Low Water on the Davidson

The water level has dropped to summer type flows on the D.  It makes fishing the hatchery section different for sure.  The fish are often in shallow spots, flouro leaders may snag rocks as they sink, and the clear water makes the fish spookier and more selective.  Despite the tougher conditions, my buddy Matt Sloan still caught fish on the D his first time fishing it.

Matt with nice rainbow from above the humble hole.

 Booyah!  15 or 16 inch rainbow.  Just above the humble hole again.

We caught fish on the typical midges as well as stoneflies, emerging caddis, and terrestrials.  It was tough fishing at times, but we landed some nice fish, a couple pushing 20 inches.  Terrestrial season is officially full tilt.

Green Drakes and Bed Bugs

This post is about a new fly pattern based off of an ever increasingly present bug.

The bed bug.  I caught a 8lb brook trout off of the blue ridge parkway on a blue line with this fly. JK. Thats bs. However, I did get to see maybe the biggest variety of "trout flies" flying around earlier this week.

Monday I fished way over in Macon County and saw a very wide variety of bugs on the water. I even got to see my first green drake, and fish a green drake hatch for about 3 hours.

The Legendary Green Drake

The green drake is a massive mayfly, that has been just a legend to me for years.  Ofcourse, i didn't have any green drake dries, so I threw the biggest mayfly I had in the box ( a big irresistible adams), and managed only 5 or 6 little wild rainbows over the course of the hatch.  Their guts were HUGE from eating the drakes, and my buddy later told me I should have tried a green wooly booger, because they were probably keying on emergers.  I did have green wooly boogers, and that could have been the ticket.

Here are some of the other bugs flying around Tuesday.

I saw tan, black, and molted caddis flies

Little Yellow Sallie Stoneflies

Sulfur Mayflies

Big Tan Stoneflies

I also saw a number of different midges, some carrying a bubble like egg sac that was 50 times the size of the midge. 

It was in the low 60s until about 2, then the temp started dropping fast into the 40's.  I saw the sallies and sulfurs when it was warmer, and then the drakes starting coming off as the clouds increased and the temp fell.  The caddis were sporadic all day.  There was moderate to good surface feeding through out the day, the heaviest with the drakes between 4 and 6.

I managed no more than 10 trout, all wild bows no bigger than 10 inches.  Most were closer to 5 or 6 inches.  It sure is beautiful country in the far west of the state.  My camera battery was dead, so no pics!

Tight lines all my ninjas.

Davidson River Video

Some video of me and a couple of buddies fishing the D.  

 

An old friend from college, Ryan Kraska, and I got together to camp and fish last Friday night.  We fished most the day Saturday, and were joined by another friend, Sink Kimmel.  Saturday was a fairly productive fishing day, and we all landed and long distance released a good number of fish.  Sink landed the biggest of the day (a 22'' brown), as seen in the still shot at the end of the video. And he caught it on top water!  The video and pics were just a few of the fish we were able to capture digitally. Stones, midges, and some terrestrials produced fish. 

For the record, Ryan Kraska cooks a mean bratwurst.

Delayed Harvest

Bows

 and browns

Dana Graves and I went up to fish the Delayed Harvest section of the Green River Wednesday.  The Tuxedo hydro station is running a different schedule, and there was no generated water on this section of the Green between 11am and 9pm.  It was mostly sunny, and probably in the upper 70's.  There was a bit of action on topwater, but not enought to convince me to fish dries.  We nymphed the whole day.   If we had more boss hog stone flies, we could have caught fish ALL DAY LONG! 

Go see Heath Cartee at the Saluda location of Curtis Wright Fly Shop (or the Curtis Wright locations in Weaverville or Asheville) for some Boss Hog nymphs.  The Saluda location is the first fly shop on the way into the mountains on I-26 from Charlotte or Upstate SC.

We lost all the boss hogs we had.  We caught fish on san juans, bitch creeks, and on other stone flies as well.

Dana with a nice brown trout.

Those Delayed Harvest fish will be gone soon after the first Saturday in June, so get out there and catch them while you can.  The Green has some larger angry ones.