First fishing trip of 2008

The weather finally broke this past weekend and I went down to Burkesville on Sunday to see if there were still any trout in the Cumberland, after the long winter. In past years, I've done surprising well in March. The river level was 3/7k cfs, which is high enough to launch a boat and low enough to wade. Since my Gheenoe is having winter maintenance done on it, I decided to strap the canoe to the roof of my car and put my waders in the trunk. At the boat launch I slid the canoe into the river and paddled across to the stone beach adjacent to the launch and waded downstream over on that side. At 11 a.m. when I started fishing there were no bugs flitting about. The sun was shining and the air temperature was rising toward 70 degrees, but the trees and vegetation along the bank were still in winter hibernation. A brief thaw-out wasn't going to change that. I had a double bead-head stone fly at the end of my seven weight sink-tip line from last year and decided to leave that on and see what happened. About twenty minutes after I entered the water I had a solid strike and soon brought to hand the brown trout you see above. That was a good start to the day (and this year's fishing season). My experience on the Cumberland has been that fishing is best later on in the afternoon, so I was pretty encouraged at the prospects for the rest of the day.

I continued to work my way downstream. Occasionally I'd get a short strike from a trout on the stonefly. I tied on a second, smaller fly to the hook-bend of the nymph. I'd gotten some advice last year that a "stinger" like this will often snare a fish that just misses the larger fly.

But as the day wore on, the strikes slowed down. I did hook a rainbow that rose high enough in the water for me to see its silver body and red stripe. But it broke off almost as soon as I caught site of it. In the early afternoon I did see a few caddis flies and also some bwo's (little black-winged bugs that alighted briefly on the water.) But these didn't bring any trout to the surface. I switched to a wooly-booger for a little while, and then did some nymphing below an indicator with my five weight rod. I know the fish were out there. But at this time of year I'm guessing there's so little for them to eat, they're just hugging the bottom, trying to conserve energy, rather than move up and out and prowl the currents for food.

I looked at my photo albums for the past year and I can see now that my March trips to the Cumberland came later in the month. I remember two years ago I did surprisingly well on a day when snow was falling. But the date on the pictures from that trip is March 29. Given how cold it's been this year for the past two months, it's not surprising that the fish are still not in a feeding mode this early.

Nevertheless, the weather yesterday stayed gorgeous throughout the day. Normally at this time of year when you get sunshine and warm temperatures they're accompanied by high winds blowing that warm air up from the southwest. But yesterday, there were only occasional gusts. All an all, an unbeatable day, weatherwise, for early March.

Around four o'clock I paddled back to the boat launch side of the river and tried casting along the shore over there. But nothing was happening. I left the water a bit earlier than usual. It's a long drive for me there and back for one ten inch trout and a few short strikes. But after three months of not being able to fish, the effort was worth it.

Rainbow Run, 9/14/07

Got lucky with the weather yesterday. Doesn't happen very often and I should remember yesterday, the next time things don't turn out so well; that is, I should remember that the weather doesn't always turn out for the worst.

I'd been planning all week to fish Rainbow Run downstream from the Rock House on the Cumberland River. The Army Corps of Engineers website had flow through Wolf Creek dam down to 600 cfs, which was even lower than the record low-flows of earlier in the summer. This would mean I'd be able to wade all the way down the gravel beach at RR and then to the sunken timber area below it. And since I'd be going on a weekday after Labor Day, when a lot of people give up on fishing, I'd have the place pretty much to myself.

Fishing RR is a lot of work. It means three trips down the steep ravine from the parking lot, then across a couple hundred yards of loose shale before reaching the river, and then back up to my vehicle again: once for the canoe, once for the paddles and fishing rods, once for the big box that holds my life jacket, fly-tackle box, seat-back for the canoe and various other things I deem necessary to have with me. Once the canoe is loaded and I can push off into the river, it's a mile-long paddle down to RR. At 56 I'm starting to wonder how many more years before this seems like too much trouble. But for now I'm willing and able to do what it takes.

Back to the weather...well, on Thursday night the forecast for southern Kentucky was calling for a 90% chance of rain the following day. It's only been raining around here once every several weeks since March. But apparently Friday was going to be the "once" in several weeks. I started considering an alternate plan: maybe I'd take my alternate boat, my Gheenoe, out on the Kentucky River. The Kentucky is a lot closer to where I live than the Cumberland. And if it did rain, I would have wasted 45 minutes rather than 2 1/2 hours getting to my fishing spot. Also, I don't like being caught a good distance from my vehicle if a thunderstorm blows up, as would be the case at RR.

