Marmot Alpinist 2 Person Tent

This may be a long shot, but I have a friend looking to sell a Marmot Alpinist 4 season 2 person tent.  The tent is brand new, never even been out of the bag.  He is looking to get $450 for it.  If you are interested please contact me by email for more information at TroutZoneAnglers@gmail.com.  Good price on a nice tent!  

What Happened?

On yesterday's float, we were anchored up in a really good spot and the guys were working hard to nab a few fish.  While they were fishing, something strange was spotted floating down the river behind the boat.  The slow current eventually brought it right up to the boat.  How in the world did this large vulture end up dead in the river?  Any ideas? Stories? Original works of fiction involving a dead vulture on a fly fishing trip?

Dangerous Critters

Fishing is dangerous.  Many people think of fishing as something where you sit in a lawn chair and watch a bobber with a worm under it.  While that is a perfectly good way to fish, people don't realize that many of the more adventuresome types are scrambling along rugged shorelines or through remote canyons in an effort to reach less-pressured water.  There is good reason for that of course.  Most people are lazy and a bit of effort can put you on water where the fish rarely if ever see a fisherman.

On yesterday's smallmouth trip, we started to see significantly more action as we got farther and farther from the road.  Several times over the course of the trip, I almost commented to the guy I was guiding about how I have never seen any poisonous snakes in that particular area even though they are rumored to be there in good numbers.  Something kept nagging at the back of my mind though, and I kept my mouth shut.  It turns out that just thinking about it is enough to jinx a person.

While scrambling over rocks and through brush stream side, I suddenly froze like a bird dog coming to a point.  In a small crevice right under the rock we had come over on the way down was a nice big copperhead just waiting for an unsuspecting fisherman meal.  I've climbed over those rocks many times, often while only wearing sandals.  After I found my way back down to earth from the upper atmosphere where I had involuntarily jumped to, I realized the snake was still a good 6-8 feet away and got out my camera while keeping one eye checking the area for its mate.

In the end, it was actually interesting to see a copperhead.  It was the first I've run into since returning home from Colorado.  If I see a few more I might just have to move back, but in the meantime the fishing is good enough to keep me coming back to those smallie streams.  I guess I learned why no one fishes them too...

New Fly Fishers

It has been my pleasure to help 5 different people catch their first fish on the fly rod this past week.  Some were friends, some were clients, but all did a great job of learning and applying what I taught them to catch their first fish on the fly rod.

The first were my friends Elizabeth and Antoinette.  I gave about a 30 second lecture on fly casting and they said, "Like this?" and started casting perfectly.  Complete naturals.  The bluegill were biting well that evening which made it even better...

The next was on a Smoky Mountain guide trip last Thursday.  I had the pleasure of taking two young men for their first fly fishing trip in the Smokies and they did great!

Perhaps the best was when I took my buddy Seth to the same spot where we were catching the bluegills shown above.  He also received the 30 second lecture on casting and started throwing right where I told him.  Before long a big bluegill had taken the fly.  We admired it, and then I told him to throw back in again.  Something hit with a huge swirl and started fighting really hard.  When he pulled it up to where we could see it, we realized it wasn't a bluegill.  What a pleasant surprise when you're bluegill fishing!

New Boat!!!

Yes, you read that correctly.  I have a new boat! Well, new to me at least.  While not a brand new boat, this beauty is in extremely good shape and will bring many pleasant days on the water for both myself and any lucky anglers who choose to fish with me.  If you are interested in a day of drift boat fishing, please head over to Trout Zone Anglers to explore your options.

Breaking News!!!

More as things continue to develop, but big things are looming on the immediate horizon.  I'll have a lot more on this either tomorrow or Friday, but I'll give a pretty good clue: I have an appointment first thing in the morning to get a hitch installed on my car, the Moose Magnet. Just to clarify, I am not getting a trailer to haul all those moose around in.

Where Are You Fishing?

Fishing around middle and east Tennessee continues to be phenomenal.  The Smokies are really fishing well and the tailwaters are doing great also.  The Caney is fishing about as consistently as you can ever see.  However, I'm not fishing this weekend.  Yes, you read that correctly.  While everyone else is out enjoying the long weekend, I'm not getting out to fish.

