Last week Great Smoky Mountains National Park fisheries biologist Matt Kulp spoke to the Little River Chapter of Trout Unlimited. The main focus of his presentation was the progress on the Lynn Camp Prong brook trout restoration in the Tremont section of the park near Townsend, Tennessee. The project has been a tremendous challenge and […]
Warmer Weather On the Horizon
I’m sitting at my desk in Townsend waiting for more freezing weather and snow to arrive. Yesterday was relatively mild but the streams in the Smokies were essentially frozen over. Even now I can still see snow on Thunderhead Mountain and other high peaks. Still, yesterday was sunny and about 50 degrees and we weren’t […]
Cabin Fever Spreads Like Wildfire
One thing we can tell after getting out over the past weekend is that there is a highly virulent strain of cabin fever spreading out there. We thought it was only us. Last Saturday we had the unlikely combination of a good TVA flow on the river, Nana lined up to keep the kids, and […]
Conditions Better But Not Perfect By Any Means
We feel like we’re being pretty patient with the weather. After all it is January so it’s not like we’re supposed to have warm weather perfect for fishing. We don’t know about you, but we could sure use a good day of fishing about now! Water levels have finally dropped down into the fishable range […]
Weather Pattern Makes It Tough On Fishermen
It’s been a tough weather pattern lately. For the better part of a month the water has been fishable but the weather has been brutally cold or the weather has been mild and the water has been pretty high or outright unfishable. We’ll just say it… It’s pretty damn frustrating! In a move only the […]
More Water Than We Expected
We really did expect the water to be high today but what we anticipated would be decent for stripping streamers in selected spots. As it turns out there was much more water than that! There was up to 2″ of rain on the tops of the mountains that fell on top of several inches of […]
A Good Thing: It’s Warming Up
After this last week’s Arctic blast it’s good to see that it’s warming up. The forecast is calling for some rain and that will only help to warm stream temperatures even further and melt any remaining snow on the slopes and peaks of the Smokies and surrounding mountain ranges. Don’t get over excited. This doesn’t […]
Snow and Ice in the Smoky Mountains
Just like many other areas of the country we’ve seen freezing weather and some snow in the Smoky Mountains this week. We didn’t get all that much snow but the cold hit immediately after some rain that created a sheet of ice over all the roads that later became covered with snow. I know folks […]
Fly Fishing in the Bitter Cold
Here in East Tennessee we’re in the middle of what is the coldest weather we’ve seen since 1996. We’ve had plenty of cold weather since then, just haven’t hit the lowest point on the thermometer since then. The winter of early 2010 was pretty cold and we can remember snow staying on the mountains for […]
A milestone in Smoky Mountain trout fisheries
This week marks a milestone in Smoky Mountain trout fisheries. Steve Moore, the head fisheries biologist at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, will be retiring from his post. His impact on the fishery, relations with anglers, and regulations shouldn’t be underestimated. Steve’s biggest impact was to bring hard science to the fisheries management. Previous management […]