But when I awoke on Friday morning I discovered the rain had come during the night and weather.com suggested that it was already moving on. Skies were supposed to clear as the day went on. So I decided to take a chance and go down to the Cumberland after all. As I was driving south, the rain tapered off; it had completely stopped by the time I reached the Rock House. In fact, conditions looked ideal, from an angler's point of view: overcast skies, air temperature in the 60's, no wind, a bit of mist rising off the river.





As I approached RR from upstream I saw trout swirling in the slow-moving water just above the spot where the bottom shallows out and the current picks up. I tossed my bead-head Prince nymph out ahead of my boat, hoping one of those trout would take it. None did, so I pulled over to the top of the beach and donned my waders.

I'd been planning to hike straight down to the end of the beach and get in the water where the sunken timber begins. But a large trout swirled just off shore where I stood. So I waded out and began casting at the top of the swift water. A brown trout attacked the nymph on my third or fourth cast. I tried to set the hook too fast, so the fish came off, but the quick strike promised good action ahead.

Well...it was an hour before I had another strike. This time I brought the ten inch fish to hand. Aside from a house fly or two that landed on my hand and a mosquito that buzzed in my ear, there were no bugs on or near the surface of the water. Back in June, I'd seen mayflies and caddis and midges sporadically throughout the day, and these would bring the trout up to feed as the nymphal stage of these bugs rose to the surface. With each trip I've taken since then, there have been less of these bugs in evidence. Yesterday, I saw no mayflies or caddis at all, just an occasional midge. That undoubtedly accounts for why trout were surfacing maybe once every 10-15 minutes, instead of more or less continuously, as they had been earlier in the summer.

I did eventually work my way down to the submerged timber, where I caught another brown trout.




It had been clear to me as soon as I'd gotten out of the canoe that the flow was greater than 600 cfs, no matter what the ACE website said. It was more in the 1,000 cfs range, as it had been earlier in the summer. This meant that I could not wade very far down into the sunken timber area. The current gets quite swift there and the bank is lined with large logs and stumps that would make it hard indeed to climb out of the water. Once you're in the water, the only way out is the way you came in, which means a mighty slog up-stream in waist-deep water running at five miles an hour or so. That's too much for me, so only waded a few yards downstream before turning back.






I was discouraged by the lack of action, although I realized it was caused by the lack of food to put the trout in a feeding mood. I hiked back upstream to my canoe and had lunch. Afterward, I tried another float in my canoe over the fish that swirl at the approach to RR. I paddled quietly upstream along the bank, so as not to disturb them. I threw my nymph and indicator out ahead of my canoe about 25 feet and then allowed the canoe to float slowly on the current. Just as my indicator approached the area where the fish were, they stopped swirling. I could not have been quieter in my approach. Still, they somehow knew I was coming. Maybe they saw my canoe itself. In future I should try approaching these fish with much more fly line out ahead of me. Twenty-five feet apparently just isn't enough distance between my canoe and my fly.

When I pulled the canoe up on shore a second time I noticed that a sunken log that I had floated over earlier was now mostly out of the water. The amount of water coming downstream was diminishing, whereas I had expected it to be constant all day long.

I worked my way down the beach another time without raising a fish. When I reached the flooded timber it seemed I could get a bit further downriver than earlier. But by then it was already four o'clock and the sun was down behind the trees. When you start to lose the light, you don't want to commit yourself to a hard push back upriver. Had it been a couple hours earlier, I would have explored another couple hundred yards downstream.

I'd been drifting the Prince Nymph all day and not doing all that well on it. I believe a Prince imitates the immature form of mayflies and I hadn't seen a mayfly all day. I switched over to a Copper John, also a nymph imitation but one with a bit more weight and which thus sinks deeper in the water column.

