Family Vacation, South Holston River, Bristol, TN

Date: Sunday April 1 through Thursday April 5, 2012

Weather: Fantastic! Sunny with a few scattered rain showers, 70 - 80 degrees, NO WIND!

Insect/Activity: Sulphur mayflies were on the verge of hatching, scuds everywhere, midge and baetis were sparse, but effective patterns

Patterns Used: Blacktail PMD/Sulphur, AB Tungsten Pheasant Tail, Gammarus Scud, Olive Midge Pupa, Compara-dun Sulphur, Blacktail Baetis

Flows: Low (not sure what the river runs at with no generators, my guess is 150 CFS), Generators were on each day at 4 AM and 11 AM, each for one hour making for a perfect low water day with a nice break for lunch :-)

Michelle crossing the old iron bridge just upstream from our cabin.

Simply an AMAZING trip. The South Holston river is a tailwater in the northeast corner of Tennessee. Jay got turned on to it a few years back and ever since we have been visiting this place, and intend to make it a regular destination on our fly fishing calendar. It's fishes a lot like the White River and Norfork River in Arkansas, but the dam generation releases are much more predictable since, my understanding, is this dam is more for flood control than power generation.

One of the bigger browns from the week with FLAWLESS coloring!

As a brief overview, the river has an amazing bug and fish population, with natural spawning occurring (all the browns are wild I'm told), but one of the highlights of the river is a slot limit on fish. All fish between 16" and 22" must be returned to the water immediately and you can keep 7 fish under 16" and only 1 fish over 22". My hat is off to the Tennessee regulations department because that is a GREAT management practice! The only flaw, is poachers, and that will always be the case.

I took this shot from on of the best nymphing riffles.
It's looking across the river, back at the cabin's front yard.

As for the family aspect - PERFECT! We stayed at a cabin on the river and since this was our first trip with young Winston, it turned out ideal because we were able to hop down to the river and wet a line any time since it was only 35' away. Even better was the fact that the stretch of water in front of the cabin was excellent water. We had everything from long, slow, deep pools to shallow-wide riffles all within 200 yards of the cabin. Most of our days looked like me slipping out for morning fishing at 6:30 AM, then breakfast and back to the river for a couple of "day sessions" with a break for lunch and some family time playing in the yard near the river.

Winston, enjoying the river view.

Front porch

Winston meeting a new friend (yes, I got his hand wet before he touched it :-)

Chillin' out.

The fishing was nothing short of fantastic. The water was low the whole week, and the weather was unseasonably warm for April, which meant we were fishing in t-shirts most of the week. And, coming from a Colorado boy, there was NO WIND to speak of, which made me very happy!

Michelle, with a big brown. She was a very happy girl!

We were there just as the baetis were slowing down and the sulphur's  were ramping up. So we never hit a real strong sulphur hatch, but you could always find a few willing victims to rise to a compara-dun dry. The real champs of the week were (in this order) the Blacktail PMD/Sulphur and the Gammarus Scud and the AB Tungsten Pheasant Tail, but I would be remiss is I didn't mention that the Olive Midge Pupa and Blacktail Baetis didn't play their part in catching fish!

Another perfect brown.

The South Holston is really the best of both worlds - it's a technical, spring creek, fisherman's dream, but also a fantastic place for the beginner to catch fish. This is mostly due to the large fish population in both numbers and size. You can catch twenty 6" fish in a half day (and may even be surprised by a 13" here and there), or you can go "hunting" for fish that average 15" and run across 19" fish pretty easily. Then there are the mega-tanks that push the 10 lb. mark. They're not as easy to find, but they are definitely in there and are scary big!

A gorgeous rainbow.

Probably one of my favorite features of the week was the spring-creek-like nature of this tailwater. It is awesome to see some of the skinny, shallow riffles that you can find fish in, and good sized fish too! One of my favorite spots was a 60' wide riffle that was no more than 12" at it's deepest. Most of the time I was fishing a micro indicator, micro split shot and a #16 Blacktail PMD/Sulphur set at 8" deep. With a keen eye you could spot areas that were slightly slower in water speed, or where there was a small depression in the gravel and sure enough, there would be 5 or 6 browns concealed. What an excitement to be fishing water that look so unassuming, but held some of my best fish of the trip!

