Earlier this week I had a pretty unusual day on the water with a customer. Before we even got to the water things were just a little bit different than usual. Jason, my angler, was British and had come to East Tennessee for a vacation. Futhermore, he’s a British subject living in Dubai which makes […]
Golden Stoneflies in the Smokies
Winter is when most people think about fly fishing with big nymphs in the Smokies. There is no surface activity, the water is cold, and a big nymph will sink and just maybe spur a sluggish trout into action. Most fishermen forget that mid-summer can be a great time for big nymphs as well. This […]
Quick Pic: A Great Reason To Stop Smoking
Last week Charity took Paulette Carver out for some fly fishing instruction in the Smokies. They started with learning how to cast a fly rod, then progressed on to reading water and even catching a few fish. Paulette decided to take a break and sit on the bank to have a quick smoke. While she […]
Tailwater Fly Fishers, Your Long Wait May Be Over
In most years TVA will start to drain reservoirs in August and we’ll see medium to high flows into December, sometimes early January. Then flows are typically a mixed bag, sometimes good and sometimes tough until spring when TVA cuts flows to fill the reservoirs. This year has been a tough one due to weather […]
Keeping An Eye on the Water
Water levels in the Smokies have receded to quite fishable levels after they spike up pretty high late last week, but we have some more rain on the way today. So far it looks like the system is breaking up and should only bring us light and scattered rain showers. As fly fishing guides […]
Quick Pics: Dry Fly Brown Trout
Spring is here and the guide season has arrived with it. I did my first full day trip of 2012 and it was a good one. Fish were rising quite well and the few spots where we couldn’t rise a fish we often drew a strike on a nymph. We even managed to get a […]
The Smokies Are Fishing Great, The Tailwaters Not So Much
The fly fishing in the Smokies continues to be great! And the fishing on our local tailwaters… Did we mention that the fishing in the Smokies is great?!? We had some high water over the weekend, but that has subsided and there are clear flows in all of the mountain streams. All of the charts […]
Quick Pics: Trout Under Water
We’ve gotten some new equipment that allows us to get some really nice underwater images. Here’s a brown trout and rainbow trout, both from Little River in the Smokies. The fish are rising quite well, even if the number of bugs seems to be diminishing. The Quill Gordon hatch usually gets started in a week […]
Return to the Clinch River
This past weekend I couldn’t take it any longer and took the drift boat over to the Clinch River. Flows have been high for months now and while I wouldn’t do a guided trip under these conditions, I just had to get out and row the boat on a pretty day. I can’t say I’m […]
Hatches Continue in the Smokies; Meanwhile Winter Returns
Quill Gordon: The surest sign of spring on the streams in the Smokies Spring really has arrived early, at least from a fly fisher’s view. Here in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee we’ve already experienced about a week of afternoon hatches with rising fish. This doesn’t usually happen until early March or the last […]
