We’ve been keeping an eye on things and began to wonder last week when we witnessed a pretty strong egg laying flight of Early Brown Stoneflies at Tremont. We didn’t want to get anyone riled up, but we saw a couple of Quill Gordon mayflies that day too. We’ve never cared about groundhogs, but you can be pretty sure about things if you pay attention to the bugs on the stream.

The Quill Gordon is one of our favorite hatches and one we have carefully documented over that years. The earliest hatch of consequence I’ve ever witnessed was on February 14 on Citico Creek. Two of the largest brown trout I’ve ever caught in the Smokies were on February 27th and 28th of different years during Quill Gordon hatches.

Last Saturday I did see what can only be called a hatch of Quill Gordons on Little River. Granted, it wasn’t a particularly strong hatch and it didn’t last long, but fish were up rising in several spots. And I did catch a pretty nice fish on a Quill Gordon imitation. I caught this nice brown trout using a Tenkara rod. More to come about that in another post.

We’ll keep you posted, but it looks like hatches in the Smoky Mountains will be running a little ahead of schedule this year. In 2010 and 2011 we didn’t see many Quill Gordons until about March 10. That was about a week late, but we’re easily running three weeks early this year.

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We’ve had a very wet fall and winter so rivers across the region have been well above average. In recent weeks most of the tailwaters have not had many days with fishable flows. Hopefully this will change. Long range forecasts show us drying out over the next few weeks, so hopefully this will translate into better flows from the tailwaters.

This chart from TVA shows that it will probably be a few more weeks before the Clinch river will have lower flows. Norris Lake (shown as the red line) is currently higher than TVA’s flood guide so you can expect them to generate as much water as possible until the lake falls below that level.

Fortunately we should see lower flows in the coming weeks on the Holston, South Holston, Hiwassee, and Watauga Rivers. It’s been November since our drift boat has been out of the garage and we’re ready to get it back on the river.

Smoky Mountain streams have provided the best opportunities to fish over the last couple of months, but even they have had a good number of days with high flows. Fortunately they don’t stay high for more than a day or two.

Mild weather has meant far better action than typical for January and February. All this warm weather also means that our hatches will probably start earlier than normal. We wouldn’t be surprised if our Quill Gordons start hatching in a couple of weeks. We usually look for them around March 1, but this year it could be mid-February.

We’ll be sure to post a report when the hatches start.

Great Smoky Mountains – We are very involved with the biologists in the national park and already knew most of what they had to say. Most of the commentary from Steve Moore was about the Lynn Camp Prong brook trout restoration in the Tremont section of the park. It seemed that someone had taken a few rainbow trout back into the stream after all rainbows had been removed and restored with brook trout. Last September brookies were removed from that stretch of water by electro-shocking and taken to a neighboring stream. This was done to keep them separate from the rainbows that had to be removed. After the brook trout were moved out, that section of Lynn Camp Prong was re-treated with antimycin to kill any remaining rainbow trout.

Lynn Camp Prong brook trout captured during a sampling to check the growing population

Exhaustive shocking was done throughout the entire length of the stream and that was the only section with rainbow trout. About 70% of the brook trout were recovered from the neighboring stream and brought back to the section of Lynn Camp Prong where they had been removed. Furthermore, an additional 800 brook trout were brought into Lynn Camp Prong to bolster the population. Heavy flows from this last fall may have hampered the spawn, but nothing can be known for sure until later this summer when the stream will be sampled.

Tellico River basin – Jim Herrig of the US Forest service reports that the Tellico trout hatchery is a pioneer in propogating native Southern Appalachian brook trout. This is an experimental program in cooperation with TWRA. Brook trout were collected from Sycamore Creek, Bald River, and Henderson Branch for brood stock. About 120 fingerlings were produced and biologists reported that wild brook trout behave far differently in a hatchery than typical rainbow trout reared in a hatchery. One of the largest issues was that about half of the fish would not eat trout pellets and had to be released. The biologists plan to change their methods slightly next year and the long range plan is to use this method to propagate native fish for future restorations.

Brook trout are becoming more common in the Tellico River basin

Steve Moore from Great Smoky Mountains National Park related the recent discovery that Southern Appalachian brook trout have spawning preferences that biologists have no idea of how to identify. DNA samples were taken from fish used in restorations. Fish from different streams were used in restorations to minimize the effects of removing too many fish from any one stream. After several spawning seasons DNA samples were taken from fish. DNA samples show that there is very little, if any, cross breeding between those populations of fish placed in a restored stream. Moore pointed out that this may have contributed to the limited number of fish that were successfully spawned in the hatchery. This seems to be an issue that will have effects on restorations.

Jim Herrig reported that a brook trout restoration done on Sycamore Creek some years ago in the small headwaters with only 200 fish was wildly successful. The numbers of those fish grew significantly and the population moved downstream of a barrier falls and displaced a wild population of rainbow trout for over a mile. Herrig would like to remove rainbow trout even further by electroshocking and immediately place brook trout in that water. His hopes are that expensive, time intensive restoration methods used now may not be necessary if brook trout can displace rainbows on their own.  The Sycamore Creek restoration is already more successful than it was envisioned and the Forest Service would like to try this in conjuction with the brook trout hatchery program as an experiment.

