We’re officially into summer now and happy to report fishing is looking good almost everywhere you look. A wet spring season made fishing pretty tricky, especially on our tailwater rivers which ran high for a pretty long time. In fact, we lost more float days due to high water this season than we’ve ever lost […]
Spring Weather Roller Coaster in the Smokies and East Tennessee
You always know it’s spring in East Tennessee because of the stomach churning roller coaster ride you’ll see with the weather. I say “stomach churning” because when you guide for a living you’re always living in fear of anything that wrecks a day or even worse, shuffles the calendar. Over the years we’ve gotten to […]
Smoky Mountain Brook Trout Documentary
We thrilled to let you in on a little bit of a secret! A Nashville based film crew is currently working on a documentary about Smoky Mountain brook trout. There’s already been several days of filming with many more to come as the season progresses. Hollis Bennett is one of the film makers involved and […]
The Season Is Upon Us
It’s the middle of March and our guide season has started rolling even as hatches in the Smokies started at least a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been seeing Early Brown Stoneflies for some time and the Blue Quills and Quill Gordons have been hatching in good numbers. In spite of what’s been an exceptionally […]
Spring Hatches Should Start Soon
We’ve experienced an incredibly mild winter and the extended forecast shows nothing but above average temperatures over the next few weeks. This is important as we usually start watching for our spring hatches to get rolling in early March, about the time when the weather starts to warm up. Since the warm weather will be […]
Dogwood Winter Provides Varied Fishing
Early April in East Tennessee brings the blooming of dogwood trees, an iconic Southern Appalachian spring scene. It also tends to bring a cold snap regionally known as Dogwood Winter and this year has been about as wild as we can remember after the dogwoods bloomed, although we can remember one Easter weekend a few […]
Backcountry Brook Trout Paradise
We recently found this nifty video of backcountry fly fishing for Southern Appalachian brook trout via the good folks at the Orvis blog. It’s on the Raven Fork, about a 3 mile hike over Hyatt Ridge into remote country. This isn’t an easy place to reach or fish, but here’s an opportunity to see this […]
All Options Are On The Table
It’s been incredibly warm here in the Smoky Mountains and East Tennessee over the last week. Hiking up a trail to fly fish a backcountry stream has been a sweaty affair with temperatures 20 degrees or more above normal, but the fishing has been pretty good. Nymphs are working, but we’re not sure who’s fishing […]
Here We Go!
The weather is great, bugs are hatching, trout are rising, and our guide calendar is filling up fast. We even saw a flock of turkeys with a couple of strutting gobblers yesterday. No doubt about it, spring is here and it’s a great time to fly fish in East Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains. Up to […]
Spring is in the Air
If your could see out the window here at R&R Fly Fishing world headquarters in Townsend, Tennessee you’d think I was crazy to say spring is here. Snow is falling and there is a dusting on the trees. That doesn’t tell the whole story, though as it’s been in the 50’s and 60’s the past […]