Thursday, I had the pleasure of showing John and Joe Horning how to fish the Smokies. Wednesday night it rained a lot and it raised the water a solid foot and turned it a tea color. The fishing was a little off and we didn’t see many bugs coming off. The nymph activity was pretty good in the morning, but when the sun came out we couldn’t resist throwing some dries and had several strikes on them. Most of the strikes that we got were pretty subtle, but it only took a few times missing fish to sharpen their reflexes.

As the afternoon crept up on us, the fishing slowed down some, so we hiked in a ways to find higher ground and maybe even some dry fly fishing. It paid off too, because John and Joe both had strikes on yellow sally patterns and were sight casting to fish that were barely breaking the service. We caught a few more fish at the end of the trip and one of them was a brown. It was a good day and I think that these two guys will be fishing more together in the future.

If you are thinking about fishing the park, Yellow Sallies are coming off strong in the evenings but you can catch fish on them all throughout the day. I would probably use a pheasanttail or haresear nymph in the afternoon and dries the rest of the time. Also find water higher up away from highly populated areas.

Yesterday we had an awesome day in the park with Ted and Ted Destifano from Wisconsin. The sulphurs are really coming off in the park right now in sizes 18 to 12, but the killer was still a 16 yellow stimulator. We had some really nice fish blow up on our dries, but missed a lot of them. The rain didn’t help either when it would drowned our flies. When the rain started coming down harder we would throw the dry under over hanging rocks or limbs and the fish loved it. Then we just switched to nymphs and caught even more.

It was a great day and the Destifano boys were a hoot, now they can fish the park like pros. Unfortunately my camera quit on me so we don’t have any pictures, but I am not lying I promise. I wouldn’t do that to my readers. There are so many bugs coming off right now in the National Park in a variety of sizes, so keep in your box some yellow sallies #16, Sulphurs #18 to #12, Tan caddis #16 to #14, and of course the parachute adams. You can drop of a beadhead pheasant tail or beadhead tellico nymph and do pretty good too.

Thanks for reading with us and we hope to get you on the water for some incredible dry fly action. Have an awesome day.

The park was on fire today with bugs everywhere and fish were eating them all day. The fish were only eating the adults too so don’t miss out on some of this fishing. I saw a lot of BWO’s and Quill Gordons coming off and tried to grab a fly to get a shot of it but the fish wouldn’t let me. I did manage to catch one on the water and noticed the Gordons are getting smaller in a size 12 or 14 so be careful how big your bug is.

The average fish today was between 12 and 14 inches which is unusual for the park, but I’m not complaining. I wanted to cover some water today and see how the hatches were in other parts of the river, but I noticed a fish off to the side just barely sticking his nose out for a bug and started watching him. He finally came up to the surface and I saw Smoky Mountain gold, and a lot of it. I would say he was around 20 inches, it was crazy to see a fish that big eating dries. After seeing this I had to throw at him. I actually got him to take the fly 3 times and missed all 3 times. I don’t stay collected when there are big fish like that around. It was an awesome day none the less and the Lord definitely blessed me. The Smallmouth fishing should be getting good as soon as we get some warm weather. We are starting to book up for Smallmouth trips so give us a call if you want to to book a trip. Oh and if  TVA shuts off the water on the Holston we will be fishing the insane caddis hatch. Ah yes its that time again. Check out these Gold bricks from today. Oh and one rainbow brick.

TVA has been running their normal schedule on the Holston here lately, and with the weather being really nice I had to get the boat wet. I didn’t get to spend all day on the river, but I was out there for about 5 hours and I wasn’t disappointed. As soon as I got to the first riffle I stuck a toad and lost it at the boat, but I thanked Jesus for blessing me with it anyways. There weren’t many bugs coming off except for midges, but that seemed to be what the trout were feasting on. There were a lot of fish rising all down the river throughout the day and they didn’t let up. I pumped one fish’s stomach and couldn’t believe how many midges he had, and on top of it he ate mine. If you don’t have a pump, I would suggest getting one it will make your day a heck of a lot easier.

They were real finicky though, and it took several casts to get them to eat the fly, so be patient. The water temp was in the high 40′s almost 50, but like I said, the midges were everywhere so the temperature didn’t matter. I would try to get out and fish if you can and take advantage of this nice weather. Spring is getting closer and the fishing is excellent so come join on the tailwaters or in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a fun time on the water. We have a raft on the way and we are building a trailer for it, so now we can take more folks on the water and use it for more smallmouth trips. We are pretty excited about floating those hard to reach rivers. Thanks for reading today and hope we can share with you some of the same experiences that we have.