Notice the coloring on the tip of the dorsal on this rainbow.

If you ever get a chance to head that direction, the South Holston is a river not to be missed, and for any serious angler, it's a good place to put on your bucket list of destinations!


Below are some good shots from the trip, check 'em out.


Tight lines,


-Jeff

On the River: East River, Gunnison, Colorado

May 15, 2010

A short jaunt to the East River during one of my favorite seasons to fish it! Sadly, living in Colorado Springs now, that is a statement you won't get to hear much from me. In the Gunnison days, we really could head out to the river for an evening hatch after work. Living a minimum of an hour from trout water makes that a little tougher to do.

I love fishing the East River in the pre-runoff season because you can hit days where the water is just starting to come up (i.e. greenish murky) but is easy to wade, and the fish are stuffing themselves with any and everything being washed down the river by the slightly increased flows.

If you are just beginning your love affair with this sport and are in need of some encouragement here is my best suggestion: Buy some flies with a tungsten bead (AB hare's Ear, AB Pheasant Tail, AB Prince Nymph) and fish them below an indicator in slightly off-colored water. It's the best time to catch fish when they aren't too spooky, are feeding like crazy, and lots of nymphs that the hare's ear/pheasant tail genre are in the water. The strikes will be solid!

Having said all that, that is pretty much how our few hours went. Numerous fish, slamming a single Hare's Ear set about 3 feet below an indicator.

If it's not pre-runoff season, just look for summer days when there has been a light rainstorm recently and you may get a taste of what it's like!

-Jeff

On the River: Ashtabula River, Ashtabula, Ohio

November 23, 2009

Michelle and I flew home, to Ohio, for Thanksgiving and the natural thing to do is figure out how to get to a steelhead river. I mean, let's be honest folks, I'm a thankful guy, but I'm a lot more thankful for everything when I've got an 8 lb. steelhead on the end of my line!

So we headed up to the Ashtabula River the morning of the 23 of November. Pretty much every time I go home for the Holidays I try to hit up the steelhead run, and every time the conditions are kind of crap. Last year the Holiday was Christmas. We showed up just at the end of a rain cycle, which meant the rivers were blown out, but the day before we went fishing a cold snap moved in overnight. It was so cold that the water was actually below freezing and the friction was the only thing keeping the water from being frozen solid. How do I know this? Because after 20 drifts our flies were a solid nugget of ice (even the hook point was buried in ice) so we would have to suck on the flies until the melted then start casting again.

I say all that to give you an idea of my steelhead experiences, but I'll get back to my story now.

This year was quite the opposite, it was an unusually warm Thanksgiving and there hadn't been rain for about 3 weeks, so the rivers were low and gin clear. Unfortunately, for steelheading, that presents a new set of problems. To start, not many fish had run up the river yet as they usually wait for higher flows to come out of the lake en-masse. Then, the gin clear, low water, made for some very skittish fish when we did find them.

However, I still can't help but smile when I think of the whole day! The warm, overcast skies made this Colorado boy giddy with excitement. I fished the day in my down jacket, but could have easily been in just a hoodie. And then there was the wind ... or lack thereof. You don't realize that Colorado is windy ALL THE TIME until you go somewhere that is not. Most of the time as a Colorado resident you think, "wow, it's a really calm day" when all that really means is "the wind is light, as opposed to gale forces". Out East it is not that way. You can actually have days that are DEAD CALM. It's a beautiful thing, being able to cast at a target without having to calculate what the wind is going to do to you.

The Ashtabula is not a big river, and with the low flows most of the day we were fishing in less than 3 feet of water. Our plan was to foul hook AS FEW of the monsters as possible so most of the time we fished some very light line tactics. It really was like sight nymphing on a spring creek, except that every fish could eat your leg if they wanted to. Most of the day I fished a #16 tungsten pheasant tail, or a glow bug with one micro split-shot. To fish any sort of a tandem rig in that slow water would have been asking to get hung up on the bottom, or snag a 10 lb. steelhead in the dorsal fin on every drift ... not something you want to do.

We arrived at the river and within 15 minutes found a healthy, but skittish, pod of about 10 fish. I gave Michelle first crack at it and she hooked up with a solid 24" fish within 30 minutes. After about a 10 minute battle the solid rainbow made some fast movements and spit the hook. Michelle cried ... I laughed ... it was definitely the first time she had felt the sheer power of a 5 lb. steelhead.

