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Fly Selection Part 2 – Dry Flies vs. Nymphs

Fisherman on Little River Smoky MountainsLast month, I talked about ways to simplify your fly selection and offered tips on how to choose flies based on season and what was hatching. Based on the number of questions I had, however, I left out an important part of the process. Many folks said they are often uncertain when to fish a dry fly vs. a nymph.

As you might imagine, there are a lot of variables. There is not a simple answer like fish nymphs before noon and dries after. The truth is, in places like the Smoky Mountains, when conditions like water temperature and water level are ideal, it often doesn’t matter. There have been plenty of days when I’ve fished with my buddy Brian, going up the stream together and taking turns fishing. He was fishing nymphs or wet flies and I was fishing dries. We caught about the same number of fish. When conditions are right and the trout are actively feeding, they’ll typically feed on both.

So when the conditions are great and you could fish either, how do you decide? Sometimes it just boils down to personal preference. I happen to think fishing with dry flies is more fun. I’m often going to choose a dry fly in those instances. But it also depends where I’m fishing. If it’s purely a rainbow or brook trout stream, I’m highly likely to fish dries. But brown trout are more reluctant to feed on the surface. If there’s a chance of catching a bigger brown, I’m more likely to fish nymphs.

Some people choose to fish dry flies because they think it’s easier. Nymphing requires you to read the water three dimensionally. You have to factor in the depth as well as the surface currents. And there is more stuff, like split shot and sometimes strike indicators, that can lead to more tangles for less experienced anglers. On the other hand, one of the most experienced fly fishermen I know chooses to fish nymphs in smaller, pocket water streams for a similar reason. He says he can cover more water and catch more fish because he’s not spending so much time drying and redressing his dry fly after every fish. It’s a great point. Keeping a dry fly floating in smaller mountain streams, especially when you’re catching a lot of fish, can require a lot of time and effort.

So when the conditions are great and you could fish either, it’s really just going to come down to your personal preference and fishing style. But what about when conditions are not ideal? What are some “less than ideal” conditions that might dictate the use of one fly category over another?

The first one that jumps to mind is water temperature. If you’re fishing early or late in the year when the water temperature is in the 40’s (or colder), there will be fewer insects hatching and the fish are going be more lethargic and less willing to come to the surface to feed. While you can sometimes coax fish to the surface in these conditions, you’ll likely have far greater success fishing nymphs near the bottom where the fish is already seeing most of its natural food and where it doesn’t have to expend as much energy.

High water is another one. When water is high, many of the channels are moving too fast at the surface. In pocket water, the water that normally goes around the rocks is going over them and eliminating the holding pocket. Fish will not only have a tougher time seeing food on the surface, they will have to work too hard to get it. While there can sometimes be fish surface feeding in back eddies, etc. in high water, you’ll likely be far more successful drifting nymphs closer to the bottom.

Low water can be the opposite. Fish don’t quit feeding on nymphs when the water gets too low. But it gets very difficult to fish with nymphs in these conditions because you’re frequently hanging the bottom. Can it be done? Absolutely. But you’ll have a much easier time fishing dry flies in these conditions.

The other situation worth mentioning is fishing for trout in tailwaters. While there are exceptions, most tailwaters are not known for their diversity in aquatic insects. Rather they’ll usually get one good mayfly hatch and/or one good caddis hatch and that’s it. The Clinch River is a perfect example. It gets a great sulfur (mayfly) hatch in May and June and that’s it. During that timeframe, the dry fly fishing can be pretty darn good. The rest of the year their diet mostly consists of midge larvae, scuds, and sulfur nymphs.

Even when tailwater trout can be observed surface feeding on adult midges, you can usually catch fifteen trout below the surface for every one you can catch on top. Tailwaters almost always lend themselves better to nymph fishing.

Finally, if you want to get scientific about the whole thing, it is estimated that anywhere from 65-90% of a trout’s diet comes from below the surface. It makes sense. The typical aquatic insect spends one to four years as a nymph. It only spends one day to two weeks as an adult. So really, we fish dry flies because it’s fun. And sometimes it’s easier. If your primary goal is catching big fish and/or more fish, learn how to fish nymphs.

Learn more about Smoky Mountain hatches and flies in my hatch guide.

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Fly Selection – Making Sense of It All

Fly Bins at a Fly Shop
Too many choices?

If you are new to fly fishing, particularly for trout, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the number of fly patterns available. Which ones do I need? What colors? What sizes? Do I need all of them? First of all, if you carry every trout fly with you, you need a wheelbarrow to go fly fishing! While there is no way to make it immediately simple, there are ways to simplify the process. As with many things in fly fishing, find a good starting point. Learn as you go from there.

Sulfur Mayfly Adult
Sulfur mayflies can come off in bunches on the Clinch in May, and you better have a good imitation

First, There are many fly patterns that imitate a very specific bug when it is hatching. These may only be relevant on certain rivers at a specific time of year. Some only imitate certain stages of that hatching insect’s emergence. These hatches may involve hundreds of bugs coming off for hours out of the day, and maybe over the course of several weeks.

When that’s the case, fish can get highly selective. They may ignore anything that doesn’t look like what is actually hatching. You need to match the hatch. The heavier the hatch is, the more selective the fish can become. They may only focus on one stage of the emergence. For instance, they may opt to ignore the nymphs and adults, and purely key in on emergers just under the surface film.

This kind of situation can be exciting and frustrating at the same time while you try to unlock the puzzle. But these situations are rare. Most of the time, particularly in smaller mountain streams like the Smokies, you’re not going to see many heavy hatches. Rather, there will be sporadic small hatches of a few different types of bugs. And the fish rarely key in on one specific bug. They can’t afford to. Often, there won’t be anything hatching at all.   So, a good starting point with trout flies is with a basic selection of attractor patterns in their most common size(s).

Parachute Adams Dry Fly
The Parachute Adams is one of the most universal topwater trout flies in the world

Attractor fly patterns, also referred to as generals, generics, or prospecting flies, are not designed to imitate anything in particular. They will either be rather drab looking flies, like a Parachute Adams, that look similar to a lot of food items. Or they may be something with some color that doesn’t look like anything at all, like a Royal Wulff, intended to trigger a feeding response from a trout. In most situations, if you have a basic selection of attractors and you present them well, you can catch trout anywhere in the world.

Many of you may have seen, or even purchased, the Great 8 fly selectionfrom my online store. That’s exactly what it is – a collection of eight dry, nymph, and streamer fly patterns that will work on trout most anywhere in the world.   Now if you ask ten different fishermen their eight must-have fly patterns, you won’t get the exact same answer. But I guarantee you’ll see a lot of similarity and crossover. A simple selection of these types of flies is a great place to start your fly collection. From there, you just gradually add fly patterns based on multiple sources and scenarios.

Maybe your buddy told you he did really well at Tremont on a size #12 Yellow Humpy. Pick up a couple and give them a try. Or maybe the guy at the fly shop said people have been doing well on #16 Copper Johns. Pick up a few of those. Or maybe you purchased my hatch guide for the Smokies and it indicated there should be good hatches of Light Cahills when you were coming. Better have a couple of Light Cahill patterns with you.

There are hatch guides and charts for most every popular trout fishery in the country and they can be very helpful. And the folks at the local fly shops are great sources for information. When they’re not fishing, they’re in the shop talking to people who have been fishing. They almost always have the most up to date information. After doing that for a while, you start to accumulate a lot of fly patterns. And through the process, you start to find your own personal favorites.

