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Good day on a Middle Tennessee river
Yesterday was cool enough to merit its own post IMO, so I'm throwing this up rather than adding to the 2019 at a glance thread. I've been doing a lot of stream fishing around here for about 20 years. Everything freestone is warm water, with smallmouth bass at the top of the gamefish pyramid. I mostly fished in these streams with a spinning rod the first few years, but gradually tried them on the long rod, and about 6-7 year ago went to fly fishing 100% of the time. It has been strictly a do it yourself learn on the stream experience though because warm water fly fishing hasn't been much of a thing around here, though that is gradually changing, so there are very few guides in this part of the country who focus on stream fishing, other than in tailwaters for trout. Last summer though I heard of a guide here doing it, James Johnsey who owns Tennessee on the Fly with his wife Amy. Yesterday, I finally got out with him after a couple of trips cancelled due to rain or unexpected life commitments on my part.
We had a really good day. Fairly early on, I stuck a nice river smallmouth. This was 14-15 inches and fat. I catch a few of these every year, but that's right around the top end of what I have caught on the fly rod. Good work out on a 6 weight.
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One of the interesting things about fishing these rivers though is that they have a lot of different species in them. My buddy and I caught 8 different species just yesterday. Here, not long after the first big bass, i get into the pooper game with my first carp ever, a big grassy that I caught sight fishing with a popping bug that was not quite buoyant enough to float.
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Onto another species, this guy is a rock bass, or what is commonly called a redeye around these parts. They give you the most exciting 6 second fight you can imagine and then roll over for you to drag them in to release. Little guys--they normally top out at around 10 inches. "How's the fishin?" "Ahh, ok, but I'm mostly just catching redeyes." This little feller was probably 6-7 inches.
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But, at least on this day, the best thing about a redeye, is that a 19 inch smallmouth might eat the bastard while you have him hooked. That picture above is after the guide had used a pair of hemostats to grab the rock bass by the tail that was sticking out of the smallie's mouth to extricate him and drop him in the river where he was trying to figure out his Jonah experience. We all saw the big guy come out and swipe at him hard, but he didn't quite get the eat, so he came back, and the guide was yelling "let her eat him, let her eat him". "Letting her eat him" is not really one of the angling skills I have developed, so I just stood there and held the rod, peering down into the water where there seemed to be a helluvalot more than a 7 inch redeye. So, I just slowed started taking in line hoping not to pull the little guy from the big guy's mouth, and it worked. It really wasn't that much of a fight. Just a lot of weight. I guess it would be like trying to wrestle someone while piggy backing your little brother, though, so not to take anything away from the smallie, here she is.
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So that was pretty cool, and we moseyed on down the river, catching quite a few more smallmouth and throwing in a few spotted bass for good measure. Then we reached the end of that river and floated into another, which was pretty close to the takeout, and I got really happy.
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Because Striper Happened.
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That was a new species for me too.
And then Striper Happened again.
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Good day on the river. Oh yeah, my friend caught some fish too.
