we starting picking up fish again. All mine came on either zebra midges or a beadhead Eat at Chucks.

Kevin with a nice brown

Kevin's brown close up

I was able to get a "grand slam"... Brown, Rainbow, and Brookie.  I did get two nice brookies, one first thing in the morning and one in the afternoon after the water came back down. 

The highlight of my day, besides seeing my older brother catch fish bigger than the ones we catch in the mountains, was a 16" brown trout that I caught by sight casting to him.  I was walking along the gravel bank downstream to where Jeff and Kevin were fishing when I saw a nice brown feeding right up against the bank.  He was pointed down stream and just slowly cruising, picking things off the bottom as he went.  I backed up off the bank to keep from spooking him and cast my purple softhackle out in front of him.  Well, it evidently wasn't far enough out in front because he spooked as soon as the fly hit the water.  Luckily he went back to feeding only a few seconds later but this time he was in the usual facing up stream position.  It took about 3 more casts or so but once I got it in the right spot and made a drag free drift he took it like he hadn't eaten in a week.  He put a nice bend in the Bamboo rod.  I was fishing a rod made by Don Recker; his version of the Dickerson 8013.  This is a powerful bamboo rod and easily throws multi-rigs and indicators that we need to use so often on tailwaters.  Don makes a fantastic, beautifully finished rod  and in my opinion worth much more than he sells them for.

16" brown that I watched feeding in shallow water

 

Second brookie of the day.

Towards the end of the day just up river from our take out the fish started to really feed and rising everywhere! We anchored mid-river and took a good number of fish on midges and soft hackles, specifically a bead-headed Eat at Chucks.