Ladawn Ostmann is a veteran of our Western trips and has traveled to Turneffe Flats Belize with us in addition to spending time with us in the Smokies. She really set the bar high for the whole group by catching this monster 23″ cutthroat / rainbow hybrid from Henry’s Lake before lunch on the first day of the week.

It doesn’t look like you could slap the smile off of Mike Downey’s face. He caught a number of nice rainbows like this on the Box Canyon section of the Henry’s Fork.

Chris Thompson shared the boat with Mike Downey and ended the day with this slab of a rainbow trout. Well done!

Charity and I spent our day with our children in Yellowstone National Park and did some fishing. As many of you know our daughter Willow is progressing as a fly fisher and having fun in the process.

Willow brought in this nice brown trout on the Gibbon River not far upstream of its confluence with the Firehole at the source of the Madison River. Willow actually landed her first trout with some assistance at the age of 3 in Yellowstone. Since then she’s started to hone her skills in the Smokies and is eager to get back on the water in the Rockies.

We end the day at the TroutHunter Bar & Grill every evening. So far we’ve enjoyed dishes like bison short ribs, wasabi crusted tuna, and cheese burgers and washed them down with some brew like Black Butte Porter. Here’s the view of the sunset over the Henry’s Fork from the window.

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The superb fishing with poppers continues…

We originally intended to get it back up much sooner than this, but the best laid plans of mayflies and men often go awry. We are happy to say the store is back up and improved. You can now buy our books as well as fly patterns we use here in East Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains. Most of these patterns are relatively difficult to find and we’ve been asked for years if there was any way we could provide them.

There is free shipping on all orders over $25. We have more fly patterns on the way along with a few more crucial items for fly fishers.

Thanks for sticking with us! We’ll see you on the stream.

On the other hand, it’s all come together this week in the Smokies. We’ve seen some excellent Quill Gordon hatches. Have a look for yourself. This was earlier in the week.

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The weather forecast for the weekend is OK, but not great. Looks like Saturday will be the best day with more rain on the way on Sunday.

I was actually expecting a pretty good day of fishing since it’s not unusual for spring mayflies to continue hatching on such days. The wet and cold conditions will often keep the bugs on the water and whip the trout into a feeding frenzy. In a nutshell, that didn’t happen.

There were a few bugs and a few fish on Little River, though. Take a look.

Fly Fishing the Smoky Mountains During a Spring Snow from Ian Rutter on Vimeo.

The weather forecast calls for sunny and warm temperatures starting on Wednesday.

Elk are the headliners in Cataloochee Valley, but there is some great fishing too.

Charity and I noticed some blank days on the guide calendar and decided we needed to take advantage of the break. Even those of us who live in the Smoky Mountains like to take a few days to get away and do nothing more than camp and fly fish.

After a quick scan of a map of the Smokies we decided to head for the Cataloochee Valley. We haven’t fished there this season and it’s always fun to see the elk. We remembered the mild temperatures and brook trout after we arrived in the valley.

Charity fishing on Palmer Creek

Those of you who have followed our fishing report will remember all the great weather we’ve been talking about. Our time at Cataloochee was no different. We wore light fleece jackets in the morning as temperatures dipped into the mid 50′s. Afternoons were pleasant and close to 80. Water levels were absolutely perfect and water temperatures were anywhere from 60 to 62. Absolutely amazing for August!

The streams fished best with dry flies. I caught a few fish on beadhead nymphs, but felt like I did at least as good if not better on dries. Terrestrial patterns like the Elkmont Ant did pretty good, but in the end it was pretty tough to beat a good old Parachute Adams.

Trout about this size are pretty standard in the streams that flow through Cataloochee Valley

Specks (brook trout for those of you outside the Smokies) have made an impressive comeback in Cataloochee Valley. We’ve heard about fly fishers picking up some specks in the main stem of Cataloochee Creek over the past few years. We’ve been catching them in Palmer and Little Cataloochee, but that’s where we’ve spent the bulk of our time the past few years when we made the trip.

We actually caught more specks than anything else this trip and that includes a good deal of time spent on the main stem of Cataloochee Creek. If you haven’t been there, the stream is roughly equal in size to Deep Creek, Tremont, and Hazel Creek. In other words, this is a big stream for specks to be the main catch. Rough Fork was nothing short of superb when it came to brookies. Charity had a real chunky one on that flipped off the hook just as I was focusing the camera. We both figured it was about 9″ long. We caught specks as low as the group camp site which is pretty low in the valley.

