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.

I thought I would take a trip to Anderson County yesterday and check out the sulphur hatch on the Clinch. As soon as I got there I realized that everyone else was thinking the same thing. I actually stepped in the river around 4:00 pm.  When I got to the river I didn’t really see that many bugs coming off, so I tried some nymphs and did ok with them. I noticed 1 fish sipping emergers in a small riffle and realized at that moment that I forgot my box with all my emergers in it. The nymph did the job though and I was soon hooked up with a nice rainbow.

The nymphs worked well all through the afternoon, I was throwing a size #14 pheasant tail and a #14 sulphur nymph. I tried them with and without weight and it didn’t seem to matter to the fish because they are so focused on the bugs that whatever they see, if it matches, they will eat it. An emerger would have been perfect, but I made do with what I had. I noticed a pretty nice fish eating in a spillway and made a few casts at him and was soon rewarded with a nice brown.

When the sun started going down the adults were really coming off and the dry fly action was just right. When it gets darker the fish won’t be as picky with the patterns you throw at them. However, I would still throw something that matches pretty close to the size and color. I was throwing a comparadun sulphur with CDC for the wings and they seemed to like it. I noticed the fish rising pretty much all the way until dark. Here are a few more pictures of the fish we caught . I hope we have been of some help and thanks for joining us, hope to see you out there.

So it was raining and cold today, but the fishing has been so good that I braved it and headed to the park to the East Prong of the Little River. I love fishing on days like today because there aren’t as many fisherman on the water and that ups the chances of catching fish. I started off the day with a bigger stonefly pattern and didn’t have any love on it. I saw a few mayflies coming off but hardly any fish eating them, but i did put on 2 mayfly nymph patterns on and caught one the next cast.

I had a #14 cadillac nymph on top and a #14 bhpt on bottom. All the fish took the bhpt, so I quickly took off the cadillac nymph. I noticed more mayflies coming off and one finally came close enough to get a glimpse and they were all BWO’s. They were coming off pretty steady and the fish were all over them. After seeing the fish go crazy for BWO’s I quickly put one on and started catching fish. They were coming off in all sizes anywhere from #12 to #20 so if you go to the park have some in your box. The water might be higher if you go due to all the rain so check out the levels before you go.

Here are photos of some fish that were caught today. Some of them still had a lot of color on them from the spawn. Thanks for joining us and checking out the fishing report, hope it will be helpful for your trip.