So, now that you have all of these patterns, how do you know what fly to fish when? Fly selection is about 1/3 experience, 1/3 scientific, and 1/3 dumb luck. If you fish an area a lot, you will begin to draw from past experiences to choose your fly. If I am fishing the Smokies in June, I don’t have to actually see a beetle get eaten by a trout to make me decide to tie on a beetle pattern. For decades, I’ve done well on beetles in June. It will probably be one of the first flies I tie on.

Little Yellow Sally Stonefly Adult
Are you seeing a lot of these?
Little Yellow Sally Dry Fly
Try something like this

I might use a more scientific approach on water that is less familiar, or even on familiar water when something unusual is happening. The scientific approach could be reading something like a hatch guide and choosing a fly accordingly to match the flies that should be hatching. Or you could be on the water and see fish feeding on the surface. If you see an abundance of natural insects on the water or coming off the water, catch a couple in your hand and try to find an imitation in your box that is close in size, color, and profile. You can do the same thing with nymphs by turning over a couple of rocks and choosing a fly that resembles what you see.

The dumb luck method is just what it sounds like. The biggest brook trout I ever caught in the park came on a day when the fishing was tough. None of my usual patterns were producing and I wasn’t having much luck matching naturals. I finally dug through my box and saw a fly I hadn’t thought of, much less fished, in the last ten years. I figured I couldn’t do much worse. So, I tried it and ended up catching several fish on it, including that big brookie. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Probably the most import thing to remember is that it is more often the archer, not the arrow. Too many fishermen blame their fly for a lack of success. With the exception of super big, technical hatches, specific fly patterns are probably not as important as most people make them. Approaching the fish without spooking them and putting a good drift over them with a “reasonable” fly pattern will catch fish most of the time.

Someone smarter than me once said that most people’s favorite fly is the fly they happened to have on the first time the fishing was good. In other words, the fish were feeding well that day and probably would have hit most anything. But from that day forward you have confidence in that fly. It’s often the first fly you tie on and it’s the one you leave on the longest. There’s a lot to be said for confidence.

Most of the big brown trout, probably 75%, I’ve caught in the Smokies have come on a Tellico Nymph. That may lead some people to believe there is something extra special about that fly. The truth is I spotted most of those big brown trout before fishing for them. And I usually tie on a Tellico Nymph when I fish to a big brown. Know why? It’s the fly I happened to have on the first time I caught a big brown in the Smokies. There’s a lot to be said for confidence.

Learn more about Smoky Mountain hatches and flies in my hatch guide.

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Skills: Fly Fishing the Surf

Angler and Heron on the Beach
Surf casting with a little company

Every time I go to the beach on vacation, I take a fly rod with me. Sometimes I already have plans to do some flats fishing with a guide but just as often, my only plan is to get up early each morning and cast around in the surf to see what might bite. That’s one of the neat things about fishing in the ocean. You never know just what you might find!

I’ve been doing this for years. Some years it’s really productive and other years not so much. It is fishing after all. The one thing that is a constant is the strange looks I get from other people on the beach – strange looks that often lead to questions. And they are typically not questions aimed at gaining knowledge, rather to find out exactly what kind of idiot I am.

On this last trip I was approached by a kid who asked, “Did you catch anything?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I caught quite a few.”

“Wait, really? You actually caught fish? On a fly rod?”

I gathered that part of his dismay was because he’d been fishing the beach himself with no luck. But he was most especially shocked that I’d been catching them on a fly. Despite the fairly well publicized evolution of fly fishing, much of the world still makes the assumption that fly fishing is something that is done in streams for trout. Nothing more.

If you are under that same assumption, let me assure you that you can catch anything that swims on a fly rod. Your only real limitation is depth. In other words, deep-sea fishing with a fly rod, while it can be done, is hardly a practical undertaking. However, fishing the saltwater flats with a fly rod is not only productive and fun, but has been a popular pursuit for decades. Fly fishing the surf sort of falls into that middle ground of practicality. It’s definitely a challenge, but with the right technique, can be very productive. And if you’re going to the beach anyway…

If you’ve ever considered surf fishing with a fly rod, you’re going to need a few things. Unless you just know of specific fish feeding in the surf that require heavier tackle, a rod outfit in the 8-10 weight range should take care of most situations.  Unlike freshwater set-ups, your reel is probably the most important component of your saltwater outfit. Not only do you want something more resistant to corrosion, but something with a significant drag system. Even the smallest of saltwater fish can run hard and fast, and a cheap reel will at best result in a lot of lost fish. Really cheap reels with plastic parts may even “melt” on you!

Leaders should be in the 9’ range and at least a 10lb. test. Most of the time when fishing the surf, you’re casting larger flies in water that doesn’t have a lot of clarity, so fine tippets are not needed. In fact, many saltwater species are rather “toothy” and can cut through traditional monofilament. You may want to consider adding metal bite guards or using wire leaders and/or tippet.

For fly selection, I typically keep it simple and use multi-purpose baitfish patterns. Clouser Minnows and Lefty’s Deceivers in a variety of colors will take care of most situations. It never hurts to have a few crab patterns as well. If the area you’re fishing has a specific fly fishing shop nearby (most don’t), you can probably get some good fly recommendations there.

Homemade Stripping Basket Interior
Homemade Stripping Basket

One of the most important things you’ll need is a stripping basket. I learned this the hard way on my first surf fishing experience. Most of the flies you’ll be fishing will be some sort of streamer, which means you’ll be stripping a lot of line. Unlike stream fishing, the line you strip will not rest neatly by your side when you strip it. Rather, the surf takes that slack line quickly in toward the shore, then out toward the sea, repeatedly. Not only will this cause big problems when you hook up, but the line routinely just wraps around your legs.

Stripping baskets can be purchased from most fly fishing suppliers or you can make your own. See the companion article “Stripping Baskets” in this newsletter to learn how. It’s cheap and easy!

Now that you have all of the right stuff, it’s time to talk tactics. Effectively fishing the surf is going to require as much observation as anything. If you just stand on the beach and repeatedly cast to the ocean, you’re going to end up with gobs of slack line when the tide rushes it back to you, you’ll wear yourself out, and you likely won’t catch many fish. Watch the water first.

The first thing to look for is feeding fish. If you can find schools of baitfish breaking the water, there’s something bigger chasing them. If you find a lot of this going on, you should have a really good day! Also watch for birds gathering over a certain piece of water. They’re looking for the same thing you are and they have a much better view. Typically, when you find the birds you find the fish.

Whether you can visibly see fish feeding or you’re simply casting blind, you want to time your casts. If you’re randomly casting into breaking waves, you’re probably not putting the fly in front of the fish and even if you do, you likely won’t be able to detect a strike due to excess slack created by the breaking wave. Fish will normally feed in the calm water just behind the breaking wave. These can be very short windows in rough surf. They’ll be long windows in calm surf.

In either case, waves tend to break in consistent patterns. Watch them. The waves may break in threes with calm water behind them. Or they may break may break in fives with calm water behind them. Take the time to learn the pattern. When you have it figured out you can time your casts accordingly to place and strip the fly behind the final wave in each series. And working at an angle, casting and stripping almost parallel to the breaking wave, will keep your fly in the prime target area for the most amount of time.

Fishing at Sunrise Outer Banks, NC
Fishing at Sunrise

The best time to fish the surf will certainly be when the surf is most calm. However, unless you’re at a private or sparsely populated beach, you’re best time is going to be from sunrise until 8 or 9am. That’s about the time when folks begin walking the beach looking for seashells and what not, and I can assure you that they will pay no attention to you. Since that fly line goes about as far behind you as in front of you, the chances of putting a Clouser Minnow into the lip of a passing beachcomber are high! Of course, when you get into late morning and afternoon, you add swimmers to the list of obstacles.