That is because I hate crowds.  Fortunately, all of the reports I'm getting from people still indicate great fishing so I guess no one is suffering out there.

So, my question is "where are you fishing this weekend?" Since I'm not fishing I need some good fishing stories.  Help me out!

Carp Afterthought

Have you ever gone fishing and had a fantastic day of catching your intended species only to come across a fish that is quite different and decide to try for it as well?  That is one of the amazing things about tailwaters, the variety that is.  You can fish hard for trout all day and then find that one 4 pound bass or 15 pound carp and fish for that as well.  Maybe you even get a shot at a striper later on as well.  When I'm striper fishing, I sometimes have lucked into trout and even some walleye.  In other words, on a tailwater you just never know what you will find.

Yesterday I headed down yet again to the Caney Fork yet again to get some trout fishing in and check several different spots on the river.  Scouting the water is about as important as actually fishing and this trip was intended to include both.  After all, when heading out on a guide trip, it is essential to be in touch with what is happening on the river.  My basic research was just locating fish and the best places to land both numbers of fish and quality fish.

The morning's highlight occurred when I saw a big brown charge into a pool full of small stockers and eat one or two while I was fishing for them.  Yes, my heart rate is still a bit elevated, but that is the beautiful thing about fishing trips; you just never know what is going to happen.  After calming down enough to actually fish, I worked a favorite section pretty hard and found a lot of chunky rainbows.  These fish are super healthy right now and providing great nonstop action if you have the right flies, the right depth, and a knowledge of where to use them at.

A little after noon, my buddy Tyler and I headed back to the car for some lunch as well as some air conditioning on the ride down to our next spot.  When we got to the next spot, things continued about the same as before.  In other words, we were both catching a lot of fish.  The insects were varied on this day and the occasional caddis and cranefly kept the fish looking up.  Our dry flies were getting enough action that we never switched over to an indicator nymph rig, preferring the dry/dropper method instead to cover our bases.

Eventually the heat and sun took its toll, and I was ready to call it a day.  Heading back to the car, I stopped at a spot where there are usually some carp and buffalo hanging out.  While this was definitely a trout trip, I had no problem at least looking at other fish.  Of course, you can guess where this eventually took me.  Upon seeing all those carp, I naturally had to at least cast a couple of times.

I've fished this spot and a couple of others nearby many times over the years.  In fact, given the opportunity, I would rather catch at least one or two carp on each trout trip.  Not that I'm ready to turn my back completely on trout.  Its just that carp are some of the toughest fish you will ever fish for.  Being a carp fisherman automatically makes you better at catching other species as well, trust me.  The crazy thing about this particular spot is that while I've put in my time to attempting to catch these fish, I've never really had any success.  Oh, I've caught carp other places on at least a couple of different rivers, but these particular fish had always outsmarted me.

So here I was casting to fish that I could see just fine but really didn't expect to catch when lo and behold one of the fish ate!  Seriously, it was all so easy that I pondered momentarily why I hadn't caught one before.  Then the fish realized it was hooked.  If you've ever hooked a carp, even a small one, on 5x, you know how I felt as this fish started running directly away from me for a underwater log.  I really had no chance, or at least that's how it felt.  By some miracle, the fish always came out on the right side of those logs.  All the pressure I thought the tippet could handle was brought to bear. Once the fish ran under another log and only came back out when I kept muscled it back.  I know, it's hard to believe all of this happened on 5x, but in the end, the best moment of the day came when my buddy slipped the net under the finally tired fish.  A couple of pictures later and the fish tore off back to its pool to rest up for our next meeting.

If I lived close by, I would chase these fish all the time.  Seriously.  They are that much fun.  Every one I've caught has been memorable.  Oh, sure, the trout fishing was awesome too, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but as an afterthought, those carp sure provide a lot of fun!

If I can help you with a guide trip to the Smokies or the Caney Fork tailwater, please contact me.  I'm not booking trips through July.  

Smokies Adventure

Adventure is a huge part of fly fishing for me.  During a conversation on our camping trip, I was telling my buddy Joe how I enjoy exploring almost as much as the actual fishing.  Thankfully I was able to enjoy both on this trip.

