2020 OFF TO A BANG……or GREAT START

Thurs Jan 30,2020 ……We have had some great fishing already this year. The nymph bite has been on fire the past several weeks. I have done a good many trips since Jan 1 and since mid month we’ve enjoyed a mixed bag of trips…. On 1-17 I guided Robert Johnson, Cherryville, NC, on TN tailwater trip, Robert brought his friend Carl along and we met up mid morning, Robert had fished with me before but it was Carl’s first trip, and first time fly fishing. We fished nymph rigs, swung wet fly rigs, fished dries, even tossed some streamers…and caught fish on everything. Fishing is pretty good…well, excellent to put it straight. Carl put almost 30 fish in the net, quite exceptional I’d say for never having fly fished. Together the guys put between 60 and 70 fish in the net over our day long float. It was great. Cool weather but not terribly cold, light wind, part sun to clouds to end the day, a perfect winter day and the boat traffic was light to boot. Made for an exceptional day on the water. It was great, a fantastic day for any time of year. Normal stuff for January on a tailwater though. Good fishing will continue, no reason to wait til spring when things will get pounded and we’ll be all booked up.

On 1-18 I guided Ted Linczak, Summerville, SC, a TN float trip, and I met Ted early as the threat was for Freezing rain, sleet, and snow to start the day….weather warnings were posted online and on all the weather channels and apps…and as usual they were wrong. Apps on your phone are almost never right. But fortunately it kept a lot of folks away… we enjoyed the river to ourselves only seeing a couple of other boats all day long. We nymph fished and threw streamers as well and had a banner day probably putting 50 or more in the net…including some quality larger fish on the meat and a couple really nice dredging bottom with the nymph rigs. It was cool and midday started to rain and get windy which made for raw, nasty conditions all the way to take out. Imagine 5 miles through breezy and rainy conditions with chilly temps….it will test your desire to be out there. But as in the SIMMS ads, we mocked the weatherman, forgot the forecast, and made a great day of it. The nymph bite lately has been off the scale….. red hot.

I have spent several days working on website edits, continuing to learn how to use a new Mac in all the stuff I have been doing for years, as well as tying flies. January is also pre-spring maintenance time. Its a time where everything gets a look over…..equipment, boats, trailers, fly lines, you name it. If it needs replacing or servicing now is the time. With a handful of nasty, chilly , cold , bad weather days in the High country some of this will get done. And did I mention how enjoyable servicing /repacking trailer bearings is? Wonderful good time.

Also have been spending a bit of time finishing up a pile of fly orders …… making up for some off the water days a couple of days with the temps in the teens….. I fish in this, guide in this, have for decades…. and believe it or not you can still catch fish in it. We have done it many times over in some pretty sketchy conditions. We are still fishing if a customer calls. I have been working also on several things as well, designing some stickers, hats, t -shirts, etc., excited as a lot of it uses some of my own art and photography. Look for some of that real soon…..dependent upon how quickly Jeff acclimates to a new computer system and some new design software.

I get a lot of questions about the variable appearance of Brown trout in area streams. Folks remark that there are wildly differing colorations. There’s actually a reason for this. Trout in our area have two separate blood lines. Most people that think of browns they think of German Browns right away. Many of these and a good many of the ones on our tailwater are German browns….what is known as "Bachforelle" strain. Around here the river fish are pretty much of this variety. They migrate up and down a river system but are more river fish (salmo trutta fario…."river dwelling").

There was another type of brown that made its way to America as well. It is called the Lock Leven brown. Lock Leven means "Lock Eleven" and is a brown of Scottish heritage. Both trout species were brought over in the holds of ships by early settlers. Some Scottish strains are also referred to as seeforellen…..these are what we have in local tailwaters….most notably the South Holston where you have a strain of ‘lake run’ fish that migrate in the spring out of the lake and into the river. These fish are highly migratory (salmo trutta lacustris…"lake dwelling"). We often catch these sight nymphing in summer on low water and streamer fishing in spring, summer, and early fall on high water. Fish have intermingled somewhat wherever the two live side by side. The way to tell the 2 breeds apart before they became intermingled was the different spot patterns. German browns typically have reds spots intermingled with the other spots. Loch Leven browns have no red spot. It has also been suggested that the real way to tell them apart definitely is to look to see if they are wearing leder hosen or kilts. lol

This week I have spent a fair amount of time on small water. Have also had some great fishing. The rains we’ve had have been great "maintenance" rains….just enough to keep our streams full and fishing well. On 1/29 I guided longtime client Curtis Reeves. We fished a wild stream in Central VA. We started with a short hike in. I knew weather wise we’d be in for a great day and we were. Cloudy, to mostly cloudy, back to cloudy, cool but not cold, and great water conditions. Curtis booked the day with me with the goal of hitting wild water in a remote area and working on sharpening up for an upcoming Competition he is participating in with some of the best tightline nymphing anglers in our region.

Water temp where we were was low to mid 40s…we started with dual nymph rigs. Curtis was using his setup w 10’2Wt and long leader and two tungsten bead heads. We then we rigged up and fish a short section of deep swift, pocket water. That section produced four nice rainbows. Three of the rainbows were 16 to 19 inch fish, one was close to 20. From there we moved upstream and targeted a couple of other deep slots And caught several more rainbows probably eight or 10. Cloudy skies in near perfect water conditions were producing a really good Nymphing bite.. Continued upstream to another spot and a spot that has always yielded a lot of fish. There were some rising to blue wings but the tightline rig was working so well we stuck with it. That spot yielded over 15 fish …several nice wild rainbows and a stunner of a wild brown…. a wild 14 or 15 inch brown…..a real prize for any small stream with wild fish.

We continued to work holes, pockets , seams and caught close to 40 fish when we decided around 130pm to stop for a quick streamside lunch. We hiked back to the car and had lunch. Then hiked upstream to another secluded area and started back fishing. We had good fishing for another hour and a half or so……including two nice fish (one of them an 18 inch rainbow) on dry flies. By 4/430pm the sun started to slip below the ridges and tree line and fishing shortly tailed off after that. That is normal stuff for a wild small stream. Things shut off and we left and hiked back to my truck as we had had ourselves one heck of a day. 45-50 fish roughly…..that’s a great day anywhere, anytime….let alone late January. And on wild water at that. Fishing has been great! And it should continue….

I am looking forward to a great week’s end and end of January. I have two trips, on on Friday 1/31, a wade trip with Cory Kirkland on some NC water. on 2/1 I have a tailwater float trip with client Ted Linczak. Expecting some good fishing on both…..

Fishing is good right now and I have some open dates coming up in February. Let’s go bend some rods…..

Tight Lines….
Jeff

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