But that makes it perfect when you’re on a family vacation. Get up early and fish a couple of hours, then spend the rest of the day with your spouse or kids. Give it a try on your next beach trip and don’t give up if you strike out the first time. Like most other types of fly fishing, you have to suffer through some failure before things start to click. But when it clicks, it is all kinds of fun! Oh, and don’t forget that saltwater can really trash your gear, even the good stuff. Be sure to thoroughly rinse all of your gear after each outing.

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Homemade Brookies

These are hardly the idealized fly fishing journeys that most anglers conjure in their minds in those last few moments before sleep takes hold. It’s not the casual, early morning stroll through a dewy meadow. It’s not the spacious pool in a lazily meandering river where 20-inch trout routinely clock in for their daily shift of methodically sipping delicate mayflies. In fact, unless you are one of a few passionate, dedicated, and perhaps slightly mentally unbalanced backcountry anglers, you might consider these journeys way too much like work.

This kind of trip involves laborious long miles up steep, narrow, rocky, root-infused trails. The necessities for the day are transported on your back. The destination sometimes has a name. Sometimes it’s only a mysterious, blue squiggly line on a map. And once you reach the destination, the journey has just begun.

Such small, rhododendron choked Appalachian streams may only yield a few trout per pool or pocket. To catch fish here, you need to cover water. You need to keep moving up the stream. But this isn’t the large watershed two thousand feet below where a well maintained trail shadows every bend. It’s another mile before the trail meets this stretch of stream again. From here, traveling the streambed is the only option. You fish as you go. But you’re diligent with your pace to ensure you reach the takeout point before dark. With vertical banks coated in impenetrable tangles of undergrowth, exiting the stream beforehand is not a possibility.

Navigating up the bed presents its own set of challenges. The stream forces its way down a staircase of ancient boulders, persistently carving away the earth’s multi-billion-year-old foundation. Through its course over, under, between, and around these timeless obstacles, countless small pockets, seams, and pools are formed. These are the places where water hesitates, taking a much needed rest from its perpetual quest to reach and become the sea. In every hesitation of water, native brook trout exist and thrive. They survive in the stream’s periodic moments of weakness.

With full intent to exploit these weaknesses, you enter the stream and prepare to fish the first run. It’s a little shoot that slices between two desk size boulders. Canopy is heavy above and to the right so you cast off your left shoulder. You place the fly perfectly on the upper left edge of the current. The fly casually drifts for mere seconds before vanishing in a sucking gulp! It’s not the showy splash to which you’ve become accustomed on this type of water. This is a good fish. The rod bends and pulses with every desperate evasive maneuver by the trout. Quickly tiring the fish, you raise your rod and grasp the line. A close up inspection confirms this is indeed a nice trout.

You reach out and gently cup the trout, admiring the vivid array of colors exploding from its body. An intense burnt orange consumes the trout’s belly. It continues over its fins only to stop abruptly against vibrant white tips. Its back and sides are a deep, rich, olive, randomly dotted with spots of yellow and orange. The orange spots are encircled by angelic blue halos. Temporarily mesmerized by nature’s perfection, you carefully remove the hook and place the trout back in the stream. You’re transfixed as he instantly seems to transform to rock, moss, and water. Measuring out at 10-inches, this Southern Appalachian brook trout may be small by many anglers’ standards. It’s a trophy in a small, backcountry Smoky Mountain stream, where a 6-inch fish is the standard.

At one time, you didn’t have to go to quite so much effort to catch the native brook trout of this region. Nearly all of the streams in the Appalachian Mountains were heavily populated with specks, as the locals call them. But years of irresponsible logging practices in the earlier part of the 20th century destroyed much of the brook trout’s habitat. Clear cutting right down to the stream created erosion issues and removed critical canopy. Streams were silted and warm.  Low elevation brook trout migrated or die. Most died. The ones in higher elevations survived.  Much of the high country couldn’t be reached by loggers. And the higher elevation was naturally cooler.

As time passed, logging companies began to focus their attention elsewhere. Meanwhile, more people had discovered the area, including sportsmen. But there weren’t many fish to catch. The lack of fish in these otherwise perfect streams prompted the introduction of non-native rainbows.  As more time passed, the forest began to return. Eventually, the streams had the solidified banks and necessary canopy to once again support a natural trout population.

Through decades of stocking, rainbow trout had taken hold and were reproducing. They had completely filled in the previous voids in the lower and mid elevation sections of stream. Consequently, they ceased all stocking of rainbows in the early 1970’s.  Great news, right?  Not if you happen to be a brook trout.

The acidic nature of Appalachian streams doesn’t allow for a tremendous amount of aquatic insect life, at least not enough to adequately support and grow the healthy population of trout that live there. With the rainbows now thriving in these lower elevations, there simply wasn’t enough food to go around. So brook trout, for the most part, remained relegated to the uppermost regions of the streams.

In an attempt to preserve the native brook trout in the Smokies, the park service closed most of these streams to fishing more than 30 years ago.  But after years of research, they determined angling pressure has little to no effect on these high-country brook trout populations. Consequently, most of these streams were re-opened in recent years. Since then, there has also been an effort to re-extend the range of the brook trout back into select mid elevation waters.

The first step in the process is defining a natural barrier, like a tall waterfall, that will prevent upstream migrations by non-native fish. Above the waterfall, existing fish are then removed by using a chemical called antimycin. This EPA approved chemical kills all fish and most aquatic insects from a stream. And it poses no threat to plants, amphibians, or humans. Only small areas of the stream are treated at a time. The chemical is then neutralized below the waterfalls with potassium permanganate to render it harmless. After treatment, crews augment the brook trout population with native species from other areas in the park with expectations of a full return of aquatic insects, a reestablishment of brook trout, and no more rainbows.

The entire process typically takes about 5-7 years and the stream, of course, is closed to fishing during the process.  Though controversial at first, this method has been highly effective and successful. It now serves as a model for similar projects in the Smokies and elsewhere. However, there is only so much water that meets these necessary requirements. Rainbows and browns will never be fully eradicated from the entire watershed. These trout have a solid foothold on the lower elevationsof rivers and likely always will. While there are now a few more brook trout streams that are easier to reach, unless a more effective method of eradication and replacement is devised, brook trout seeking anglers will continue to be relegated to long, steep hikes into remote places to find their prize.

Why do some fly fishermen go to so much effort to pursue a fish that averages about five inches in length? Throughout the region are relatively flat, fifty-yard-wide tailwaters. A fisherman can stroll five minutes from the car and find gobs of trout that are rarely smaller than ten inches! To a dying breed of relatively few high-country enthusiasts, size doesn’t matter. These anglers pursue trout in the Appalachian backcountry because the fish they catch are born there. They’re not created in the cramped, narrow concrete runs of a hatchery. And while many of the rainbows and browns inhabiting lower elevations in these watersheds are wild, only the brookies that swim in the high streams of these mountains are truly native.

Quite simply, native trout have a certain indefinable appeal to the self-aware angler. Perhaps it’s just that we as humans seem to be wired to yearn for a connection to something bigger. Whether through genealogy, science, religion, or fly fishing, there is an innate desire to link to the world that was here before us; if for no other reason than to better understand ourselves. For fly fishermen in the eastern United States, the opportunity to pursue, connect with, and maybe even understand the uncompromising brook trout that have existed and persisted for centuries before us provides that all too vital link.

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A Fly Fisherman Looks at Forty

A Struggle with Age & Responsibility

(It should be noted that this was written several years ago. I now have 50 firmly in my sights!)

I’ve been guiding fly fishermen for 20 years now and through those years, most of the fishermen I guided were men who were older than I was. I was reminded of this regularly as they would all routinely sit back observing as I tied on a fly, replaced a piece of 6x tippet, or cleared a tangle and calmly remark, “Wait til you turn 40.”