I'd been fishing with the Copper John for twenty minutes or so when I had a strike. The fish immediately began pulling line off my reel. I saw it moving upstream beyond where I stood. It was a large fish, somewhere in the "slot" (between 15 and 20 inches.) I was glad to see it bucking the current, as that ought to tire it out. Eventually, it slid back downstream. I'm using 6X tippet these days, which is 3 1/2 pound test, so I had to be careful. I tightened, then loosened the drag on my reel, not sure where it ought to be set for a fish this large. The fish seemed to be able to take line at will, with the drag on the light setting I'd been using. The fish couldn't break the line with that drag setting. But I also wasn't able to pull it very far back toward me. Every time I recovered a few yards of line, the fish would head back downstream.

I did eventually winch the fish up within a few feet of where I stood in the strong current. I had recovered all of my fly-line and now there was just leader and tippet between the tip of my rod and the fish's mouth. I grabbed the handle on my net and tried to guide the fish toward the net-opening. I pulled the trout over the net but this net is meant for 10-12 inch trout, not one that might have been twice that size. The fish slid over the opening and now dove down straight between my legs. I reached down for the tippet but couldn't find it. The water was too high and the current too strong for any fancy maneuvers to untangle the tippet from my leg. I slogged over toward the shoreline, not sure if I was dragging the fish with me or if it was already gone. By the time I was able to reach down and feel for the tippet, the fish was no longer there. It had pulled off the fly, which was now lodged in the back of my boot. Well, so it goes. The fish had been a rainbow, probably around 18-20 inches. In retrospect, I should have played it a bit longer, so that it wouldn't have had that last burst of energy to shoot down between my legs. But I would have released the fish anyway, after taking its picture and reviving it in shallow water, so now it was back in the river where it belonged. I just hope it had enough strength left to right itself before the current knocked it sideways and it drowned from lack of body control.

I fished another 30 minutes or so, then headed back to the canoe for the paddle upstream to the Rock House.

I would have liked more action. But apparently this is how the fishing will be for the rest of the fall--fewer and fewer strikes, but still a chance at some nice fish. Not sure if I'll get back to RR again this year. I'll have another weekday off next month and in November. If I can, I'll make an effort to get back there.

Cedar Creek Lake 9-2-07

Haven't posted in a couple months but that doesn't mean I haven't been fishing. Just haven't had the time to write up my trips.

I fished Cedar Creek Lake alone about six weeks ago and did OK. It's been hot and dry for months now and the rivers and streams have been suffering from the drought. We did have a slight cool-down over the past few days, so I thought it made sense to try a lake like Cedar Creek when sitting in a boat all day wouldn't be quite the ordeal it would have been when temperatures were over 100 degrees, as they were recently.

Of course, I'm not one to set my alarm for four in the morning in order to be out on the water at dawn. I realize this hurts my chances for catching fish by not being out there when they're most likely to bite. But fishing is supposed to be fun. And getting up in the dark is not fun. Besides, I usually do manage to catch at least a few fish no matter where I go and no matter what time I get there.

That said, my buddy Jim and I were backing my Gheenoe, which I've named the Cap'n Dan (after my father), down into the water a little bit after 9 a.m. There was virtually no wind and overhead a nice overcast in the sky that might keep the temperature down a bit. We saw a few fish surfacing, which suggested maybe some topwater lures would work today.

I drove the boat straight to the spot that I'd found six weeks ago, when I'd caught a bunch of bass. It's the place you see in the lower of the two photographs above. There's a steep drop-off at the bank which leads to a small channel between the bank and a stand of submerged timber. For whatever reason, bass seem to find this a congenial spot to hang out.

I started out with my reliable rubber worm, rigged "wacky" style. Within a few casts I had an eight inch bass in the boat. Jim was using some kind of rubber worm/jig/spinner contraption he had bought for the occasion of our trip. He didn't stick with it very long. Within ten minutes he had switched back to the crawdad lure on which he's caught many a smallmouth bass and bluegill in Elkhorn Creek.

We moved on from this spot and fished some flooded timber around the bend from our first spot. By mid-morning the wind had sprung up and was pushing us around the lake. We spent the next several hours looking for shelter from it. Cedar Creek is full of submerged timber that must provide great fish habitat. For some reason, though, I've yet to catch very much amongst the tree-trunks protruding from the surface. Maybe I just haven't been casting at the time the bass choose to hang out there. We found a few back corners of the lake that looked prime for a floating Rapala. I switched over to one from my rubber worm for a few minutes but didn't attract any takers.

