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

South Platte, 11 Mile Canyon, Colorado

Catch-up: This event occurred in the Spring of 2011

Date: Friday April 22 and  Saturday May 7, 2011

Weather: Sunny, beautiful

Insect/Activity: Small amount of midge and baetis activity

Patterns Used: Blacktail Baetis, AB Tungsten Hare's Ear, Grey Midge Pupa

Flows: 52

Fortune smiled upon Ben and I as we took to the river a couple of times in a two week period! I can't remember what stopped Michelle from coming, but I think it had to do with bridal showers, or baby showers!@?! Needless to say, upon hearing my tales after fishing, Michelle rued the day she was born a woman and "showers" became a required event for her gender.

That's a really long way of saying: Ben and I had two amazing days. The weather was amazing—sunny, calm winds, low flows, clear water and cool enough to wear a hooded sweatshirt—and the icing on the cake was the ridiculous amounts of fish we caught!

One of the beauties of late winter/early spring is the low flows and lack of fishermen on the water. It's a great time to get out there and catch fish that, in my opinion, are feeding recklessly because they are hungry from low metabolism in the winter and haven't been pressured for a few months.

With really low flows, it's easy to see fish too, and you can get away with fishing nymphs that aren't too weighted. It's one of the best times that nymph fishing feels like dry-fly fishing.

Here are some great photos that Ben and I got of the course of two days. Make sure to check out the rainbow with the spots on his eyes! I had never seen it before (in person). Really cool looking (though it's possible he took my fly because his eyesight isn't so good :)

Enjoy!

-Jeff Allen

Beautiful, dark colored rainbow. Notice the how his spots are covering his eyes! Amazing!

On the River: Dream Stream, South Platte, Hartsel, CO

October 2, 2010

Theories, all just theories ...

In my quest to understand the Dream Stream section of the South Platte I have yet to reach the end. My experience tells me that it is primarily a Salmon/Steelhead river. Sure, you wouldn't call the rainbows steelhead, but essentially, they don't live in the river, they live in the lake. Same with the browns. My hunch is that the cutthroats do live in the river. I think that at best you can have rainbows and browns coming up river at anytime during the year if the food source is there, but they are most likely migrating up the river for a short period of time to feed.

Having said that, I really do believe you can hit the river just about anytime of the year and get rewarded by a ton of large fish, or stymied by the lack of any fish. While you can hedge your bets by hitting the two spawning seasons (fall for the browns, spring for the rainbows/cutts). Ben and I were met by the reality that in this river, it's anything but a safe bet.

As it turns out, Ben and I had a pretty fun day, but we lacked the large quantities of fish that we've run into in the past. The sun was shining, the wind was relatively calm and we even started out the morning with a pretty heavy cloud of trico's (which seemed pretty late in the year to me, but whatever!) I picked up a few fish on trico's, but none would top the 4" mark so we quickly decided to switch to nymphs and move on upstream.

I had never fished all the way to the upper boundary, so it was my goal to cover some water and see what there was. The morning proved to be fairly uneventful. We spotted one monster, 23" cutthroat that we fished to for a while and I eventually hooked on a gammarus scud, only to pull out within 10 seconds of fighting the fish. In another location I hooked a 15" cutthroat that came to the net, but I fumbled before the photo could be taken. Ben landed a nice brown trout at the upper boundary (no photo again) and I spotted a 20"+ brown that scooted after about 10 casts to it.

All in all we were surprised by the "lack" of fish in the upper stretch.

And so, we found ourselves taking a late lunch and heading down to the lower stretch around 2 PM. With ominous clouds rolling in we didn't have much time in the afternoon. This proved to be sad, because it wasn't too long before we found our magic stride. Ben I and were both hooked up with steady fish on the blacktail baetis. We only ended up with this one photo from the day, mostly because all the fish were around this size and not too camera worthy.

The day ended with smiles, because most of the fish were coming out of shallower riffles, which is always a favorite haunt of mine.

We also had one curious event take place ... as the dark clouds rolled in the flashes of lightning in the distance let us know it was time to go. Ben made his way upstream to my location where I was making just "one or two last casts". As I reached for my line to begin stripping in the slack my finger came within an inch of my hook keeper. The combination of standing in the water on a dry plain composed mostly of metallic soil sent a beam of energy, arcing to my finger that lasted about 3 seconds, accompanied by sound. Needless to say, I immediately bit off my leader above my indicator and we broke down our rods and kept a low profile on our way back to the car.