More focused on the task at hand than the comment, I’d reply, “How’s that?”

“Just enjoy your eyesight while you have it. It’s all downhill after 40!” And the two gentlemen would nod and laugh in mutual understanding and satisfaction that I would one day suffer their same misfortune.

If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times, and it was never 38, never 42, never 45…. “Wait til you turn 40.” In my 20’s, the prophecy went in one ear and out the other. In my 30’s, I started to give it a little more pause, but still shrugged it off with what little was left of my youthful defiance. Last year I turned 40 and I’ll be damned if a week later I wasn’t holding the fly 6” further away to thread the tippet through the eye of the hook!

Now I find myself frequently guiding fishermen my age or younger and I take great pleasure in forwarding this curse to my clients in their 20’s. I even started sharing my story with older clients, thinking I was now part of some exclusive club. But no, they just smile, shake their head, and chuckle, “Wait til you turn 50.”

When I turned 40, it didn’t bother me a bit and I didn’t have any Earth shattering changes to my psyche or my general outlook on life. There was no desire to change careers, to buy a sports car, or to date a 20 year old swimsuit model. Maybe that comes at 50. But that society defined milestone does have a way of promoting self-reflection and I can honestly say I’m very content with where my life is right now. If I have one regret, it’s how my attitude and approach toward personal fishing trips has changed.

Whether it is born of laziness or wisdom, it has changed and it often leaves me disappointed in myself. I used to fish whenever I could, wherever I could, and for as long as I could – usually longer than I should. If there was an open day or an open slot in a day, I would somehow manage to fill it with fishing. It was not uncommon for me to drive three hours to fish for half a day and turn around and drive three hours back home. Or sometimes I’d turn that same trip into a two day event where I would spend the night in the back of my Explorer.

Now I find myself reluctant to drive an hour and a half to fish the South Holston, regardless of how good the fishing will be, because I can be on Little River in thirty minutes. And if I do decide to spend the night on a fishing trip these days, it involves an elaborate camp or just as often, a hotel room.

I used to regularly explore new rivers and streams all over the region and now complacently opt for the more familiar waters that I’ve already fished hundreds of times. As a younger man I wanted adventure and discovery while as an aging man I tend to be leaning more toward stability and predictability. I also find myself leaning more toward quiet and solitude. Rather than driving two hours to a popular, crowded river where I’m likely to hook 20” rainbows on bead heads, I find myself hiking two hours to a small creek with nobody on it where I might catch 8” rainbows on dry flies.

My days on the water are now chosen more carefully, too. When I lived in Lexington, my longtime fishing buddy, Cecil, and I knew when each other was free and it was just understood that we would be fishing on those days, rain or shine, come hell or high water – we fished a lot of high water. After we got a little older and I moved to Tennessee, planning a trip became slightly more complicated as we would actually have to call each other a few times to determine an open date, and then we would go fishing, rain or shine, come hell or high water.

Now going fishing with Cecil involves several e-mails and phone calls, a lengthy exchange of possibleopen dates, and an in-depth study of the Weather Channel. When we do finally settle on a date, it is still subject to change due to an alteration in work load, unrealized plans of spouses, or the weather.

Funny how things change. About 15 years ago, I took a winter trip to the Cumberland River with Cecil and another friend when the projected high was 25 degrees. It wasn’t a surprise or poor planning. We knew the high would be 25 degrees and we went anyway. It was an open day, the water releases were good, and we were fishermen. So we went fishing.

We had a beat-up johnboat and none of us had garages at the time so it was stored outside and usually uncovered. After all, funds were limited and you could buy a lot of fly tying materials for the price of a decent tarp. A winter’s worth of rain and snow had left the boat filled with water that had frozen to a solid block of ice by the time of our fishing trip, but not allowing such a minor detail to hinder a day of fishing, we decided to go ahead anyway and we’d figure something out when we got there. I think we secretly hoped that the ice would magically melt away on the two hour drive to the river, but to no real surprise, the exposure to 20 degree temperatures while driving 55 miles per hour only seemed to make the ice icier.

Once at the boat ramp, after repeated failed attempts to break the ice, things were looking grim, but with desperate times calling for desperate measures, I finally had the controversial idea of removing the drain plug and backing the boat into the river, allowing the near 50 degree Cumberland River water to fill the bottom interior of the boat to help melt the ice. Though it took several attempts, it actually worked and we eventually cleared the ice from the boat and made our way down the river. The fishing turned out to be excellent and Cecil stuck a 28” brown trout that day. These days, even with nicer boats stored in toasty garages, we probably would have opted to just stay home, maybe get a little work done.

That’s the most discouraging transformation that has occurred in my older age – the willingness to just stay home. I now find myself frequently choosing to tackle built-up yard work on a pleasant afternoon rather than slipping into the mountains with fly rod in hand. Maybe it has something to do with age, but more specifically, it is probably more the result of a misguided sense of responsibility that comes with age. I blame my father. After all, what kind of a writer would I be if I didn’t blame my father for at least one imperfection in my life? But when I was growing up, Dad rarely took vacations, and when he wasn’t working at the office, he was usually tending to some task at home, and I somehow managed to inherit this overwhelming sense of anxiety when projects begin to pile up, regardless of their significance.

I’ve begun to realize though, that I also have a responsibility to feed and foster the things that I’m passionate about. When I put off fishing trip after fishing trip, I do nothing more than build up an eventual feeling of desperation. Though I am fortunate to have a wife that supports my fishing addiction and even enjoys going with me, she inevitably becomes the undeserving target of the frustration brought on by too little fishing. In these instances, she might innocently ask what we’re doing this weekend, to which I respond sharply that I haveto go fishing. I explain with irritation that I haven’t been fishing in weeks in a way that suggests that she’s the reason.

I’ll also find myself unproductive while working. Yes, I know the common perception of fly fishing guides is that we fish for a living, but while I’m fortunate that my job allows me to be on the water almost daily, being on the water and fishing are two completely things. Besides, there’s more to guiding than guiding. There’s the booking, the marketing, the fly tying, the boat maintenance, the grocery shopping, and the lunch making. For me, there’s also fly tying for the shop and writing. So when I’m trying to meet a deadline and I haven’t been fishing in a while, my mind will be all over the place and I’ll become extremely fidgety. This usually results in an indicting e-mail to Cecil about how we’ve become soft and how he needs to get his sorry ass down here and go fishing with me.

The fact is fly fishing is not just something I do. It’s a significant part of who I am. And when I go long stretches without fishing, it negatively affects me psychologically and becomes a detriment to the way I live the rest of my life. I don’t know if this is normal or not, but surely there must be others – fishermen, musicians, artists – who experience the same thing.

So I’m trying to do something about it. I’m trying to make myself fish more. Sad, isn’t it? What’s even sadder is when I feel the need to justify it by telling myself that I’m in the fly fishing business, so I need to fish. Or I play the mental health angle described above, convincing myself that I’ll be dead at 50 if I don’t spend more time on the water. Sometimes I even envision the tombstone:

Here’s lies Rob Fightmaster. He died forty years too soon because he didn’t fish enough.

I shouldn’t have to do that though. I should be able to go fishing for no other reason than I’m a fisherman and I want to go fishing, right? It’s unfortunate that things like work so often interfere with the important things in life. Responsibility comes in many forms and we can’t lose sight of the fact that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness and contentment. And when we are happy and content, we are able to share a better part of ourselves with the people that matter most.

So, sorry Little River Outfitters. That bin of Hellbender Stoneflies will have to stay empty a couple of days longer. I’ve blocked a day to go fishing this week! Well, as long as it doesn’t rain….

