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Morning Fog






First Fish of the Day



It has been a while since I was last on the Clinch, and I thought it was time I made a visit to my old friend. During the Fall, I find that the number of fisherman drops thanks to football and hunting season. Because of this I chose to sleep in some, so I got on the water around 8:30. True to form, I only saw one other fisherman on the water this morning when I arrived. He was working a decent little run upstream, but that was no problem; I was more interested in what was downstream. I got in and walked downstream about 1/4 mile to a familiar run. On about the third cast I caught a small rainbow. Fished a couple more runs that I was very familiar with picking up a couple here and there, and thought I should try out some new water. There were lots of fish rising all around, and it looked like they were taking some sort of micro-caddis (olive). I tried a tiny elk hair caddis without much luck, so I went with old faithful. I rigged a black zebra midge and a size 20 bead head pheasant tail in tandem with 7x tippet and that was the trick. I immediately starting hooking up. However, I lost quite a few fish thanks to my downstream approach, but I managed to land good numbers. Ended up landing a dozen fish, with 3 being in the slot. The best fish of the day was a 15" rainbow that I had seen rising to the micro-caddis and tempted him into striking. I have talked very disrespectfully about the brookies stocked in the Clinch, but today I caught the most brilliantly colored one yet. It was 11" and had very bright yellow and blue spots, I wonder if they will attempt to spawn this year. There is a home football game next Saturday, and I am already chomping at the bit to get back out there. Hopefully everybody will be at home watching the ballgame, and I will have the water to myself. Until next time....

God Bless and Tight Lines






15" Bow






Small Stocker Bow