It’s that time of year when we catch our breath, look up at the calendar and realize that it’s the middle of May already. We’ve been guiding quite a bit lately and the calendar doesn’t have much daylight until we’re well beyond Memorial Day. We’re at that time where Ian is spending most days in the […]
Summer Tailwater Forecast for East Tennessee
We’re far enough along in the season now that we’re able to start looking into the crystal ball for how fishing will progress into the summer. There’s always a degree of uncertainty more than a few weeks into the future, but our tailwater rivers are a little easier to predict in terms of how flows […]
All Kinds of Bugs
It’s May and you’ll find all kinds of bugs hatching wherever you go around East Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains. There are some Hendricksons still hatching plus some huge March Browns on the bigger streams. In the evenings the yellow mayflies are showing up in several species. All you really need to know is they […]
High Water in the Smokies Before the Great Weather Arrives
Last week was just one of those weeks… This is my twentieth season guiding and Charity’s thirteenth so it’s not new, but you certainly don’t like it. A constant parade of weather disturbances came through featuring everything from snow, to rain, to high winds. It was just a tough week with yo-yo-ing water temps and […]
A Week of Ups & Downs
This past week was quite a roller coaster ride for us fishing guides. It started last weekend with a fresh 4″ of snow in the Smokies that flat out shut down fishing in park streams last Sunday. Trust me. As a guide it wasn’t pretty. But the weather quickly warmed up and our new drift […]
Best Tailwater Conditions We’ve Seen in Months
Right now flows on East Tennessee’s trout tailwater rivers are as ideal as we’ve seen them in a long time. Last year’s exceptionally wet weather kept flows high for most of the sumer and by the time fall rolled around TVA had their hands full trying to get the reservoirs lowered. High flows continued through […]
Spring Kicks Into Gear
So far we’ve mostly seen some false starts as far as spring fishing has been concerned. Some nice weather with setbacks and little in the way of hatches. It finally seems as if that’s over and we’re really there! Saturday was easily the best day of fishing we’ve seen so far this year. And by […]
Tailwater Anglers the Time is Nigh
Yesterday was another chilly one around East Tennessee and particularly so in the Smokies. There was a fresh shot of snow above 3500′ or so. Not enough to amount to a whole lot, but just enough to hurt our feelings. The weather is warming up again for the weekend, but for the first time in […]
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 […]