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Dammed If You Do, Dammed If You Don’t

The Dichotomy of Southern Tailwaters

They ruined the best trout river in the Eastern United States. At least that’s what they say. Any trout angler old enough to fish the Little Tennessee River will tell you. They may fondly refer to it as the Little T, but they’ll tell you. And they’re still mad about it.

Ask one of the many farmers who lost their family land when the Little T met its demise. You’ll hear even greater resentment and disdain for the Tennessee Valley Authority. It burns nearly as hot today as it did more than thirty years ago.

It happened despite the protests of landowners, anglers, and endangered resident snail darters. The Little Tennessee was dammed in 1977. They did it in the name of economic stimulus and flood control. But nothing could control the flood of controversy that rose from this action. The resulting Tellico Lake now placidly covers the once great trout river. The surrounding land, once owned by generations of family farms, has been sub-divided, sold, and developed into exclusive communities.

As a trout fishery, the Little T is legendary. It boasted rainbow and brown trout routinely measuring 4 to 5 pounds. Even larger were taken on a fairly regular basis. Anglers still talk about the clouds of caddis that blanketed the river. It’s as if they were just drifting an Elk Wing there last week. Poke your head into the right huddle of fly shop dwellers, and you’ll still hear a flow of rumors. You might hear about that 30-pound brown trout at the trash pile. Next time he might fall for that newfangled streamer pattern. While the largest of dams and deepest of lakes don’t seem enough to drown perfect memories, there won’t be a next time…. Thanks to that dam.

The irony is that the Little T never would have been the best trout river in the Eastern United States had it not been for a dam. The upper part of the Little Tennessee River drainage already had multiple impoundments dating back to the 1930’s. Though unlike the normal, massive impoundments of the TVA system, these were created and operated by Tapoco, a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company of America. The result was a series of undeveloped finger lakes. They snaked and stair-cased down the drainage on the southwestern edge of what is now Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In fact, the first impoundment, Cheoah, predated the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority by nearly 15 years. The fabled Little Tennessee River flowed from below Chilhowee Dam. It was the final Tapoco created project in the system.

Stories about opposition to dams are not exactly rare in the fishing community. Issues in the Western United States with dams blocking natural migrations of native fish have been well chronicled for decades. But these stories have unfolded time and time again for nearly a century in the South, particularly during Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Coming out of The Great Depression, national economic conditions were terrible. The southern region of the U.S. was particularly battered. Years of heavy farming took its toll on the land. Massive flooding was eroding what was left of the soil. All of the best timber had already been harvested. And the limited amount of electricity in the mostly rural region made it nearly impossible to attract or create any real industry. The formation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933 was intended to change all of that.

The TVA began an aggressive project of damming many of the major waterways in the Tennessee Valley. The unfortunate result was that the valley floor behind the newly created dam became a massive lake. Many people lost their homes. Most were farms that had been in the family for generations.

Additionally, habitat in miles of free flowing rivers was destroyed. The benefit however, was that water levels could be controlled by releasing (or not releasing) water through the dam. This prevented future flooding that had devastated the land and its people. Another benefit was that when water was released, it would rotate a number of turbines in the process. This created hydro-electric power that could provide affordable electricity to most of the region.

They flooded homes to prevent homes from flooding. It’s the same Orwellian doublethink that, for better or worse, has shaped much of the history of this nation. And we as anglers are not immune to it. On one hand we tend to strongly oppose anything that threatens fish habitat or really anything in the natural world. Yet we now frequently find ourselves trying to protect something that did just that. Think of some of the best trout fishing rivers in the Southern United States. There’s the South Holston, Watauga, Chattahoochee, Clinch, Hiwassee, Cumberland, White, Little Red… All are all tailwaters that were formed by damming rivers, flooding land, and destroying homes and habitat. At least half the folks in the south were passionately against the formation of these dams at the time.

It’s difficult to imagine that less than a century ago these same rivers didn’t hold a single trout. Water temperatures were simply too warm to support trout. Instead, these same rivers were full of smallmouth bass and even largemouth bass at their lower reaches. The formation of a new type of fishery below these impoundments, now commonly known as a tailwater or tailrace, was not even a consideration when these projects were originally conceived. In fact, it was believed by fisheries experts that these tailwaters would be sterile, oxygen deprived deserts, unsuitable for any real fish population.

It was actually in Calderwood Lake, one of the early Tapoco impoundments, where it was later realized that wild mountain trout had been migrating from feeder streams into the lake’s cold waters. They were growing and thriving. This realization eventually spawned regular stocking programs on these lakes and throughout TVA’s massive tailwater system.

Over time, tailwaters didn’t just become fisheries that would support trout for put-and-take angling. Instead, the trout grew quickly on the ample amounts of food in these waters. They held over year-to-year to grow even larger. In some instances, the trout even began reproducing. All of a sudden, the formerly trout-deprived Southeastern United States had multiple trout rivers that rivaled some of the best in the world. Until recently, one of these man-made fisheries in Arkansas was home to the world record brown trout. It’s no wonder trout anglers are so protective of these rivers today. It’s no wonder trout anglers more than thirty years ago were so protective of the Little T.

But is that all we’re about? Does the end justify the means as long as it includes a fishery that supports big fish? Can we as anglers reasonably and logically criticize one decision to build a dam, flood land, remove homes, and destroy habitat yet support and protect other decisions that did the exact same thing?

There just doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut solution that will please everyone when it comes to this issue. There never has been. It’s the case with most large scale dilemmas that affect an entire country, or at the least, an entire region. Sometimes all you can hope for is a solution that will benefit the most people for the longest period of time while doing the least amount of harm to the people who are negatively impacted.

It’s often decades before history measures the consequences of actions we take today. Upon reflection, most would probably agree that the multitude of TVA projects executed during the New Deal era ultimately served the greater good of the Southern United States. As a bonus, hordes of trout-crazy anglers are still reaping the benefits of the amazing fisheries that resulted from those projects.

I can’t help but wonder, though. Will we look back one day and feel the same way about what they did to the Little T? Was the greater good served? Or was the best trout river in the Eastern United States destroyed merely for the development of exclusive lake-front property?

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Choosing Favorites

Thoughts About Our Favorite Fishing Places

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

– Michel de Montaigne

“So, what’s your favorite place to fish?” As a professional guide who gets to regularly interact with anglers of varying skill levels and backgrounds, probably the only question I hear more often is, “So, is that really your last name?” I have a few pre-recorded, witty responses to the second question. The first question always prompts more of a production. I look off in the distance. I pause and scratch my chin, deliberating carefully as I seem to reflect on the numerous destinations I’ve had the pleasure to fish over the years. I’m not sure if the hesitation is for their benefit or my own, since I’m usually only thinking about places I haven’t yet fished.

“Here,” I inevitably answer. The response is partly existential in that I’ve always believed that the best place you can be fishing is the place you’re fishing right now. But largely it’s because I am in love with the Smoky Mountains. It is, without a doubt, my favorite place to fish. If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here.

After all, it’s not as if I was born here. I wasn’t the guy stuck in a job he hated. I wasn’t living in a small town I couldn’t never figure out how to leave. When I finished school in Kentucky, I moved here to guide. I had no wife, no kids, and no real obligations other than a German Shepherd who seemed ready to go anywhere. I chose this place. Or maybe it chose me.

It was more than twenty years ago at a fly shop in Lexington, KY where I received a simple bit of advice that, at the time, I had no way of knowing would ultimately set the course for the rest of my life. I’d wandered in there as usual, dressed as a fisherman and wearing my best poker face in an attempt to convince whomever might be working that they were being graced by the presence of a veteran angler. In actuality, I was as green as they come and would have been hard pressed to distinguish the difference between a Royal Coachman and a yellow popping bug.