On Sunday, I arrived a bit later than Joe.  Coming from Central time into Eastern time always makes it hard to get up and on the river as early as my friends.  Getting there at first light means being up to leave around 3 or 3:30 a.m.  No thanks...  Anyway, so eventually I did make it over there and when if found Joe he was already hard at work fishing a likely run.  He reported good early morning action on the usual nymphs and we decided to continue fishing up through a nice mix of pools and pocket water.

Not too far upstream, I came across Mountain Laurel and stopped to play with the camera a bit.

Just above the blooms, Joe worked a really nice run.  When he finished and headed down to the truck for some lunch, I noticed a few rises and moved up into the run.  Tying on dry flies, I worked the fish hard but in the end was humbled.  If I had known how spooky those fish would be I probably would have brought a 3 weight and also used a longer leader.  Dry fly fishing is excellent on Little River right now, but the long still flats on the roadside stretches may produce some challenging conditions.  It was every bit as tough if not more so than chasing a picky riser on a tailwater.

Anyway, eventually we had lunch, set up camp, and headed back out for an afternoon of catching fish.  We both caught a lot of nice trout on nymphs and eventually made it back to camp to rest up for the next day's action.

We fished on both sides of the mountain and hit up some stretches that were new to both of us.  One of my favorite parts of the trip was exploring a stream known as having the ability to produce the Smoky Mountain Hat Trick.  After a fairly early start, we made it over to the stream on day 2 and started fishing by looking for nice browns in the larger holes.

While Joe worked the pools, I fished the pocket water.  A double nymph rig seemed appropriate early in the day.  Wet wading was a little chilly with the temperature hovering right around 50 degrees in the early morning shade.  Hatches were pretty much nonexistent but the rainbows were feeding well subsurface.  This is where I picked up my better rainbows on this stream.  Strangely, neither of us caught a brown trout in this stretch.  By the time things had warmed and the sun was triggering some hatch activity, we decided to head upstream and look for the slam.

Both of us had fished just a little bit of this section before but we had no idea of the challenges awaiting us.  Huge piles of debris from a semi recent flash flood made stream navigation a challenge to say the least.  The fish population seemed to be on the low side but we both caught trout.  The pools were beautiful flat runs that were mostly shallow to medium depth, perfect dry fly water if you ask me.  Of course on water that pretty we both fished dry flies.  I choose a new Yellow Sally imitation I've started tying and Joe went with the standard for brookies, a Yellow Stimulator.  Betchya can't guess what color of bugs were hatching...

I found the brookie before I found the brown.  Both came out of fairly fast but large pockets.  The nice dry fly runs were not producing for the most part.

After a ton of effort to fish maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of a mile of water, we got tired at the lack of fish and decided to head out and hit up another brook trout stream.  That was a good choice as we caught a lot of trout although the number of rainbows was a concern.

That evening, we had a good fire as it was our last night.  Staying up late, talking about trips from past years, we reminisced about our Yellowstone Trip (here and here also) as well as the epic one day fishing trip in Colorado last year.  Good days fishing the Smokies, large fish caught, and lots of other topics kept us up late but not too late to be up early the next morning.

Joe didn't have long to fish the next morning, so after fishing just a little together, he took off, and I decided to hit up a favorite stretch of Little River.  The water here is a nice mix of pools and pocket water, classic Little River water if you know what I mean.  In the first pool, I caught 4-5 trout and probably could have caught more if I had chosen to.  Best of all, most of them were browns.

I continued fishing until around 2 in the afternoon when hunger started to gain the upper hand over my desire to fish.  On the way out, I found a hat hung on a rock in Little River.  If you happen to have lost one while fishing, it is now over at Little River Outfitters in Townsend.  For this last day, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Tips and hints: The best action was in the faster deep pockets...

Little River Blooms

Today I returned from a quick camping trip with my buddy Joe to Elkmont in the Great Smoky Mountains.  We fished a wide variety of water and caught a lot of nice trout.  I'll get a full report up in the next day or so but just know that the fishing is great right now.

The first Mountain Laurel blooms of the year are making an appearance now, and I found some nice ones along Little River while fishing on Sunday morning.