I don't mind admitting ... it was pretty scary.

Nothing like a brush with death to make you appreciate life!

-Jeff

On the River: 11 Mile Canyon, South Platte, Lake George, CO

July 31, 2010

August 7 and 14, 2010

It had been years since I fished 11 Mile Canyon (aka 11MC). Really, I had only fished it once, when I first moved to Colorado for college at Western State in Gunnison. It was more of a stop in really, and my memory of it was not that impressive. We caught fish, but I don't remember anything too massive. I certainly don't remember anything about a catch-and-release stretch. So, when I blogged about moving to Colorado Springs and one of my blog readers, Jim, mentioned he fished it all the time and would show me what he know, I was excited to say the least.

And so it was, on July 31st that Jim, his son Kevin and I hit the water and they introduced me to a river that I was amazed me. First off, we met at the river at about 6:30 AM to catch the tricos. While we didn't hit an "epic" day, we certainly weren't short of rising fish taking the falling spinners. When the spinner fall ended, most of the fish just kept rising to midges. We spent the morning making delicate cast after delicate cast, and enough rejections to make you crazy, but in the end a rods were bent and smiles were not lacking.

In fact, one of my favorite things about the day was the realization that there were a lot of fish in that river, and they were educated. They act as proper trout should - snubbing a fly if the drift was off, but greedily taking it if the presentation and imitation were accurate. I feel like most Colorado rivers have the X-factor of fish that will take anything that resembles a nymph, or slurp down your indicator leaving one baffled as to "why that happened". Not so with 11MC.

After the hatch was well over, I moved to midge pupa and baetis patterns. One of the first sights I was greeted with was 14" fish sitting in shin-deep gravel just waiting to be stalked, and then picked off by my favorite style of fishing - micro-nymphing.

I spent a large chunk of time walking the river, getting a feel for it and spotting fish. Probably even spent less time actually fishing then I usually would. By the end of the day I had caught my fill of fish and was convinced that this was my new home.

On the 7th, I returned with my wife and some friends of the family. The trico spinner fall was present, but not as strong and the fishing was a little tougher (mostly, I spent the morning trying to help our friends put one on the line).

On the 14th, Ben Robb (his good buddies Matt and Chris) and I headed up to give it a go. The tricos were still a force to be reckoned with and Ben landed this spectacular Brown that had decided to gorge on tricos just 25 feet upstream of him. I spent a lot of the day getting acquainted with some deeper nymphs and did very well in the seems and pocket water using a tungsten hare's ear trailed by a grey midge pupa.

I also discovered that there were Snake River Cutt's in the river and as is my habit to prove that there is something mentally wrong with them, I tied on a large Power Ant and had a nice 15" fish take it on the first cast. (Side note: Jay lived in Jackson for a number of years and we learned if a Chernobyl Ant won't get a SRC to rise, then just tie on a Power Ant. None of those food source made much sense so I concluded that these fish had brain issues. In my years since then I've never cast to a SRC, in any river system, that wouldn't rise to one of those two patterns! It works without fail from about May until Sept. I guess they are just opportunistic fish at heart.)

In the end, my Shan-gri-la view of 11MC was jaded a bit by realizing that the river is a zoo of fishermen, tubers and campers. Though that won't stop me from going back!

Thanks to Jim and Kevin for showing me the ropes. Now I've got to just get back out there with them in the winter!

Tight Lines,

-Jeff

On the River: Spring Creek, Bellefonte, Central PA

June 28, 2010

Spring Creek in central PA - twice in less than one year, I feel fortunate. This really is one of my favorite places to fish in the world. There's just something about the early mornings, getting up before dawn to fish in the grey fog at the start of a new day. The air is dewy and cool and the midday heats up enough that it actually becomes a good excuse to come off the river for a decent lunch (as opposed to my normal "must not leave the river until dark" attitude). Compared to the West, there is no such thing as wind. Even a menacing wind in the East just has so much less force to it. Also, I find the more gentle river flows, due to less streambed gradient, is a welcome change from fishing the constant pocket-water of the West.

All-in-all, this Midwest-kid that moved to the Colorado Rockies swearing he'd never return, finds himself dreaming of fishing Central PA, Michigan, Virginia and Tennessee more often than is healthy.