I cut my teeth on the smallmouth waters of Elkhorn and Stoner Creeks, but recently, I’d begun catching trout with some regularity at the Dix River tailwater. In my mind, this was validation of my legitimacy as a fly fisherman. So on this particular visit to the shop, the conversation quickly turned to trout. If the shop guru saw through my façade of expertise, he didn’t show it, and he asked if I’d ever fished in the Smoky Mountains. Still keeping my cards close, I pretended to be very aware of that area’s fishing but admitted that I’d never had the chance to get down there. Twenty dollars later, I left the store with a few flies and a guide book on fishing the Smoky Mountains.

The truth is I was familiar with the Smoky Mountains. Just three hours from my childhood home in Lexington, we made several trips down there when I was a kid, but I’d only been to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, the gaudy tourist driven towns on the border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that provide such diverse forms of entertainment as putt-putt golf, go-karts, and water slides. Complimented by an array of pancake houses, shops with air brushed t-shirts, wax museums, and haunted mystery mansions, the once quiet mountain towns attract millions of people from the region, and they have become such popular destinations that they are synonymous with the national park for many people. And before that fateful evening at the fly shop, I was one of them.

After looking at the Smokies through a different lens, I began to realize that there was an entirely different world just beyond the bright lights and lingering aroma of funnel cakes. To be exact, it was an 800 square mile world of pure wilderness spread across eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Tumbling within those boundaries were over seven hundred miles of fishable trout streams, and not the stocked, there-today-gone-tomorrow streams to which I’d become accustomed. These were wild trout – the big time.

In fact, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with its native brook trout and a large population of rainbows and browns that have been taking care of themselves since Nixon was in office, could be described as somewhat of a wild trout sanctuary in the put-and-take minded South. I also found that there were quiet mountain towns like Townsend where I could avoid the chaos of Gatlinburg. It wasn’t long before the Smokies guide book was overflowing with scribbled Post-its. The car was frequently overflowing with fishing and camping gear, heading south.

The Smoky Mountain trout have a reputation for being tough to catch, and on the first several trips there, this Kentucky boy, more accustomed to working the long, slow runs of area tailwaters and bass streams, did nothing to refute that myth. It wasn’t that I was catching few fish or small fish. I was catching no fish. I really wasn’t even getting strikes. Even as I progressed and improved significantly as an angler, and was regarded by many as a very good fly fisherman, three-day trips to the Smokies would yield little more than four or five fish.

Yet there was something magical and mysterious about the place. It just kept seducing me back. When I’d daydream about fishing, which was often, my mind wasn’t picturing the big browns of the Cumberland River. I saw the mist enveloped forests and heard the roar of cascading water in the Smoky Mountains.

Certainly that goes against any instinct that an avid fly fisherman should have. Most want big fish and a lot of them. For many, the lure of large trout, ample casting room, and relatively easy access offered by the large tailwaters is too much to resist. But I ceased to be motivated by such things long ago and yearned for quiet and solitude. Even now, when catching a dozen trout constitutes a fairly slow day for me in the Smokies, I don’t find that I enjoy these mountains and streams any more or any less than when I’d have given anything for just a dozen strikes over a long weekend. Perhaps it’s the ambiguity of this place that is the real appeal.

Or maybe it’s the solitude. Even on the busiest holiday weekend in the Smoky Mountains, when traffic on park roads is cluttered to a stand-still and tourists seem to multiply right before your eyes, if you walk a few miles up a trail, you can always find countless miles of trout water without a soul in sight. The backcountry is my sanctuary. Far removed from any signs of civilization, it possesses a wildness that I need, that I crave. There’s something poetic about cell phones losing signal as soon as you cross the park boundary. Whether we realize it or not, we should all probably spend more time in places like that. But wildness and remoteness isn’t exclusive to the Smoky Mountains. What about Montana or Alaska?

That’s the toughest one to explain. In fact, when deciding where to relocate those many years ago, I had it narrowed down to Missoula, Montana and Townsend, Tennessee. At the time, I justified the decision with carefully considered factors like a longer fishing season in Tennessee. But that wasn’t the reason. Though I didn’t understand it then, the Smoky Mountains had already become a part of me.  I merely made a decision to go home. Just like I knew within two weeks of meeting Christi that I wanted to marry her. Some things have a way of fitting or just making sense. You don’t always have to know why.

So I answer the question as I always do, “Here. Here is my favorite place to fish.”

The typical request for clarification follows, “So, you think the Smokies has the BEST fishing? Have you been out west!?”

There isn’t a scoreboard in fly fishing, at least not an official one. So, while some places claim to have it, I’m not sure how we determine the best fishing destination. Is it the place with the most fish? Is it the place with the biggest fish? Can they be stocked and fed or do they need to be wild? Is scenery a factor? What about hatches? Or what if it’s crowded? Suppose they don’t eat dry flies? What if there are a lot of huge fish and great hatches but they’re really hard to catch? How about if the fish are too easy to catch?

One of the beautiful things about fly fishing is that it satisfies different needs for different people. What draws one person to a particular destination or aspect of the sport may not appeal at all to another. Just bring up the subject of carp fishing in a room of fly fishers. You’ll quickly see what I mean.

And even if we are able to determine what the best is, why should it even matter? Months after we had to put my fifteen year old German Shepherd down, we were finally ready for another dog. There were only three things on our list that we didn’t want. Neither of us wanted a male. We didn’t want a large dog, maybe more of a mid-size. And we didn’t want a Lab. That evening, Shadow came home with us. He was a peculiar, stubborn, mischievous, 90-pound, male black Lab who, seemingly used Jedi mind tricks and won us over. Shadow wasn’t even close to being the best dog at Young-Williams Animal Center. But he was our favorite.

Rather than seeking “the best,” with fly fishing or anything in life, figure out what brings you happiness and contentment. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, that thing or that place finds you.

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Cecil’s Salmon

The Glory and Agony of Hooking Big Fish

I didn’t know how to break it to him or more importantly, if I even should. He was about to find out anyway, and a few seconds of warning wouldn’t do anything to lessen the unbearable disappointment. From Cecil’s perspective in the front of the canoe, everything was perfect in the world. Like a child on Christmas, his eyes were widened to the brink of explosion as he nearly had the last bit of wrapping paper off what was sure to be the gift he’d begged Santa to bring. The sides of his mouth remained cautiously at half-mast but were poised to leap off his face in the anticipated coming moments of pure delight.

He’d been doing everything right, giving the fish line to run on those explosive early sprints and applying side pressure as it made powerful digs in close. Now with his left fingers placed a few feet up the rod, gently pressing the bottom for leverage, the battle was nearly over. The fish was losing steam and beginning to glide upward near the surface. I was in the back of the canoe keeping the craft steady when I got my first good look at this colossal brown, probably twenty-eight inches long and pushing ten pounds. Thinking Cecil had weathered the storm, I had a hand on the net and the camera out of the bag when the mighty fish approached in what I expected to be a last second settlement offer before unconditional surrender was demanded.

What I witnessed instead was a final foreshadowing taunt. I’m certain I saw a middle fin extended when a smug grin revealed a #6 Bitch Creek nymph no longer firmly embedded in the upper lip of this behemoth. Rather, the fly was carelessly dangling, precariously teetering and struggling for balance, like a top in those last few rotations before collapse.

“The fly’s loose!” I exclaimed as I began to raise the net. “Bring him up now!” The decision had been made. I had to tell him if we were going to have a prayer of landing this fish.

Cecil responded immediately and applied hard steady pressure, raising the fish to the surface. But almost as soon as I had opened my mouth, the fish opened his, and the rubber legs on the detached fly danced as it began its descent to the river bottom. And the brown trout gave me a little wink as his massive shape faded into water.

