If you do not see today’s Fishing Report, please refresh your browser to empty your cache.
Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. Today is much different than yesterday. Winds are calm and the sky is beautifully clear. It will be a great day to get out and enjoy the mountains whether that is fishing, hiking or just loafering.
Water levels bumped up a tiny bit yesterday but are already back down to where they were. The streamflow gauge is giving a reading of 2.29 feet or 311 c.f.s. This is just above the daily normal of 252 c.f.s. Water temperatures dropped over night (which is good) to 58 F.
Fishing should be good across the Smokies. Anglers are doing well in the high elevations for the brookies. You can fish dries all day if you prefer or you can try using some nymphs sunk down to the bottom. Pat Tully was out recently and tried streamer fishing on the Little River. I don't think he caught the one brown he was after but it sounded like the excitement from the chase was well worth the effort.
Streamer fishing......why don't we do more streamer fishing on the Little River. This is a question I have pondered many times. Big fish eat little fish. It just makes sense to give them what they are looking for. I haven't done it that much but it can be exciting. Seeing a trout chase a streamer is almost as good as landing it.
Fishing dries and nymphs you are always trying to get that "perfect drift". The fly needs to be moving the same speed as the water. This isn't the case with a streamer. You are trying to make the fly act like a little fish. One of my favorite streamer fishing stories wasn't even me fishing. I was up on Little River with a friend during high water. The river was running hard so we didn't even put waders on. We got to a stretch of stream with heavy current on the road side and on the far side was a large eddy and an overhanging rock. My friend had a floating minnow pattern tied on. A long cast laid the fly in the eddy at the edge of the shadow from the rock. One strip and out of the dark a brown slid into position behind the fly. Just then the fly line got grabbed by the fast current and accelerated the fly away from the trout. He couldn't have planned it or done it with stripping the line. It was as if a real minnow saw that brown coming from behind and was swimming for its life. The brown trout immediately was in pursuit and clobbered the fly.
Browns are not the only trout who like to eat streamers. Brookies have been known to have an appetite for things that are larger than they should be trying to eat. Next time you are out when the water is higher than ideal may a streamer will find its way onto your line.
The weather forecast for today and tomorrow looks good for getting out on the river. Rain is on the horizon for Thursday and Friday. The predicted amounts are changing by the day. Next week looks like it will be cooler weather. This should help water temperatures to reset some.
If you head out on the water today have a great time and thank you for being here with us.
Daniel Drake
May 2, 2017
Respond to: info@littleriveroutfitters.com |
