Memorial Day has come and gone along with the unofficial start of summer. Unfortunately our weather has progressed into the second week of August as our temperatures are forecast to range into the mid 90′s this week.

Streams in the Smokies are a little low for this time of year, but nothing dramatic. Dry fly fishing is generally good, but hatches are essentially a late evening event now. We’ll be moving higher in elevation this week where it will stay much cooler.

It’s terrestrial time on the streams. We’ve started to pull out the ant patterns and you can be sure that green inch worm patterns will produce as well.

Meanwhile, the tailwaters continue to produce, but expect it to be HOT out there. The good news is that the Clinch River is as fishable as we’ve seen it in months. Looks like there should be some sulphurs this week too as the river and its inhabitants start to settle into more of a routine that includes water at normal levels.

Fishing was generally on the slow side on the Clinch over the holiday weekend, but fish came to small Pheasant Tail Nymphs. We saw a few Sulphurs, but the hatch never quite materialized. Hopefully we’ll see more of them.

The topwater bite is in full swing on most of our smallmouth bass waters now. Little River below Townsend is fishing really well and you can also expect aggressive behavior from the rock bass as well. The same goes for the Pigeon River, but replace the rock bass with warmouths.