It had been a while since either of us had caught anything and with the afternoon wearing on, I decided to go back to our first spot. The wind had shifted by then such that the bank in that area provided a break from it. We were able to lie off the bank more or less stationary and cast toward it or to the left or right of it. Jim now was using a curly-tailed jig and bass started hitting it. He caught three in this area, plus a small crappie. I put two more bass in the boat with my worm. The fish in this spot aren't very big but there do seem to be a lot of them. Cedar Creek is being managed by the state as a trophy bass fishery--the minimum size limit for largemouth is a whopping 20 inches. I've yet to catch anything much bigger than half that size. But a few small fish in the boat are much better than a skunk.

We fished until around four o'clock, when the heat started getting to us. It's quite possible that fishing when I do in the heat of the day, from 9 until 5, will always prevent me from getting into sizable fish and big numbers. Cedar Creek does get a lot of attention and I wouldn't be surprised if all those boats zooming back and forth across it that you see on a weekend make the larger fish wary. But I do put in my time in on the water and maybe one day this fall I'll catch the conditions just right. Maybe some weekday in October or November will be the time to pull a twenty incher into the boat.

I'm always interested in reactions to these posts. You can email me at jimw@qx.net.

July 2, 2007

Went to the Rainbow Run area of the Cumberland, a mile or so below the Rock House. This is the third time I've fished that area in the past month. Each time I've gone, I've learned a little bit more about how to fish it under the present low-water conditions.

My plan this time was similar to last week's: put-in at the RH, paddle straight down to RR, fish that area all day, then paddle back to the RH for the take-out at the end of the day. The only modifications I made were to wear my waders (I got too cold last time, when I wet-legged it) and spend more time fishing the deadfall area on river right (shown above)), which begins at the end of the upper "rocky beach" section. I had my best luck last time fishing the deadfall area and figured I'd do better if that's where I spent most of my time. I also had bought some size 18 bead-head brassy nymphs that I hoped might entice all those swirling trout that had mostly ignored my somewhat larger prince nymph last week. I tied the brassy to the prince, so I'd be presenting the trout with a choice.

Of course, conditions are never identical, from one day to the next. Last week it was mostly sunny and warm; yesterday was somewhat cooler, with an overcast sky. And while last week I pretty much had the place to myself, yesterday I had a lot of company.

My plan to fish the dead-fall area had to be postponed, as there already were several anglers casting just above it when I arrived. They'd drifted down from upstream in a canoe and were having quite a good time together on the water. I didn't see any fish being caught but heard the guffaws produced by their banter. I suspect there was a cause and effect relationship between the noise they were making and the fish they weren't catching.

I thought I'd fish the upper section of RR and wait until they moved on. Meanwhile, three more anglers in a canoe paddled downriver and waded out into the water between me and the first bunch of guys. They were a quieter group. I noticed that only one of them was wearing waders and figured they wouldn't last in the water too long. They were followed by a solo angler in a jon boat with an outboard who apologized to me for the racket he was making when his steel hull bumped various underwater objects.

It wasn't until mid-afternoon that I got to fish the dead-fall area. I wasn't too concerned, though, because the trout hadn't really gotten active last week until around three o'clock, when conditions had triggered the modest hatch of aquatic insects that had caused the trout to swirl near the surface.

I caught a ten-inch brown trout while casting toward one of the fallen trees. I'm now pretty well confirmed in my belief that the most effective way to set the hook on these fish is to keep a loose line during the drift, then simply raise the rod-tip when a fish strikes and allow the minimal resistance of the drag on the reel to set the hook. Five X tippet, I've learned, just will not stand up to a tight-line hook-set on these aggressive fish.

That first fish proved to be it for quite a while. I had a take or two but the trout were not in feeding mode. As I was feeling a bit chilly and my stomach was beginning to rumble, I decided to hike back to where I'd tied up my canoe, at the head of the rocky beach. I ate lunch, warmed up a bit; then, just for the heck of it, decided to try drift-fishing from the canoe for a bit. Trout were showing themselves pretty regularly in the slow water just above RR.

