I got a call from a guy for a trip up in the Smokies and as I was getting the info for the books he said, “my name is Mark Martin.” I said “like the Nascar driver” and he said “yeah, but I’m not him.” To be honest I never would have known anyway, I don’t watch Nascar. The trip started a little slow, missing quick strikes on beatis nymphs, but as soon as the sun heated up the water the bugs were coming off and the fish were looking up.

Now normally a Blue Winged Olive is known for being a tiny mayfly around the 18 to 22 range. This year though, they have been around the 14 to 16 range which is great for us, because that makes it easy to see the fly in the riffles when matching the hatch.

Mark showing us how it’s done with BWO’s

This fish came up and slowly sipped the fly off the surface, awesome. The fishing was great from then on and Mark caught quite a few more fish throughout the day. This is probably our favorite time of year to be fishing. The browns are spawning, you need a light jacket to fish and just when you think the water is too cold for any dries, you see a BWO hop across the surface and a fish smash it. The thing about fishing in East Tennessee, is that the fishing never ends. It doesn’t get too cold to shut down the fishing, just the fisherman.  So if you can handle it, the fishing is here.