It’s been a phenomenal spring season here in the Smoky Mountains. The forest is greening up more and more everyday and the slopes are carpeted with wildflowers. Bears have gone from absent to relatively common. And of course, dry fly fishing has come on strong…
An angler carefully works a beautiful run of water
Water levels have been very good. We’ve seen very little high water this spring. Cool mornings and warm afternoons have been standard, sometimes with 35 degree temperature swings. This week we had mornings in the high 30’s and afternoons in the low 70’s.
This has made for some relatively slow fishing in the mornings, but fish are usually taking nymphs well by 11:00 if not sooner. Dry fly fishing usually becomes workable by noon and can be very good after that.
We’re in that particular time frame where there are so many different insects moving about that it’s difficult to fish the “wrong fly”. Hendrickson and March Brown mayflies are hatching, caddis are laying eggs, and a variety of stoneflies are emerging. We’ve been sticking with a dry and dropper set up most of the day. There have been a few cooler days or rainy days when a dedicated nymph rig did much better, but the dry/dropper is a great way to go.
You’re set up to fish both high and low. You get a real sense of when the fish start to move from only eating nymphs to reliably rising to dry flies.
Smoky Mountain trout are eating both nymphs and dry flies well right now
The extended forecast seems to show more of the same with a little bit of rain and cooler weather. That’s fine by us since we’re not even in May yet. We’ll have plenty of time for wet wading later this summer.
