The water is low and warm up in the Smokies and the fish can be picky, but that doesn’t mean you can’t catch them. We just don’t hit them very hard in these conditions and stress them out more than we have to. So that led us to float the Clinch this past saturday with Joe. The water in the Clinch is very clear and the fish were extremely spooky, so after we changed up our routine and flies we started landing fish. Long cast and light tippet will get fish to eat and midges are always a safe bet. Here is a solid fish that Joe landed after lunch.

Black caddis were everywhere on the surface in about a size 20 and fish were coming up to feed. All of our fish were caught on nymphs. When the water came up we switched to bigger patterns and that seemed to work pretty well. All in all we boated quite a few fish throughout the day and if you figure out how they want the fly that day it can be a lot of fun. It was an awesome day and I got to spend it with a really cool guy, congrats Joe on your fish.

Yesterday I took Jesse Overbay a Knoxville local on the Clinch for a little fly fishing. We have been trying to get on the water for a long time but our schedules never matched up. The generation was perfect and the Lord blessed us with a beautiful fall day. Even the air temperature was nice and warm. Jesse has done some fly fishing for bass and bream on the lake but this was his first time fly fishing for trout. Not long after we launched the boat Jesse had already picked up a few nice trout. Here are some pics of Jesse’s first couple of trout.

There were a lot of small black caddis coming off all throughout the day, but the fish seemed to be feeding mostly on nymphs and emergers. We caught most of our fish with size 16 and 18 pheasanttails and size 20 caddis emergers. We caught a few on the adults too, but just here and there. When it was lunch time Jesse grabbed a bite to eat so I took a few casts at a fish sipping midges and was surprised at what was on the other end of the line, a nice brown.

With all the rain we had early in the week it made the water from I75 bridge down kind of muddy and I was afraid that the fish wouldn’t be feeding much. They were in fact and we picked up even more fish through this stretch. On top of that Jesse caught his first brown trout, so it couldn’t have been better. I still remember catching my first brown up in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at Metcalf Bottoms on a stimulator. All in all it was a fantastic day and Jesse caught a lot of fish, so needless to say there is going to be another addict out there with us. Have a great day and thanks for being with us.