Right now water is high in the Smokies but fishable. You’ll need to move about from one spot to the next without being able to fish every last yard of stream.
We’ve had quite a bit of water this spring and water levels aren’t falling very fast. This isnt’ necessarily a bad thing; fish like water. On the other hand, it does make it a little bit harder to fish. In many instances you’re restricted to fishing only the near side of the stream.
All of this water has made the tailwater situation that much tougher. TVA has stepped us flows again to drain excess water from the reservoirs to prevent flooding. Typically we see relatively low flows at this time of year as the dams run a minimum flow to fill the reservoirs. It looks like this will be a tough year for those restricted to wading the big rivers and it’s not like flows have been picture perfect for floating.
On Sunday we made our first trip up high in the Smokies for specks. Water temperatures were very chilly and remained in the low 40’s all day long. We picked up a few fish in longer pools that weren’t very deep and had good sun exposure. About half of the fish that were hooked came on nymphs. We did manage to get a few on Thunderheads, a classic Smoky Mountain dry fly.
