South Holston River, Tennessee

  Ian and I have fished in and around Banner Elk, N.C. for six straight days now.  Catching native and stocked rainbow and brown trout.  The biggest was maybe 13 inches out of the Upper Watauga River yesterday.  We had parked at a nice park in Valle Crucis, just over the hill from our condo.  Walked to the rivers edge onto a man made fishing platform.  First cast, Ian landed a nice brown and we caught maybe a dozen more after that.  From san juan worms to olive caddis.  The rainy weather had finally let up but was still overcast.

   Today we met up with Ians guide buddy Ollie. He floats and wades on the tail waters of the Watauga and South Holston River, both in TN.  The weather was sunny and warm.  FINALLY!  About an hour drive west brought us to the Holston.  The river flow is regulated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for power.  So to fish it, one must call TVA and find out when they are releasing and holding the flow.  When in full flow, the river can be muddy and way too high to wade fish.  But when the water is held back the level drops and the clarity increases.  So at 10 a.m. we had our waders on and were walking up the river bank.  The water level was dropping dramatically.

  Ollie knows this river well.  The first spot he wanted to fish was looked amazing.  About a mile downstream from the dam.  It was weird watching the water flow drop right in front of your eyes.  Not seeing very many flying bugs or any rising fish, we started out nymphing.  That didn't take long before one of us had a nice rainbow in the net.  Only twenty minutes into the day I landed a marvelous rainbow on a size 20 caddis pupa with 2.5 lb. test!  "Jedi sh*t!" Biggest bow I've ever caught.
  About an hour later we started seeing sulphers (PMD) on the water surface.  The fish were rising and we were catching.  The browns and rainbows on this river need a more than perfect drift to hit your fly.  They are very tippet shy so your line has to be upstream of the fly and perfect dead drifts.  A lot of huge mends are necessary.  If you present the fly impeccably you might get lucky and have a trout look at it. It's techy fly fishing at its best We lost the fish count about noon and fished in a 150 yard stretch until 5 o'clock.  Beautiful fish all day.

  We drove down the river to a new spot away from the dam because they had begun to release water out of the dam.  Blue wing olives were the fly to be here.  A few rainbows were dumb enough to bite our lines.  The weather held up all day to make this the best fishing day on our journey west to Spotted Bear.   Not sure what to do tomorrow.  Maybe go fishing......