This also happened to be the first time Michelle had every truly fished the Midwest or a TRUE spring creek. As you'll notice by the first fish she picked up, within 30 minutes of the first day, she was pretty happy about the whole ordeal. Also, might I mention, that if you've never fished a true spring creek - 7x is a must. You may pick up a few fish on that "cable" they call 6x, but what you need is flawless drifts in slow moving water that the fish has some time to drift downstream with your fly as it examines its prey. All that to say - my wife is pretty awesome hooking, fighting and landing that fish on 7x!

Our days were pretty typical of fishing Spring Creek, by the time things were heating up, the fishing was slowing down. We picked up our best fish before 9 AM, and then had to work pretty hard throught the lunch hours, looking for areas that were deeper, or had a cool spring. Most of the fare was #24 midges (cream, grey) and we did some scud and sow bug fishing as well, but for the most part, fish would shy away from the large size of the scuds and sows.

Most mornings were spent in a stretch that has a large spring on it. There are a few gravel riffles that would hold 20+ fish, all sitting in 8" to 14" of water. They spent their mornings idly snacking on selective morsels that would pass by. If you placed a cast just perfect, mended precisely and changed out your fly every now and then you would certainly get a few takes, just the slightest of flash from the mouth or a feint left or right. Hooking, fighting and landing were the next three obstacles to overcome.

Most fish were in the solid 14" range with a few pushing the 20" size mark, and I briefly spotted a 24" monster, but it wasn't long before he bugged out and headed for a more protected spot. It is truly an amazing river! Every time you add an inch to a fish, you find him sitting in a tougher drift. The ones in the 18" range were generally found sitting in impossible locations with about a 6" drift window, making a realistic drift very tough. But that's the beauty of it, though we weren't there for a hatch, Spring Creek has some epic hatches, and those are the times when the "big boys" become much more available.

Without making this post a small novel, what can I say? We spent 3 days enjoying the weather and the water, with plenty of fish to throw in. That's not bad considering I would have enjoyed myself with no fish.

Tight Lines,

-Jeff

(Side note: we did spend one morning at Big Fishing Creek. Which was a boyhood favorite. However, I'm not sure if we just timed something wrong, but we hardly spotted a fish all morning. Maybe we picked the wrong stretch to be on, maybe the river has fallen on some tough times. Sadly, it was a disappointing morning, mostly from not living up to memories.)

On the River: Norfork River, Arkansas

June 3, 2010

Ahhhh Arkansas! Land of my fly fishing birth! One of two really. I started fly fishing somewhere around the age of 12. Jay (big brother) is 5 years older than me and he started somewhere around that age too. A friend of our fathers had a fiberglass rod in the rafters of his basement and he gave it to Jay. After about 5 years of Jay being self-taught, on mostly bluegill and bass, he started to pass it off to his little bro (me).

I don't remember which came first, Arkansas or Pennsylvania, but I do know that the very first places I ever fly fished was the Norfork and White rivers of Arkansas, and Penn's creek in Pennsylvania.

Ever since then, we try and make a pilgrimage to Arkansas every year two and they are almost always worth it! The times it's not is when you show up for 5 days and the water is high the entire time.

That wasn't the case for this trip (or at least not exactly). We had been watching the Norfork flows pretty closely and the rhythm was the generators shut down at 9 PM and turn back on at 12 noon the following day. The White was out of the question since it was mostly running at full generators.

If you've never fished these rivers they are tailwaters, but they water flows are dictated by power demand. On low flows, I think the Norfork runs around 70 cfs, but when they turn the generators on the river becomes a raging torrent at about 6000 cfs. Kind of a dramatic change ...

Nevertheless, fate was kind of on our side and we adjusted accordingly to make our fishing day from 5 AM (on the water, in our spot fishing) to 12 noon.

This trip was prompted from an article that told of the "rebirth" of the river due to massive flooding two years prior (I think it was two years ago). Jay and I can attest that the rivers were getting a bit stagnet, with algae blooms replacing the beautiful cress grass and vegitation. Fish were looking sickly and bigger fish seemed to be more scarce. The rumor was that the flood gutted the river, blew out the algae, and washed a bunch of dead baitfish into the river below. I don't know about all those factors, but I can say that the slime of the river was gone, the underwater vegitation was looking better than I've seen it in many years, and the scuds were ... abundant (to put it lightly).

