Recent Clinch Outings

I have been on out on the river twice in the past week now, but there hasn't really been much to report on. The first outing was immediately following a heavy shower and the river looked like chocolate milk. I only fished a little over an hour with a big wooly bugger, and managed to stick one hefty fish. However, I never saw the fish before it broke off my 4X tippet, so it could have even been a carp for all I know. Shortly thereafter I left the river and found my truck was short about 1/3 tank of gas. Apparently somebody thought they would help themselves to some free gasoline. Don't want to dwell on that for now, just know I will pay more attention to the cars around me from now on.

Also managed to get on the water yesterday morning. I took the day off work and wanted to take advantage of a little Friday solitude on the water. The water still had some stain to it from the runoff I mentioned above, but it didn't look all that bad. I rigged up with a double nymph rig and started probing the typical runs. Nada. Switched over to a streamer and fished these same runs, still nothing. I slowly made my way to the flats where I saw some big browns spawning last year, and they were untouched. So, I checked the water temp, and found that it was around 55 degrees. That is about 5 degrees warmer than this time last year, so that could account for why the fish are not where they were this time last year. I left the streamer on and went up to the slow deep water and started probing the bottom for some brownies. I managed to pick up a couple fish doing this during the heavy rainfall, but they were rainbows. So, I continued to look for that brown. I continued to stick some and miss some when just upstream from me I heard a terrible commotion. I looked up just in time to see a rainbow probably 8 or 9 inches long jumping out of the water and right on its tail was a brown trout probably 10 pounds. I immediately pulled up and fired a cast in its direction, but knew that I probably did not have a chance. Oh well, at least I know there are some big bows in there, and I think they are staging for the spawn. I hope to make one trip a week over there for the next month or so until they do start to spawn. However, I think I will shoot for afternoon fishing instead of morning fishing, as long as TVA cooperates. It just takes so long for the fog to burn off and the fish to get active in the morning, I am about to rule out any more morning fishing trips to the Clinch until next spring.



Until next time,
Tight Lines and God Bless