John Hicks
07-22-2007, 05:27 AM
Went to the Watauga with Jason Baker yesterday and took my nephew on his first float trip. After being plagued with trailer light trouble and all kinds of other crap we were on the water at noon. Spent a while getting my nephew into the groove with fishing from a boat. It seems that the Tennessee Department of Wildlife decided to stock the river with 70,000 brook trout this year. every were you looked it was these 6-7" brookies darting this way and that. Pulled into a back eddy and let Derek do some exploring up river while Jason and I hit the fish hard were two channels come to gather. pulled in quite a few nice Little brookies and shook the morning off. The middle of the float was pretty unproductive until we got to the area of the river everyone calls the caddis riffle. It is a long slick about 2-4" deep and about a 1/8 mile long. The boats were all stacked up in this section and for good reason. The fish were sipping and splashing risers like crazy. Caught several more fish from the boat and Derek caught his first fish from a boat. Got to try out my new pentax optio. The boats cleared out in front of us so we pulled over and decided to wet wade and sight fish to risers. Not a whole lot of luck with this as the fish weren't keyed in on anything we had. Threw on a soft hackle and started swinging for them. It was like clock work about every cast to every other cast fish on. Jason and I were hooking them like we were swinging crack through Marion Barry's office on a Friday afternoon. After about 30 minutes of just nuts fishing the water started coming up and fast. We boated back up and headed down river. Stopped in a few other places, managed to get the anchor stuck and freed. Overall it was a great day on the water.
Well I tried to upload pictures but the site is having technical difficulties. I'll try to add pictures later.
Well I tried to upload pictures but the site is having technical difficulties. I'll try to add pictures later.