A beautiful autumn day in the Smokies even if streams were low.
It was a busy November here in the Smokies with a roller coaster ride of temperatures. We had several mornings of hard frost with lows waaay down in the 20’s, but the weather was quite pleasant overall. There were even a couple of days with record high temperatures near 80 in the afternoon. The big story was record dry conditions.
September and October were the two driest consecutive months on record here with just a tick over 1″ of rainfall. Considering some of the droughts we’ve seen in the past that is pretty impressive. Stream flows are very low, but fortunately didn’t break any records. Even better, we’ve seen some rain and have more in the forecast. While stream flows are still pretty low this should improve and we seem to be past dangerous fire danger. More about that later…
A nice Smoky Mountain rainbow trout, even if he does seem to be missing most of his spots!
Dry fly fishing was the primary way we caught fish through the fall. We fished a few dropper nymphs here and there but the extremely low water and mild water temperatures made dry flies work well enough. Furthermore, the plop of a strike indicator or heavy nymph was about the same as throwing rocks at the fish.
Fortunately water levels have rebounded even if the bottom has fallen out with the temperatures. It was 18 degrees on our porch this morning, so no telling how cold it was on top of the Smokies. Fortunately we have some moderate weather in the extended forecast and more rain to help the stream flows. Nymphing will become a necessity but a dry / dropper rig could work quite well if it’s a warm afternoon. Watch for small caddis and blue wing olives to be the predominant hatch.
A colorful Smoky Mountain brown trout
Wild Fire in Townsend
We had a somewhat harrowing experience a few days before Thanksgiving. I walked out of the house to make a grocery trip when I smelled the smoke. It was then that I saw the plume of smoke on Rich Mountain, right in the gap where Rich Mountain Road exits the park. The weather forecast called for a strong front with rain to come in. Unfortunately it would be preceded by high winds. This was a carbon copy of what happened 7 years ago that led to the massive Gatlinburg fire.
A helicopter was on the fire quickly and we watched nervously from our back deck as it made repeated trips to drop water. We were relieved to hear the fire was contained in only a few hours. That night the wind picked up to 50 mph with even stronger gusts. We awoke in the morning to the news that there was an evacuation of Dry Valley because the fire re-ignited in the heavy wind.
The view from our backporch at 6:30 in the morning
We were a couple of miles from the fire but the similarities to the big Gatlinburg fire were too similar. We packed up what we might need if the strong winds caused the fire to spread. Fortunately the efforts by firefighters kept the flames at bay in spite of the incredible winds. We are so grateful for those who acted quickly to keep this one from spreading.