This wasn’t the first time Cecil had faced disappointment.  On a different day at the Cumberland but only a couple of miles downriver, Cecil and I were fishing with Chad, another regular fishing buddy of mine. We were fishing at an enormous gravel bar with a long, broad, powerful, riffled channel running beside it and a vast flat above. We’d anchored the boat above the bar and were spread out wading, Chad at the bottom of the run, Cecil at the top, and me fishing midges to risers in the flat.

Despite being a twenty-five degree January day, the fishing had been pretty productive with all of us hooking a few fish in the twelve-inch range. I was in a trance on the flat, trying to keep my eyes focused on the #22 midge pattern, when I experienced déjà vu. “Hoh-lee Shit!” When I heard what is apparently Cecil’s default big fish expletive, I turned to see him once again with rod and arms extended upward, deep bend in the graphite, and reel smoking.

Being a smart ass, I shouted, “You hung up?”

Not amused and surprisingly composed, Cecil replied, “You might want to get down here. I think it’s a good one.”

It didn’t take me long to get there and when I arrived, I found Cecil in yet another epic showdown. The fish, much like his fabled Michigan salmon, had stopped in a shallow beside the riffle about fifty feet from Cecil. He wouldn’t come and he wouldn’t go. He just hunkered down, daring Cecil to make a move. “What’s he doing?” I asked rhetorically.

“He’s not doing anything and I can’t seem to move him.”

“What happens if you go to him?”

“I’m afraid he’ll head back into fast water and break me. I’m fishing 6x. Can you net him?”

“With legitimate concern, I stated matter of factly, “I don’t think he’s ready and I’m not George!”

Chuckling at my reference to a similar pickle encountered in Michigan, he replied, “I don’t know what else to do. Where’s George when you need him?”

Trying to re-focus on the present, I advised, “I’d go to him. Get him on a shorter line where you can control him. If he runs, that’ll give you a chance to tire him out.”

“If he runs, he’ll break me. Can you try to net him?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Let’s try it. Worst that could happen is he runs which is what you want me to let him do anyway.”

“Except that you won’t have him on the shorter line,” I reasoned. “You sure you’re sure?”

“Yeah. Let’s see what happens.”

About that time, Chad arrived on the scene and asked what was going on. When I explained that Cecil was tied to an uncooperative pig of a trout and that I was about to try to net him, Chad looked at the fish and asked, “You sure he’s ready?” I responded with a shrug of the shoulders and an uncertain smile that suggested that I was just following orders. When it comes right down to it, the man holding the rod, the man who made this scenario possible in the first place, has to have final say.

So I tried to make my way slowly to the fish. Managing to maintain a stealthy approach, I was nearly within netting range. This just might work! Lord knows Cecil deserves it.

Now within six feet, I had a clear view of the fish and he was every bit as big as the heartbreaker Cecil lost at the canoe. Moving with the caution and deliberate motions of a Great Blue Heron, I slowly began lowering the net as I took another step closer. The fish then began to wiggle in the current, telling me he was about to make his move. I knew it was now or never, and just as I began to make a desperate lunge with the net, I could clearly see the trout’s face.

He gave me the exact same look that Michael Jordan gives a defender before blowing by him to the basket. And that’s exactly what he did. Easily side-stepping the net lunge, he proceeded with shocking speed, a crossover dribble, a spin move, and dunked right over Cecil. Line limp. Cecil dejected. Crowd silent. Bulls win.

Though disappointed, Cecil took it all with good humor and even posed with Chad for a grip-and-grin photo with arms outstretched, holding an invisible fish. The curse would continue for years to come as he would have epic battles with epic fish on every large river and tiny stream that you can imagine. It’s hard to feel too sorry for him, though. While often coming up short, Cecil has hooked and played more giant fish than many anglers could ever hope to even see. As Tennyson so eloquently put it, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Cecil is cursed. At least he was. Like the Chicago Cubs in baseball, Cecil spent many years on the water where he just couldn’t seem to catch a break. Oh, he caught plenty of fish, and some pretty nice ones at that. He’s a very good fisherman, after all. But being a cursedfisherman does not make you a badfisherman. It was those fish-of-a-lifetime catches that haunted Cecil. If there was a big fish in a run, and I mean a reallybig fish, Cecil would find it, hook it, play it, and then manage to lose it in the most heartbreaking way possible. Well, except for that salmon on the Pere Marquette in Michigan. But he had some help on that one.

At that time, my lifelong friend Mike was working for Anheuser-Busch and living in Michigan. Mike really wasn’t a fly fisherman but he was anxious to try, so Cecil and I met him in Michigan for a few days of fishing and camping. Trout would be fine, but we were really hoping to catch the fall run of salmon from Lake Michigan. On our way in, we stopped at Johnson’s Lodge to get the skinny from my buddy Sean, who informed us that we had more or less missed the run on the Pere Marquette but that the salmon were running well on the Manistee. And we didn’t question this at all. Religious salmon and steelhead fisherman know. They stay on top of and in pursuit of these runs like surfers follow big waves.

Road weary and eager to fish, we opted to set up camp on the Pere Marquette. We’d do a little trout fishing, and then head to the Manistee in the next day or two. It didn’t take us long to set up camp and we still had a few hours of daylight left, so we headed down to the river in hopes of catching an evening hatch. Expecting to cast dry flies to trout, I had my Winston four-weight, Cecil took a soft, five-weight Sage Light Line series, and Mike took whatever-the-hell we had left over. The first pool we came to was right above a small island where the river split around in two narrow channels. Cecil decided to fish there. I took Mike to a long run upstream where I could help him with his casting.

Mike was getting the hang of things pretty well, and I was about to leave him alone and head upriver when we heard that all too familiar expletive fly from the pool below. “Hoh-Lee Shit!” When we looked downriver, we saw Cecil with his rod bent over double and line screaming off his reel. With no attempt to disguise the urgency of the situation, he shouted over the zinging reel, “Rob, get your ass down here!” Mike and I reeled in as quickly as we could and plowed our way down the brushy bank.

By the time we got there, his reel had gone silent and the pool was still, but his rod was still bent deep into the butt. “You hung up?” I inquired legitimately this time.

Staring intently at where his line met the water and seemingly annoyed at my question, he replied sharply, “Hell no, I’m not hung up. I think I’ve got a salmon!” I followed his line about forty feet to the water and noticed the silver reflection at the other end – not budging an inch.

“I’ll be damned, I think you’re right,” I said with excitement. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s not doing anything. He quit running and I don’t have enough rod to move him.”

Trying to help, Mike advised, “Why don’t you go to him?”

“I tried that but every time I take a step toward him, he tries to run. I’m afraid he’s going to run me into that fast water beside the island, and there’s no way I could keep him on. Rob, do you think you can go behind him and net him?”

Removing my narrow, terribly undersized, eighteen inch Brodin net from its magnetic connection on the back of my vest, I looked over at the monster of a fish, back at my net, back at the fish, then at Cecil. “I’ll try.” As I tried to make my way around the back of the pool for a sneak attack on the fish, we noticed two guys coming from the back of the island – guys that had been in the woods for a while. They looked like they might liveon the island. Stopping right next to where Cecil’s fish was firmly anchored, they looked down at the fish and up at Cecil.

“Purty nice fish ya got there,” one stated in a twang that hardly suggested Michigan origin.

“Thanks,” Cecil replied politely but obviously annoyed at the distraction.

Again looking down at the fish and back at Cecil, the potentially manifesto-writing-backwoodsman flatly stated, “You ain’t got enough rod.”

“No shit,” Cecil replied with a smile. “I was fishing for trout. My buddy’s comin’ around to help me with the net.”