We caught more brookies than we can remember that were about this size

Brown trout have traditionally been the main reason we’ve fished Cataloochee Creek. Long pools in the valley directly adjacent to meadows have always made for some superb terrestrial fishing. Browns are as abundant in Cataloochee Creek as other streams, but now we’d have to rate the creek as a top roadside destination to catch a Smoky Mountain grand slam. As always, the brown trout will be the toughest third to land.

I missed a real nice brown on an Elkmont Ant. It wasn’t a beast, but no less than a foot long. We didn’t land many browns on this trip compared to specks and rainbows, but we hooked enough browns to keep it interesting.

This is typical of the brown trout we landed. This one was in the campground.

If you can swing a free day you should head on over to Cataloochee. It’s always a beautiful place to visit and you’ll probably see more elk than fly fishers.

A cow elk grazes in the valley with her calf

Charity helps our daughter Willow get the drift over a pod of risers

The weather has been pretty good and while the fishing hasn’t been drop dead awesome, it’s still been pretty good. We hitched up the drift boat yesterday and headed to the river. Fish were up midging almost everywhere. We can sometimes catch them on a variety of small dries, but not this time. A small midge pupa was the way to go and we caught most of our fish on that. We hung it under a #14 Parachute Adams so we didn’t feel like we were nymphing. A few fish did eat the Parachute. Most of the fish were about 10″ with a few smaller and a few larger. There were a couple around 14″.

Our three year old daughter Willow got in on the act too! She caught her first few trout last fall on our Yellowstone trip and wanted a few tries yesterday after watching Mom and Dad catch fish. She did about as well as some of our customers. (Not you! All the other customers.) We helped her cast to fish and set the hook. When she hooked one she immediately began to reel the wrong way. I got her to stop that and handed her the line to strip in the fish. She hung on for a second, then dropped the line and started reeling backwards again. Fortunately the fish was hooked solidly and we managed to finally get it in the net.

Daaaaad! Don't take your picture with my fish!

Later in the afternoon Charity and I decided to switch over to streamers. We turned a good number of fish and caught several, although none were exceptionally large. At one point I had hooked four or five fish and Charity asked when she could quit rowing and get to fish again. I told her that I kept holding on for a big one since she has this magical way of catching the fish of the day (or the year) within the first few casts of her turn.

True to form she caught a 18″ rainbow on the sixth cast. It shot up at the fly and rolled at it, then turned around and inhaled it. It was a beautiful fish with such a girth Charity couldn’t get two hands around it. She held it up for a picture, the fish squirmed and kicked itself into the air and went right back in the river. No picture this time, but we’ll get more next time!

We’re anxiously awaiting the first spring hatches in the Smokies. It was in the 60′s today and we’ve got some rain on the way. A warm rain might be what it takes to kick things in gear, but we’ve got some cool weather forecast for the early part of the week. We’ll let you know when the bugs show up.

As fly fishers we have an advantage over natural predators like osprey, herons, water snakes, and otters. They have to catch their dinner with their claws and mouths. Skilled anglers fool trout into coming willing to a fly. All too often many anglers negate the advantages of a well tied fly and clear monofilament leader.

Put the fly where a fish will see it. This is a relatively simple concept, but one that is often overlooked. A fly fisher may have the best fly ever devised, but it is worthless if a fish never sees it. Anglers should strive to find the best spots to cast a fly. Feeding lanes are always the best place to cast a fly since these are the currents where fish find food most often. Most trout will not be found in excessively swift water or still water. Swift water requires a good deal of energy to hold in and still water doesn’t have enough current to bring a steady supply of food.

There's a lot of water out there and that fly is small. Be sure to put it where a fish can see it.

Take special care not to spook fish or make them aware of your presence. As soon as a fish has spooked you will not catch him. This is basic knowledge, but we often see anglers on the river who seem to ignore this fact. We have even watched some anglers wade through pods of rising fish to get a better casting position. Of course this better casting position was worthless once the fish were gone! If a fish runs away to hide it will never see your fly. Again, the perfect fly has been rendered useless.

Move slowly on the water and cast from a position where trout won't notice you.

Make accuracy a priority over distance when casting the fly. The ability to cast a fly far is a valuable skill, but that skill is nullified if you can’t hit a target. Even when casting from a drift boat a 30 foot cast usually works better than a 60 or 70 foot cast. Many anglers can hit a target at 30 feet but have more difficulty as the distance grows. Again, trout will not see your fly if it lands off target.

