North River with the Club

With our due date of the birth of our twins approaching I knew I'd better get out and fish while I could.  I don't like to miss the North River outing anyway so I talked momma into letting me go on this one last fishing trip for long while.  The weather, again, was a little rainy and chilly but the fish were eating.  On Friday Marty, David, Donna, and I split up and hit a small tributary of the Tellico River.  The water was a little higher than I like but still at a fishable level. 

With the conditions the way they were I decided to go ahead and fish a dry/dropper combo.  A parachute Adams for my dry with a fox squirrel tail nymph below it.  Most hits were on the nymph but a few took the Adams.  I fished with a newly acquired Don Recker North Fork Special.  It's a 7'6", 5 wt bamboo rod built on a Winston taper.  It was a pleasure to cast and fish with.  It casts a double fly rig easily and accurately and it's not too much rod when you fight those small but scrappy mountain trout.   I caught about a dozen small rainbows on Friday and lost at least half that many.  A little better than I expected with the weather and water conditions.

Marty fishing his 7030 Granger

The day was capped off that evening with bone-in rib-eyes, baked potatoes, and big salad.  Then down to the campground where everyone else was camped to sit around the fire and tell lies.  It was a good day for sure.  And it was a good thing too because I had a call that night back at the cabin with news that my wife's grandfather passed away and we needed to head out to Texas for the service. 

I gave my dry fly fishing class Saturday morning, fished for about 45 minutes (caught two more) then packed up and headed home.  It was just my luck too that the sun had come out and was shining nice and bright.  I just knew that the bugs were going to start coming off the water heavy that afternoon.  Oh well, next time.  Off to pay my respects to a fine man who lived for 95 years and many more changes in the world than most of us could ever imagine.

http://www.mtff.org/

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.

The Smokies with water this time

The club had our July outing in the GSMNP. The weather couldn't have been better and the water levels were great. Which was a nice change from the previous two years. However the fishing wasn't as easy as it normally is up there. I don't know if the lack of water the years before had reduced the fish numbers or if the cooler weather had slowed them down. We still caught fish and had a great time as you tend to do in the presence of good company no matter how the fishing is.

I shared a campsite with two of my buddies that love small stream trout fishing like I do; Woody and Jim.  I got there late Thursday night and they had already been enjoying the campfire for a few hours and even got some fishing in earlier that evening.

Woody stalking a Little River pool

The standard smoky mountain patterns worked well as they a normally do.  Woody and I used our Thramer DX bamboo rods.  His a 7 foot and mine a 7 1/2 foot, both 4 weights.  I also used my Don Recker "Dickerson 8013" on the West Prong of the Little Pigeon.   Other than that we normally fished the Little River above Elkmount where we were camping.
 

A little River brown

Some wildflowers were still hanging on

A rainbow from the Little Pigeon

Greenbriar rainbows and bamboo - April 2009

Back this past April my good buddy and guide Jeff Barrett and I went over the the Smokies to be river helpers for the CFR event. We left a day early to do a little fishing ourselves. Neither of us had ever fished Greenbriar so we decided it was about time. Weather was nice. A few bugs hatched - mostly small stoneflies - and the fish were taking dries. I fished my AJ Thramer 7 1/2' 4 wt DX taper.  I've come to love this rod for small stream fishing.  It can throw a dry/dropper combo without any problem and is just just a joy to cast. 

It was a great day. All we caught were rainbows but no complaints.  We never got up high enough to get into brookie water.  We saved that for next time.

Jeff working some pocket water

A colorful rainbow tricked with a parachute Adams