Newfound Gap Road after a drenching rain
I’m happy to report that this has been the rainiest few days in the Smoky Mountains I can remember over the past few years. It hasn’t been raining continuously but we’ve been getting some good afternoon thunderstorms. Stream levels inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Nantahala National Forest, and Cherokee National Forest bear a striking resemblance to what they should look like. Water levels have been low for about a month, but nothing like what we saw last year. We’re still close to 5″ behind on rainfall this year, but far better than the 13″ deficit we had racked up by this time in 2007.
We’re thrilled to see the rain, but the unsettled weather has made this fishing a bit tougher over the past week. In our experience fish seem to respond best when the weather is relatively steady. This isn’t always the case, but we’ve seen the fishing slow down just as thunderstorms started to build then get much better as the weather cleared. There were several days when we had 3 guided trips go out on the same day to different places. All experienced generally slow fishing with spurts of activity after the skies cleared.
River otters on Calderwood Lake, Tennessee
