It had to happen at some point. Water levels throughout East Tennessee and the Smoky Mountain region are finally pretty close to normal. If you want to nitpick and point out that stream flows are still way above average you’d be right, but they’re finally below the 75% mark and well below daily records. We […]
Conditions Close to Normal
It’s been a wild fishing season across the Southern Appalachian region with high water, or sometimes worse, good water levels that have been muddy. Fortunately, it looks like things are beginning to resemble something like normal this week. Well… Normal might be pushing it, but let’s say fishable and call it good. East Tennessee just exceeded […]
Thunderstorm Season in the Smokies
It’s been a wet season across the Southeast and even wet by the rainforest standard of the Great Smoky Mountains. Fortunately we’ve seen an end to the stationery fronts pulling tropical moisture to us the way metal shavings are drawn to a magnet. Even though things have dried out substantially we’re in the middle of […]
An overview of water conditions around the Smokies & East Tennessee
High water became a bit of a regular thing around here and after nice weekend in the Smokies it’s pretty obvious that most anglers have all bit given up on fishing. You can tell because there were very few fishermen out on the river. Fortunately it looks like we’ve turned the corner and water conditions […]
Unprecedented Water Conditions Across East Tennessee & The Smoky Mountains
We’re not the oldest fly fishers in the region, but we have been guiding a long time now. Charity has been doing this professionally for about 12 years now and Ian has been at it since 1995 plus we’ve been around the area longer than that. We’ve never seen or heard of water conditions like […]
Guiding a Guide
It’s often the case that Charity and I are on the water for days at a time from the spring thru the autumn, but we’ll look up and notice we haven’t fished together in months. So much of our free time is spent doing things with our kids. Even as we take the kids fishing […]
Keeping Our Fingers Crossed
Take a look at stream flows across East Tennessee and another look at TVA releases on the tailwaters and there’s good reason for optimism. After another week of rainy weather and blown out rivers and streams we’re off to a good start. But to be completely honest, we have a sense of deja vu because […]
Our Advice Is To Watch the Flows Carefully
To be clear, we’re used to flows on the tailwaters lacking absolute consistency. We get reliable flows in the spring when the reservoirs are filling, then in June you need to pay more attention but you can usually divine a pattern from it that you can work with. We came to terms with this fact […]
A Ton of Possibilities
Water flows are much better going into this week than they have been over the past few weeks. Streams in the Smokies are good levels after a period of unusually high flows. We’re also seeing more favorable tailwater flows that seem to have something like consistency. We’re seeing pop up thunderstorms every day in the […]
Fish When You Can
You’ve probably heard the old saying “When is the best time to fish? Any time you can!” We’ve always agreed with that sentiment but with the current water situation it’s taken on a deeper meaning. Our creeks have been blown out for more than half of the past week and our tailwaters… Well, at least […]