We had a great trip! Most of the grey mornings were spent blind fishing gentle riffles, and once the sun was up it was a sight nymphers dream! There were also risers to be had on midge and baetis, but the vast majority of fish were active sub-surface.

It's always hard to say what was my favorite, because I love the subtle strikes of blind fishing, but how can you go wrong with sight nymphing? If you've never fished the area before, you're probably asking how I can compare blind fishing with sight nymphing, but this place is different. There are so many fish that will be tucked up into 8" deep, broken water that it really means blind fishing is unique and nothing short of awesome! So, you end up blind fishing these shallow, broken riffles that a two-year old could walk across without much trouble, but if you pay attention to these lightning micro-strikes, you lift up on a 14" rainbow that you never even saw there! It's pretty sweet.

As far as flies and tactics go, it's pretty straightforward nymphing. You can fish standard runs all day long, or you can fish tight (as described above), or you can get crazy and fish flat water for bigger fish, feeding lazily on midges. Our staple flies ended up being the Gammarus Scud and a #24 Cream Midge with a thread head (which we don't currently sell, but we hope to correct that sometime soon!). Sow bugs were working well too, just not as well as the G-scud.

Really, if you wanted a bigger, picky fish, you needed the cream midge with 7x and a micro indicator. That's where the money was at.

All in all, we landed a ton of 12" to 14" fish, a good amount of 15" and I think five 18"+ fish. Never really spotted any Monsters in the 6 lb.+ class, which was a bit of a shame cause that is our favorite target.

A good time was had by all, and the days were filled with friends and family. Ben joined us for the trip and I think he will chime in and verify that our tales of Arkansas were not too highly exaggerated.

Until next time,

-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: Gunnison Gorge (Chukar Access), CO

April 8, 2010

My sister and brother-in-law came out to Colorado for a little visit. Whitney (brother-in-law ... don't let the name fool you. He's from NY and will mess you up if you think his moniker is sissy!) had only been to Colorado for Michelle and I's wedding, and had never fished here before. I thought there would be no better way to give him an experience he would not forget than by taking him to the Gunnison Gorge to see the sights and hook some of those fish!

It turned out that we picked one of the best weather days I HAVE EVER HAD in Colorado. We got to the river by about 10:30, which is when the sun is just coming over the canyon walls this time of year, and the weather report for the day actually said "brilliant sun" ... no kidding! But to top it all off, I have never fished a day in Colorado that was as windless as this day. Not even a puff of wind! It was crazy!

Oddly enough, we fished most of the morning without success, and even saw very few fish. After spending most of the morning in slow, deep pools and side eddies, we decided to head down to some faster water and riffles. The action picked up, and we hooked a few fish on baetis, but certainly nothing to write home about. To be honest, after lunch (around 1 PM) the sun was already setting behind the cliffs and we had enjoyed the day so much we weren't opposed to wrapping up. Until everything changed, that is ...

We had been noticing baetis rolling off at an ever increasing rate since about 11 AM, but there were just no fish responding to them. By about 1 PM I was almost starting to think the fish migrated down stream to different water types for the winter (especially since Michelle and I did so well 3 weeks before 8 miles downstream at Pleasure Park). That's when Whitney said, "there are a few risers up here, one of them looks pretty decent". We were standing in the sun and the risers he saw were just on the edge of the canyon shadow. I rolled upstream and immediately recognized a pod of about 6 fish feeding heavily.

The risers were much too far of a cast, but we decided to look for more on our side of the river upstream. Once we crossed into the shadow and our eyes adjusted ... OH SNAP!!! We realized that there were PODS of risers as far as you could see upstream! And, due to the low light conditions, none of the fish were too reluctant to take a fly. In fact, for visibility we switched up from an emerger pattern to a quill body adams.

Like two kids in a candy store, Whitney and I proceeded to spend the next 2 hours in a giddy state of enthusiasm. When you haven't hit a "true" hatch in a while you start to forget what it's like.

It's like "good times"! That's what it's like!

We rounded out the day with about 8 fish each on dries (we opted for comradery over fish quantity and decided to share a rod), and none were too small! It was a day that will not be forgotten soon. And, as for my theories of migrating fish ... I've decided they were all hunkered down during the day since they knew the all you can eat buffet was coming that afternoon.

Tight lines,

-Jeff