Michelle, putting her back into it.

She handed the rod over to me and I started targeting some big dogs at the head of the pool. After 40 minutes of casting I finally hooked up with a fish that was sure to be 15 lbs.+ but had similar results as Michelle, a couple of powerful runs and the fly pulled out.

After that we ran dry for a while as the low numbers of fish in the rivers made finding pods few and far between. We traveled downstream for a bit and found a pod of 3 fish. After 20 minutes of persistence the alpha fish swung hard and CRUSHED my pheasant tail. After 15 minutes with a 5 wt and 6x tippet I was holding a hefty, good looking steelhead. Please, don't ever let them tell you that you can't put the pressure on a big fish with a light rod and tippet! Jay and I are huge fans of soft action light line rods and are confident that monster fish don't have to be played to death. In fact most of the time I feel a light rod will help protect your tippet better and allow you to fight a fish more effectively. I have a good deal of experience to prove my theories too.

Thanksgiving indeed!

The rest of the day was spent moving from pod to pod, making casts at each one for an hour or so. Michelle had a couple of great opportunities, and briefly had a few other fish on, but never did land one.

She'll be back another day ...

-Jeff

On the River: Gunnison Gorge, Ute Park

June 27, 2009

Foiled again ... sort of. I was all geared up to really hit the Salmonfly hatch this time, patiently watching the flows, checking the reports, all so I could hit the perfect section of the river where the Salmonflies were coming off the strongest. Turns out it never really happened. My theories are that the weather and water flows were just weird enough this year that there were not many great Salmonfly days. I think most of the time the egg-laden females never made the mass exodus to the river, like they are supposed to, but instead meandered back to the river one by one and silently laid their eggs. I'm sure someone hit a decent day or two, but from the reports I read most people ended up foiled like me.

On top of it, I was double foiled on the day that I chose. It turns out that the reservoirs above the Canyon were overflowing and so Friday night they decided to pump the flows from 2800 cfs to 3400 cfs which is the best reason I can think of for fish not rising. Let me back up ... I rolled onto the river to a circus freakshow of bugs, thinking to myself, "this is gonna be awesome". There were massive quantities of Salmonflies, Giant Stones, Golden Stones and Yellow Sallies everywhere, not to mention the clouds of PMD spinners and caddis. Bugs were literally crawling all over my skin and up my shirt. At one point I had to tuck my shirt in to keep them from driving me mad and even then the occasional stonefly would crawl down the neck of my shirt.

However, even near the end of the day when there were 10-15, half dead, twitching stoneflies that had just laid their eggs in each eddy-line I never saw a decent rising fish all day long. It was really quite maddening. The reason I blame it on the flows is from past experience. When the water levels fluctuate, the fish don't necessarily stop feeding, but I do think that they "hunker" down and stop thinking about surface feeding. It may even be that with the increased flows the vast majority of food is getting washed down in the nymph form so fish are gorging on nymphs even if there is a lot of flies on the surface. Above all you have to remember that fish are machines programmed to go for what feeds them the most.

So, I started the day with my "drown stone" and hare's ear combination. Surprisingly, I didn't hook many fish. The water available to fish was very limited with the flows so high and pushing hard. I was mainly relegated to very small seams tight against the bank. My first hook up was a rainbow that screamed downstream and put me into my backing before I lost him. But still, with out much fast success I started thinking and remembered all the PMD's popping off just the week before. I decided to switch up to a Pheasant tail, trailed with the Blacktail PMD and thing LIT UP!

Fish started slamming the Blacktail PMD like it was going out of style. Most of them were in the solid 12" to 14" range, but it seemed like every 5th fish was pushing the 16"+ range. Most of the big guys did a good job of spitting the hook.

Then I rolled up onto the "Super Seam". It was a seam like any other, no discernible difference, but I proceeded to hook and land 3 fish in 5 casts that were 17", 18" and 17", all on the Blacktail PMD!

It was a great time! I ended up landing numerous other small fish, and then finished the day with the rainbow pictured here.

It was a good reminder that you don't ever want to get static in your thinking on the river. I could have fished a dry fly all day long and never hooked any of those monsters, but with a bit of observation and thought it turned out to be a great day.

Tight lines,

-Jeff