Georgia Fly Fishing Blog

Posted By Kent Klewein on December 7, 2009

Despite our best efforts to pull off a great fishing trip on the South Holston and Watauga River this past week, we fell a little short due to constraints out of our control.  We arrived to a brutal cold-front for our first day of the fishing trip.  And with really nasty weather arriving Wednesday we drank some beers and debated on where we should float the first day.  The forecast was calling for heavy rain and 35 to 40mph winds with gusts of 60 mph (holy s**t we thought) for Wednesday.  After what seemed like hours we finally agreed to start off floating the South Holston, and take our chances on having the Watauga being blown out our second day.

We woke up to brisk temps and frost as we hooked up the drift boat and hit the road to the TVA dam put-in on the South Holston.  We started our float around 10:30am and Louis wacked a decent brown right off the bat with one of his signature streamers he ties.  I was on the oars and Brad fished his 90 degree tandem nymph rig with anticipation of hooking into a big brown.  We were stoked we got into fish right off the bat, but I was a little leery of the early success since many slow fishing days in the past had started off this way.

A few miles into the float BWO’s started hatching and fish started rises pretty regularly.  It didn’t take very long for Brad to trade in his nymph rig for a dry/emerger rig.  Shortly after he started landing trout on his sulpher/bwo emerger rig and Brad was like a kid in a candy store.  Despite Louis’s early streamer success in the morning the streamers were not producing much action.  He was getting some light nips and chases but the trout weren’t very eager to devour his offering.  Being the streamer fanatic that Louis is, and the encouragement I kept giving him about the big browns in the stream, he carried on with non-stop casts and strips for most of the day.

Eventually the BWO hatch tuckered out and we were forced to re-rig the nymph rig.  This time we rigged up a double egg rig and started landing some trout.  It was my turn to fish and I put on a sweet streamer that works great for big trout as well as stripers and bass.  The browns liked it and would swim 360′s around the fly especially when I paused the strip, but they still just didn’t seem to want to eat a streamer.  I did have a huge brown half way into the float that tried to eat my streamer three different times but my hook failed to connect.  It would have been a trip maker for sure.  I estimated it well over twenty inches.

The second half of the day resulted in very slow fishing with the temperatures dropping and wind picking up.  We ended up landing around fifteen fish that day.  We had some pretty sweet fish but nothing huge.  It wasn’t what we were looking for but December days are always hit or miss, especially when your dealing with high water.

Second Day of Fishing or Should I say our two hour soaking.

Wednesday we woke up to some serious wind and had no choice but to wade fish on the Watauga River.  We hit the river behind our cabin rental for a couple hours and all of us landed a few trout.  Although they weren’t huge they all had perfect fins and great colors.  Louis was too busy fishing to stop and shoot any photos of them.  All of them came on eggs nymphing.  For those of you who have not waded the Watauga before, get ready for some slippery rocks when you get over there.  The only thing that I can compare it to is the lower Nantahala River during non-generation.  The Watauga River is best fished floating from a boat and we just didn’t have safe conditions to due that so we packed up and headed back down to Georgia.

Day Three of Fishing

Our Best Day of Fishing, and it came on our Home Stream, the Toccoa River

As originally planned we floated the Toccoa River thursday.  We were excited to fish it since the TVA had been generating for the past two weeks solid practically.  We loaded the drift boat and began our day of fishing rigged up the same as we did on both the South Holston and Watauga.  First, second, and third cast we hooked up and landed a trout.  They came so quick I just kept them in the net for a quick threesome photo.  We landed several more fish of which most had perfect full white-tipped fins.  It was really good to see the fish biting and us catching respectful fish on the Toccoa River.  Especially since the latest DNR data that was compiled this past month stressed that the Toccoa River needs better bio mass to produce a quality trout fishery.

As we moved downstream the fishing slowed up some but then the Blue Winged Olives started coming off and the trout started rising.  We rigged up our dry/dropper and we immediately started catching fish.  It was so great to see the bugs coming off and the trout inhaling them off the surface.  For about two hours we had some pretty darn good dry fly fishing.  For December, you really can’t complain , I really hope the bwo’s continue to come off.  It makes for some sweet fishing.

Louis took the oars as Brad and I switched back to nymphs and streamers.  The sun was getting low with the temperatures starting to drop, and we knew the hatch was done for the day.  Louis positioned the boat very nicely and we both made our presentations.  BAMM!, fish on and it was big.  Brad hooked up with a big fish with his nymph rig and we netted and released the rainbow.  Quickly after I bent the road over and we had another big fish on.

We floated down the river a ways and bamm, Louis hooked up with a very nice rainbow that nailed his streamer.  Again a few hundred yards further down we hooked up with another big-gun.  A couple others we fought but they spit the hook before we could get them in.  We just looked at each other and said damn, why did we drive ten hours the last two days to trout fish when the best fishing was right hear on our home waters .  We ended up with around twenty-five fish landed with several more that should have been landed.  Bottom-line, it was a great way to end the trip.  Days like this make me want to round up the representatives in charge of our trout streams like Eddy in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and make them protect our coldwater fisheries.  If anyone is taking gift ideas, that’s one for ya .

Some more photos from the float on the Toccoa River.

Click on the Photos for Larger Views

Give me a call or email for a guided float trip down the Toccoa River.  I’m very much looking forward to getting you on the river and into the fish.

Keep it Reel,

Capt. Kent Klewein

Reel Job Fishing, LLC

www.kent-klewein.com

info@kent-klewein.com

770-330-7583

Categories: Fly Fishing, Louis Cahill Photography
Tags: Brad Wayne, fly fishing blog, Fly Fishing Guide, Kent Klewein, Louis Cahill Photography, Reel Job Fishing, South Holston River, Toccoa River, Trout Fishing GA, Trout Fishing TN, Watauga River