The hot, dry conditons continue to persist here in East Tennessee. However, all is not bleak. The tailwaters continue to fish well and better weather seems to be just around the corner. The weather forecast includes some rain this week and milder temperatures going into this weekend.
We had a pretty busy weekend. Charity was in North Carolina doing a Casting for Recovery weekend. She spent a little time on the Davidson River at Brevard along the way. I was down on the Hiwassee rowing the drift boat to help out my friends at Southeastern Anglers.
Tony Wilson in his beautiful wood drift boat and Mark Scarbrough in the Clackacraft, part of our Hiwassee River flotilla and informal tournament this past weekend. Notice Mark landing a trout, well on his way to kicking my butt.
Dane Law called me a few weeks back and explained that he had a big party of repeat anglers coming in and was one drift boat short. Dane’s a great guy who runs a great operation so I was eager to help out so I could make an excuse to spend some quality time on the Hiwassee. That’s a river I used to fish all the time and for whatever reason, I look up and it’s been a while since I’ve been.
The intrepid band of fly fishers met us on Saturday morning and had an annual tournament. The guides drew names out of a hat for anglers and all anglers put some money in the kitty. Half the pot would go to the boat with the most fish caught and the other half would go to the boat with the largest measured fish. There were five boats in the mix and I had the least recent experience on the river. In spite of that fact we jumped out of the blocks at a sprint, boating 5 trout in about 15 minutes. At that point there might have been one other fish caught among the other boats.
By the end of the day I would have deemed us a success, braving temperatures in the high 90’s and putting 25 trout in the net. We were humbled though. Mark’s boat brought in 33 if I remember correctly and Tony Wilson put 45 trout in the net for his anglers. Yow!! Talk about posting some numbers! In any case, all boats did well and a good time was had by all.