We often fish to pods of midging fish on our local tailwaters here in East Tennessee. The midge hatches are so prolific that most fish will not move more than a couple of inches for such a small offering. Casting accuracy is crucial in this situation where being off by about a foot might be about as effective as missing by a mile.

Ensure your accuracy by stacking the odds in your favor and only make casts that have at least a reasonable shot of hitting the target. Long casts also increase the chances of a sloppy cast that slaps the water and spooks the fish.

Short casts are usually better than long casts even when fishing from a drift boat.

Get a good drift so the fly looks natural on the water. Ever heard the old adage that good looks will only get you so far? That’s particularly true with trout flies. Even the most realistically tied fly will not look right to a trout if it drags across the current like a water skier. Anglers can do several things to make a good drift easier to accomplish. We’ve already mentioned shorter casts but shorter drifts are just as important. It is far easier to make a fly drift without drag for five or six feet than it is for 20 or 30 feet. Divide a run of water into several short drifts and you will increase your odds of covering a fish with a perfect drift. Another thing anglers can do is to plan ahead by anticipating drag and make the appropriate mend with the line before drag sets in. Mending line is less effective after drag has set in.

Give every drift a chance. We all make bad casts, but leave the fly on the water and see what happens. Worst case scenario a fish will not see the fly and you can pick it up and re-cast in a moment. Every season we see fly fishers pick up “bad casts” just as a fish was about to eat the fly. The fly was good enough to fool the fish, but the cast wasn’t good enough for the angler and he took it away when the fish wanted it. Let the fish be the judge and give every drift a chance, even if it didn’t meet your standard.

Dropping a fly to the water then picking it up quickly may also spook fish. Let the drift out of the zone you’re fishing. Even when fish want the fly they are less likely to come to it a second time if you picked it up before they got to it.

You've fooled the fish. Don't squander the opportunity!

Expect the strike. After reading the water, making an accurate cast, and getting a good drift it’s a real shame when you fool a fish but miss the strike. It never fails to surprise us when anglers say that they didn’t expect a fish to eat. Our response is, “Then why did you put the fly there?” There is no reason to make a cast if you don’t believe a fish might eat your fly.

Even when the fisherman had the perfect fly and the perfect drift he didn’t catch the fish because he was caught off guard. Our motto is “Be surprised when a fish didn’t come to the fly.” Act deliberately and have confidence in your cast and your drift. Try to anticipate the strike and be prepared for it.

View of Rich Mountain and Dry Valley from our home in Townsend, TN

The temperature struggled to reach 30 degrees and the three inches of snow we received is still here today. It was a bit of a jolt since it was sunny and 55 on Saturday. Charity had a Casting For Recovery meeting and our daughter went to the movies with her grandmother so I hitched up the drift boat and headed over to Calderwood Lake. My old fishing buddy Andrew Sonner came along.

Neither of us have done much fishing on Calderwood in the winter and we were reminded why. The fishing wasn’t just slow, it was dead; at least with a fly rod. There was one other boat on the lake and they were trolling. The one time we passed them they picked up a rainbow trout.

We could have gone to a number of other places and probably gotten a number of hook ups, but that’s not really the reason we took off for Calderwood. First of all I had been in my drift boat only once in the past few months and Andy hasn’t really done much fishing at all since the holidays. I also wanted to fire up my boat’s outboard, but there’s also the issue of the beauty and solitude that you find on Calderwood Lake.

Springlike temperatures are due to return this week and we’re officially on “Quill Gordon Watch 2009″. Quill Gordon and Blue Quill mayflies are the first good hatch of the season that get fish rising in the Smoky Mountains. We’ve got some olives and brown stoneflies flitting about right now along with some dun caddis, but none of these get the fish up reliably. Once the water warms up in late February or early March these insects begin to hatch and will continue to do so regardless of what the weather does after they begin.

Last year the hatches started around March 10 but we’ve seen them begin as early as February 25. I even saw a few around February 15 in the early 1990′s on Citico Creek. We’ll keep you posted.

Tailwater flows look like TVA is moving into their spring mode as well. Generation schedules are cutting back and the rivers are getting more fishable. Every spring TVA allows the reservoirs to fill and they have to cut generation. This usually lasts until around Memorial Day. After that flows are loosely based on rainfall. Dryer years will have lower flows and wetter years have higher flows, but the rivers remain fishable most of the time in the summer.