Herrig also reported the banning of Off Road Vehicles in the Tellico River watershed seems to have already had beneficial results. Tellico River clears much faster after rains and the numbers of mussels in the lower river have increased dramatically. This should help aquatic insect populations and have benefits for trout spawning.

TWRA cold water biologist Jim Habera reported that several wild trout streams in the southern districts of the Cherokee National Forest have not made much of a recovery from the drought of 2007-2008. Water levels have recovered, but high water levels during spawning periods have hampered reproduction. Trout populations are higher now than they were immediately after the drought, but far from what they were previous. He fully expects populations to make a full recovery when water conditions normalize.

Clinch River -  Jim Habera reports that the slot limit on the Clinch seems to have had impressive results. Trout in the 14″ – 20″ size range are at a record density. Slot limits have had mixed results in the past, but this is by far the best result they have ever seen.

Clinch River trout in this size range are more common than ever before

South Holston River – Jim Habera reported that the number of fish in the slot limit was nearly as low now as when it was first imposed. However, that comes after several years of higher populations in that size range. Right now there is a year class of fish missing from the river, almost surely the result of a bad spawn several years back. Every year those fish will be missed less as successive generations grow. On the bright side, the overall number of 9″ – 12″ trout in the river is at an all time high. This sets up for good numbers of large fish in the next couple of years.

South Holston brown trout are more numerous than ever, but currently a little smaller than previous years

Hiwassee River -  This is the first year of delayed harvest regulations on the river and the removal of the “Trophy Section”. This was done because water temperatures played a much larger role in fish populations and growth rates than angling pressure. The most accessible areas with the most angling pressure also received the most stocking. The former Trophy Section had extremely limited access and light angling pressure. That also meant it received very light stocking and also had the fewest fish. Light angling pressure often leads to larger populations and larger trout, but this was not the case here. Trout populations and sizes never showed any benefit from the previous regulations. Sampling will be done on the river this year to see how the seasonal catch and release regulations affect the population over the course of the year.

Caney Fork -  This middle Tennessee tailwater has seen an explosion in trophy trout populations. A slot limit was imposed on brown trout several years ago with positive results. Last season a 13 pound brown trout was captured in a TWRA population sample. Regulations have been deemed so successful that catch and release regulations have been imposed on brown trout up to 24″ and rainbow and brook trout also have a 14″-20″ slot limit protecting fish in that size range.

There is very little to do in the way of set up since there is no reel or fly line. We took two rods, a 13′ Ayu and a 12′ Iwana and used to different style leaders. The first leader was the furled style with a few feet of tippet material. This rig cast beautifully on both rods but was a little long for the area we were fishing.

We made leaders with Tenkara level line, nothing more than hard monofilament and added some tippet material. As light as this was the rods still cast the flies very nicely and accurately. I can say with complete confidence that anyone who can fly cast will find Tenkara very easy to pick up. It’s probably easier for those who have never fly fished, but like a fly rod, Tenkara demands a light touch.

We fished with both dry flies and nymphs. As you might expect, the nymphs did better since it’s January, but Charity did hook a fish on an Elk Caddis. There were good numbers of Early Brown Stoneflies laying eggs on the water and Charity found one enthusiastic riser to take her fly.

Our only problem came when it was time to land fish, and it was primarily because of our inexperience with these long rods. Every time we hooked a fish we hung the rods in overhanging branches. We’ve used 8′-9′ fly rods on these streams as long as we can remember and are accustomed to keeping them out of the trees. The extra few feet was no problem during casting, just during the excitement of hooking fish.

I can tell these rods will work superbly on larger trout streams around the Smoky Mountain region like Little River, Tellico River, Deep Creek and others. Tight streams like Jake’s Creek, Little Cataloochee, and Chasteen Creek that flow through rhododendron tunnels are probably not well suited for this. These streams are tight enough to challenge most fly fishers with much shorter rods and require a fair number of bow and arrow casts. I’m sure we’ll eventually become very comfortable handling fish on these longer rods, but for now we’re going to stick to the bigger waters to gain some experience.

I am very excited to try Tenkara in a number of spots, though. The extra rod length coupled with the all monofilament line will make it much easier to achieve a good drift in countless locations. It also allows you to stay further back from the fish in pocket water like we have in the Smokies. The ultra light, extra sensitive tips on these rods also make them excellent for tight line nymphing or wet flies. Even those who have always relied on strike indicators could probably do pretty well tight lining a nymph on a Tenkara rod.

We plan to continue using these rods and keep you posted on our progress.

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Here is a time lapse video from yesterday of the sunrise that foretold there was some weather on the way. You can tell something is up by looking at the motion of the clouds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s to hoping for dryer weather…

Dragging weighted nymphs through a deep pool on a mild winter day in the Smokies

Smoky Mountain streams got relatively high over the weekend and will certainly rise today. You can track stream levels throughout the Smoky Mountain region on our website. This is extremely useful to figure out whether or not a stream is worth fishing so you might want to book mark the page for future reference.

Fortunately the streams don’t stay high for more than a day or two and will be fishing when the water falls. In the meantime, conditions are prime for tying flies or reading books.

Fill ‘em up!