I myself have pretty much given up on drift-fishing a fly from a moving canoe, although in theory it ought to be an effective way to fish. If you get the fly out 20-30 feet from the boat, you can get a very natural drift. But it's not easy to manage your fly line, your fly and the orientation of the canoe while coasting downstream. When you cast a fly rod from a canoe, you sit so low to the water that if you try to extend your line for a long cast, it tends to drop down into the water on the back-cast. And since a canoe has no keel, the bow never stays straight downstream; it's always falling off to one side or the other, so you need to set the rod down, and pick up the paddle to keep the bow pointed downstream at your fly. Having done that, you barely have time to pick up the rod before it's time to set it down again and grab the paddle for another re-orientation.

In fact, that's what I was doing--trying to set the paddle down quietly and pick up the rod again--when I discovered that, not only couldn't I see my day-glow orange strike indicator in the water downstream, my floating fly-line was being pulled below the surface. I lifted up the rod to find a heavy fish at the end of my line. It was hooked quite solidly, despite the fact that I had done nothing to set the hook--I'd been preoccupied with the paddle. The fish pulled several yards of line off my reel, which I was able to recover pretty quickly. As I tightened the line a bit, the fish began towing my boat around in circles. Soon I caught sight of the fish--no behemoth but a nice brown trout. My tippet and knots held and I was able to coax the fish toward my net. Once in the boat I estimated the fish at about fifteen inches. Not a keeper brown (they need to be over 20 inches on the Cumberland) but still a fish I consider pretty nice. For me, the best part was catching it while drifting in the canoe.

By the time I'd gotten that fish unhooked and released it back into the river, somewhat revived, the canoe had already drifted past the beginning of Rainbow Run. I paddled back upstream a few hundred yards to try another drift. Fish continued to show themselves every few seconds in various spots, but I had no more hits on either that drift or the one after that.

It was after three o'clock by then, and I was ready to hike back to the dead-fall area and see if activity would be picking up, as it done the previous week. Then, I'd caught some fish on the prince nymph but felt the trout were actually keying on something smaller rising up through the water column. I hoped the little brassy fly I'd attached to a bit of tippet coming off the hook bend of the prince nymph would do the trick.

Well, not really. I did hook what was probably another 15 inch trout. But it didn't stay hooked. I guess my loose-line hook-set technique isn't infallible. Around 4:15 I caught a small rainbow, which took the prince (the other two fish had gone after the brassy.) This third fish seemed to prove that I was in the right place, using the right flies and presenting them more or less properly. But the fish just weren't feeding aggressively.

Meanwhile, RR was getting crowded again. Two driftboats came past me and a couple guys in a boat with an outboard motored upstream, smacking the rocky bottom every so often. My enthusiam for staying on the river a bit longer began to wane. Last week I had headed back to the RH at 5 o'clock because I wasn't absolutely certain I wouldn't have trouble paddling the canoe upstream. Yesterday, knowing that wouldn't be a problem, I might have stayed a bit longer. But now it didn't seem worth it. When the outboard had come through, the trout in the dead-fall area had stopped swirling, so I hiked back to the head of the beach. I might have tried a couple more drifts through the slow water just above RR but a pair of canoes with very noisy two-cycle engines buzzed downstream when I reached my canoe. It would be a good while before the trout recovered from that commotion, so I got back in my canoe and paddled back upstream to the RH.

I think I've satisfied my temporary obsession with drifting nymphs at RR. With the water level as low as it is, the fish become just too spooky with so many people in the area. I saw about twice as many as I did the previous week, and several more power boats than I did then. When I try it again, it'll be on a Friday, or perhaps later in the fall, when I would hope to have the place to myself.

June 24, 2007

Didn't make up my mind about where to go yesterday until the very last minute--in fact, I was still thinking about it as I was driving south on 127 toward the Cumberland river. We're still in a drought, so the Elkhorn is pretty much bone dry. And I don't think the fish are very active on either the Kentucky River or the North Fork of the Elkhorn, either. So it was either the Cumberland or possibly the Clinch River in Tennessee. All last week I was thinking about my previous trip to the Cumberland between the Rock House and Winfrey's Ferry (see previous post.) I wanted to profit from what I had learned on that trip--mainly, that the best fishing was along Rainbow Run, just downstream of the Rock House, and that it was pretty much a waste of time to try to fish the whole river between the Rock House and Winfrey's. Better to concentrate on Rainbow Run and ignore the rest of the river. Based on the river flow I saw last week, I was pretty sure I could paddle my canoe down to RR, fish there all day, then paddle back upstream. If I could put my canoe in at the RH and then take it out there later in the day I could also save the 30 minutes or so it takes to drive my Forester to Winfrey's (so it would be there at the end of the day) and walk back to the RH, where my canoe would be waiting for me.