Now shifting his attention to me and my pitifully inadequate net, he obviously came to the same conclusion I did earlier. I just didn’t want to disappoint Cecil. “That net? Ain’t no way. You want George here to hep you land eem?”

Seeing nothing in their hands or on the bank, I inquired, “Do you all have a bigger net?”

“Nah. George don’t needa net. He does this all the time. He loves it.”

Now having flashbacks to Larry, Darryl, and Darryl on the Bob Newhart Show, I wondered if George was able to talk. But I needed to focus. We were in a crisis here.

Knowing this wasn’t my call to make, I looked to the man with the fish for guidance. “Cecil?”

“Well somebody do somethin’. I can’t move the son-of-a-bitch.”

Taking charge, I looked over at the good ol’ boys on the bank and gave the order. “Go get ‘em George!” None of us had any idea what would come of this. I guess in the back of my mind I was expecting George to be the fish whisperer. He would ease his way toward the fish, gently coo and stroke it, and then delicately lift it from the river with no protest at all from the salmon.

Instead, like Hulk Hogan from the top rope, George dove from the island on top of Cecil’s fish. Mike and I were in tears. Cecil was in shock. Not really knowing protocol for this situation, Cecil pointed his rod tip toward the water, figuring George might want some slack. Good thing too because George was really into it with the fish. The two were rolling violently in the water like Tarzan wrestling a crocodile. It didn’t last long though. In a matter of seconds, George had the fish out of the water. In one continuous motion, he body-slammed him on the island. Though, if I’m being completely honest, I think it technically may have been an Atomic Drop.

George emerged wiping the fight off his hands and displaying a proud, every-other-tooth grin. I suspected he had done this before. Proud of his friend in a Dr. Frankenstein and his monster kind of way, George’s interpreter boasted, “I told you boys George’d get em.”

“He sure as hell did,” I chimed in.

Realizing the salmon would soon die anyway, from natural causes as much as George’s Atomic Drop; Cecil made the offer to the backwoods dynamic duo, asking, “You want him?”

“You sure?” replied the interpreter.

“Yeah,” Cecil said lying. “We’ve already got a mess of trout back at camp.”

“Sure, we’ll take it. ‘Preciate it. The boys down at the VFW will love it.”

“No problem,” Cecil assured him. “Can I just get my picture taken with him real quick?”

So, deep in the archives, you can find it – a grainy photo from a disposable camera, yellowed out from age. Standing on a small island in the Pere Marquette River, Cecil is holding his delicate five-weight rod, with the smile of someone floating high above ground. And George is displaying his scatter-toothed smile through a beard that hadn’t been trimmed (or cleaned) in probably fifteen years. Between them they are holding a mighty twenty pound salmon, covered in grass, mud, and scratches. And if you look at the photo closely enough, you can kind of tell where the fish has a black eye.

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Flies: Blue Wing Olive

Blue Wing Olive Mayfly Adult
Blue Wing Olive mayfly

Winter seasons are not typically known to produce large hatches of aquatic insects, particularly in our part of the country. However, if you’re going to run into a hatch worthy of bringing fish to the surface during the cold winter months, it’s likely to be a hatch of Blue Wing Olive mayflies. Blue Wing Olives, or BWO’s as they’re commonly called, are one of the most erratic hatches that I know of. While most aquatic insects hatch at fairly predictable times of the year, BWO’s are likely to come off anytime of the year, typically on the crappiest day imaginable.

Parachute Blue Wing Olive Fly Pattern
Parachute Blue Wing Olive

I can remember guiding someone in the park several years ago in early May, a time when we’re usually seeing good sulphur hatches (and about anything else yellow). We had an unusual and harsh cold front come in where highs were hitting 50-degrees at best. It was cold, windy, and raining and the fish had more or less shut down. We’d had a tough morning to say the least and while shivering through lunch, we were considering calling it in.

I suggested hitting one more nearby pool and to our surprise, it had fish rising in it… a lot of them. Without giving it much thought, I tied a sulfur on his line since that’s what had been hatching… Every. Single. Day. But when he began fishing to them, the sulfur imitation repeatedly drifted through rising trout, untouched. So I switched him to a different, smaller sulphur pattern. Same result. Then, I switched him to a sulphur emerger. Nothing.

Blue Wing Olive Comparadun Fly Pattern
Blue Wing Olive Comparadun

I was making a mistake that a lot of fishermen make. My decisions were based on what the fish had been or should be doing rather than  what they were doing. Eventually, I waded out to the channel in the very back of the pool where I wouldn’t disturb the fish and focused closely on the surface of the water. What I found was not the size #16 sulfurs that had been hatching for the last week. Instead, I saw dozens and dozens of size #20 BWO’s. Fly selection is 45% experience, 45% science, and 10% dumb luck, and I had been relying 100% on experience! We made the appropriate fly change and were into fish for a solid four hours before the hatch ended and the fish went cold again.

Olive Bead Head Pheasant Tail Fly Pattern
Beadhead Olive Pheasant Tail Nymph

There are a lot of morals to this story but the one most relevant to the topic of this article is that BWO’s can hatch anytime. And they usually like to hatch on the foulest of days. With that said, don’t rush out to the Smokies in February because Rob Fightmaster said there would be a great BWO hatch. But if you’re on the water in less that ideal conditions and fish are rising, look for BWO’s. If you don’t see anything but just want to try something on the top, try a #18 or #20 BWO. I ALWAYS have at least a few BWO’s in my fly box in these sizes. I carry different versions but prefer something with a dark olive body and medium dun hackle in a parachute or comparadun style pattern.

Again, a hatch can occur at most anytime but you’re most likely to encounter them between late fall and early spring, at least in this part of the country. And you’re just as likely to see them hatching on a tailwater as you are in the mountains.

Of course, for every fishing eating a BWO on the surface, there are probably five eating a BWO nymph. The nymphs are also usually dark olive in color and can typically be imitated with an olive Pheasant Tail or olive Pheasant Tail nymph. Both are good choices during a hatch or just blind “nymphing” in the winter months.

Learn more about Smoky Mountain hatches and flies in my hatch guide.

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Flies: Blue Quills

Adult Blue Quill Mayfly
Blue Quill mayfly

Blue Quills represent one of the first good mayfly hatches of the year in the Smokies. By “good,” I mean they can come off in big enough numbers and with enough consistency for trout to really take notice. Water temperature determines when they hatch. As an early season bug, there can be as much as a three week variation from year to year.

Blue Quill Dry Fly
Blue Quill Dry Fly

They tend to start hatching in the Smokies in late March and continue through the third or fourth week of April. With a warmer than average February, they can get started a little earlier or they may get going a little later in a cold spring.

They hatch sporadically through the day with the heaviest activity occurring between noon and 4:00pm. Water is often higher and faster this time of year.  Pay close attention to soft current edges, eddies, and slow pockets for trout feeding on them. Water temperatures also tend to be chillier this time of year, which can retard emergence. An unweighted nymph fished in the surface film or just below can be very effective, particularly on cooler, damp, or overcast days.

Bead Head Pheasant Tail Nymph
Bead Head Pheasant Tail Nymph

The nymph is a reddish brown color and typically a size #16 or #18. The bugs tend to get smaller as the hatch progresses. So while we’ve mostly been seeing #16’s, expect #18’s to be more common in the coming weeks. There are specific Blue Quill nymph patterns but a standard Pheasant Tail Nymph works as well as anything.

The adults also have a reddish brown body with a light to medium dun wing and are also found in sizes #16 and #18. Again, very specific Blue Quill dry fly patterns are available but a Parachute Adams serves as a worthy imitation.

Learn more about Smoky Mountain hatches and flies in my hatch guide.