Late Fishing Report

Last Thursday I decided to go up to the Smokies for the day and it turned out to be an excellent decision. The fishing was very good with lots of insect activity and the water temperature was in the low to mid 50's. My best fish of the day came from a pocket that I had spotted good fish in before but hadn't hooked any out of it yet. Thursday turned out to be the day though. I was fishing a double nymph rig with a large stonefly on top and a Tellico dropped off of that. As usual, I was fishing without indicators using the highstick tightline method that is so productive in the Smokies streams. I lobbed my heavy rig up into the pocket that had a nice little eddy and watched as the line drifted around. Suddenly it seemed to hesitate and I quickly set the hook. You never know if it is snagging the bottom or if it is a fish so it was nice to feel something move on the other end. At first, I thought it was a nice rainbow of perhaps 12 inches or so. It didn't feel particularly heavy at first but as it ran downstream, I tried to stop it and met firm resistance. "Maybe it is a nice rainbow" I thought. Of course, I had been hoping for a brown but the glimpse I got lead me to believe it was a rainbow. Once it started bulldogging though, I realized it was probably a brown. I pressured it more than I should have been on the 5X tippet but everything held and soon I had a nice brown to hand for a quick shot.

The rest of the day continued to produce very good fishing with lots of rainbows and one more brown. All but one fish came on the Tellico nymph and the other one hit a softhackle I had tied up the night before. The average size of fish was particularly good also with most of the rainbows in the 9-12 inch range which is good for the Smokies.

Later in the day, I had a "situation" which proved disastrous for my camera so I won't be able to post pictures for at least a week or two as I shop for a new one. I fortunately was able to recover the pictures from Thursdays trip from the memory but otherwise, the camera is dead.