So that's what I'd pretty much decided to do as I drove south yesterday morning. But two thoughts were still nagging me: 1, the forecast called for a 40% chance of rain. And the overcast sky and high humidity I noted on my drive suggested I might get stuck down at RR in a thunderstorm, which has happened times to me before. It's no fun at all to be standing on a riverbank with lightning smashing all around. 2, I'd read a report that the trout were still doing OK in the Burkesville area. If I went to Traces and waded across the river from the boat ramp, I'd be close to my vehicle in case a storm blew up; plus, I'd get to try the "stinger" technique someone has suggested to me, namely, tie a small nymph to the hook bend of a streamer as a way of snaring those trout that come up to slash at the streamer but somehow avoid getting hooked.

In the end I turned off Route 127 at Route 55, which leads to the RH, rather than continuing on to Burkesville. Earlier in the week I'd bought half a dozen prince nymphs to try at RR and since that's really where I wanted to go, I decided to roll the dice and hope I'd get lucky with the weather.

When I pulled into the little parking area at the RH I was dismayed to see seven or eight vehicles already parked there. Of course, the previous time I'd been there it was a Friday, which was why I'd had the place mostly to myself. I hoped that maybe all the anglers who'd come from these vehicles were fishing in the RH area and hadn't taken canoes and kayaks down to RR.

I humped the canoe down the rocky trail that leads down to and then under the RH. When I came out on the stone beach I only saw a couple bank anglers still fishing a few yards upstream. That probably meant everyone was down at RR. But I was here now and would just have to see what I found when I got there.

I pushed off from the RH beach around 11 and paddled straight downriver toward RR. I wasn't going to waste time fishing between the two points, even though I passed over some large trout on the way. For my own peace of mind, however, I did make a test run back upstream after I'd gotten through the one narrow spot where I might have trouble later in the day, when I wanted to get back to the RH. With some vigorous paddling, I was able to do it.

As I came around the bend that would put me in sight of RR I expected to see a flotilla of boats, the progeny of those vehicles parked back at the RH. I did see two guys in a green Old Towne canoe casting toward the east bank of the river just upstream from RR but no one else. I beached the canoe at the head of the gravel shoreline that parallels RR and tied it to a fallen tree there. My plan was to tie a prince nymph below an indicator and let that rig precede me downstream, as I drifted in the canoe to the end of RR, then paddle back upstream and do it again. This was what I would have done on my previous trip if a storm hadn't pushed me off the river.

I wasn't seeing many fish swirling near the surface of the river as I floated over the gravel along RR. The further I allowed the canoe to drift downstream, the more work I'd have paddling back upstream later. Still, this is what I'd wished I'd been able to do last time, so I let the river take the canoe most of the way down RR--maybe half a mile or so--before giving up. I didn't have a single strike. I pivoted 180 degrees in the canoe and slogged back upstream. It took me 20 minutes of hard paddling but I was able to reach the head of the gravel beach that parallels RR. After last week's trip I had thought I'd want to do this over and over. But with no fish and and all that effort to get back upstream, I rejected that idea.

By then, the two guys in the canoe had floated down to RR, pulled their boat up onto the rocks and were wading out into the river to do some casting. I was ready to do some wading myself. I saw my waders in the bottom of the blue "stuff" box that I always take with me. But I was pretty warm from that 20 minute upstream paddle, and since I'd managed to do without waders on my previous trip, I decided I would just wet-leg it.

I fished the slow water just above RR with the nymph. Fish were swirling here and there, which was encouraging. But I had the feeling that none would touch what I was throwing toward them.

I hiked down the beach, well beyond the two anglers I'd passed earlier, until I reached the point where the rocky beach gives way to fallen trees. The current picks up here and the water deepens a bit. It's great-looking nymph water. It's just below this point that I had aborted my canoe drift a little while earlier and it was here that I had the toughest time paddling back upstream. As the water began to rise on my legs up to around mid-thigh, I began to have second thoughts about not wearing my waders. But I was soaking wet now and pulling waders over wet clothes doesn't help much. Within a few minutes I had a hard strike from a trout and forgot about being cold. The fish pulled line off my reel but as I began to put pressure on the fish my confidence grew that it was well-hooked and that all my various knots and my 5X tippet would hold. I had brought my small trout net with me, knowing I'd be fishing light tippets all day. The rainbow at the end of my line was almost too big for this net but eventually I slipped the net around it. It's the fish that you see at the head of this post. I'd estimate it at around 14-15 inches--for me, a very nice fish indeed.

