It’s been in the 60’s and we’ve been fishing without a jacket. In fact, we’ve had our sleeves rolled up. There are bugs on the stream, but the fish haven’t quite gotten on them just yet. Every nice run or pool has yielded a rise, but as of yesterday (March 9) we still haven’t seen [...]

We’ve done all kinds of things since the last post. While we’ve done some fishing we also traveled up to Indianapolis to speak at a meeting of the Indianapolis Fly Casters. There was a large and enthusiastic turnout and I’m pretty sure we made a few former Tennesseans homesick for the trout fishing they left [...]

It’s been a couple of weeks ago now, but I came across the the biggest brown trout I’ve ever seen on the Clinch River. I had taken Gary Newton from Berea, Kentucky on a float trip. It was a pretty good day of fishing with most trout taking midge patterns in the #20 range. A [...]

It’s been too long since I’ve posted a report and the reason is because we’ve been fishing so much. Fishing in the Smokies, fishing on the tailwaters, fishing for smallmouth. You name it, we’ve done it over the past two weeks.
Smoky Mountains
Water levels have come down to where you’d expect them to be in late [...]

The big news is that the drought is officially over. In fact, we’re
currently running a rainfall surplus here in East Tennessee. This has not
only brought our stream levels back to normal, but also has implications for
fly fishing on the tailwaters.
Smoky Mountain Streams
Spring hatches started strong with Quill Gordon mayflies in the Smokies and
midges on the [...]

Another year has come and gone. We’re gearing up for a busy 2009. We’ve got a hefty schedule of appearing at fly fishing expos in the next couple of months, we’ve got two new books that will be coming out within a month, and we’ve already booked a number of guided trips. But before we [...]

Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone and the guide season left with it. It’s snowing pretty hard right now in Townsend, but nothing’s sticking. Regardless it’s a strong reminder that the guide season is essentially over.
It’s always the same every fall. September is a period of relatively light guiding as the kids are back in [...]

We’ve had our usual slow down in guiding in mid-November. This has had us scrambling to get as much fishing in as possible while the weather is still pretty good. That may be up for debate as we’re looking at a week of weather that sure looks like it’s winter. Newfound Gap Road was closed [...]

It’s been an eventful week of fly fishing and guiding here in the Smokies and on the Clinch River in east Tennessee. Fall provides the best chances to put a fly on big brown trout and this was the week.

I caught this fish on Little River this week
The weather, fall colors, and fly fishing were [...]

We’ve been on the water almost every day which is why we haven’t posted a report in a while. East Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains have reached peak fall color and the fly fishing has been great for the most part. There was a lull in the fishing earlier this week after the first snowfall [...]