Catching that fish was in itself good but I also felt confirmed in a technique I'd been thinking about since a trout had broken my line when it had struck the previous week. Everything I've ever read about nymphing for trout has advised snapping the rod back hard to set the hook when the indicator suddenly gets pulled below the surface. For that reason I've always kept a finger on my line against the cork rod-handle so that there would be no give in the line at all when a fish struck, thus insuring a hard hook-set when I reared back on the rod. Well, I've had a lot of fish break off this way at the hook set, but I thought it was the proper thing to do. But I've noticed that Cumberland trout always attack a fly aggressively--they smash at it, even the seven inch stockers. And what I finally learned is that a 5X tippet often will not stand up to a hard hook-set. So yesterday I tried keeping a bit of slack in the line at all times and my finger away from it along the rod-handle. That first fish pretty much hooked itself. When I felt the strike, I simply lifted the rod a bit and let the drag allow a bit of line to come off the reel. The hook-point on the prince nymph was ultra-sharp and, between that sharp hook and the trout's aggressive attack, the trout got hooked, stayed hooked, and never managed to snap the tippet.

I caught a couple more trout in the wooded area below the rocky beach. Meanwhile, two guys in a drift boat with a 8 hp outboard powered upstream right through the water I was fishing. I was a bit surprised to see anyone try running a powered boat up through that area. One guy stood at the front of the boat, calling directions to the guy on the motor at the back. The deepest water was where I was trying to fish, so I guess they had no choice. They pulled ashore about halfway up RR to wade. The two guys in the canoe drifted past me a few minutes later, followed by a party in an unpowered drift boat.

As I continued wading downstream, the water got deeper, until it was up close to my armpits. I was getting the "trembles" now from the cold. It was now getting on toward three o'clock and it seemed the right time to hike back up the beach, both to warm up and to eat my lunch, which was waiting for me back at my canoe.

As I walked along the edge of the river I saw that surface activity had really picked up--trout were swirling every few seconds or so. I postponed lunch a bit longer and cast to these fish. They ignored the prince nymph, so I switched to a size 20 zebra nymph. No response. I noticed a few brownish mayflies coming off the water. They might have been blue-wing olives (I'm not sure), so I put on an Adams for a few casts. Nothing. I've been in this situation many times before, when fish are clearly keying in on some aquatic protein rising up through the water column but I see no evidence of what it is on the surface.

I went back to the canoe, ate my lunch, warmed up a bit and thought about what to do. By then my leader was getting a bit tatty, so I changed to a brand-new one out of the package. It was around four o'clock and I had RR all to myself again, as everyone else had had to continue on around downstream to reach their take-out point at Winfrey's Ferry.

I walked back to the wooded area to finish the day. I went back to the prince nymph and caught two more trout. But it was clear that the prince wasn't imitating whatever it was the trout were keying on. Several times trout swirled near it without taking it. The two that I did hook only went after it because they were in a feeding mood and were ready to take anything that looked edible at that point. Thinking that whatever they were eating was smaller than my size 16 prince nymph, I tied a size 20 WD 40 to the hook bend of the prince. The fish ignored it.

So far I'd lucked out with the weather. But by five o'clock the sky to the north was darkening and the wind was picking up. I still had to make the paddle upstream back to the RH. I was 99% positive I could make it but if the Army Corps of Engineers had suddenly let out a bit more water from the dam upstream (as had happened to me once previously), and I had to make the long paddle around the horseshoe to reach Winfrey's Ferry, I wouldn't be off the river for at least a couple hours. The trout were still swirling but I felt like the prudent thing to do was to head back upstream.

It took me about 25 minutes to reach the RH from the head of RR, versus 15 minutes paddling downstream. But at least I got there. Then I had to carry the canoe back up to my vehicle. A branch got in my way on the narrow rocky path back up to the parking area and in trying to get around the branch, I lost my balance and the canoe fell over my head and shoulders. I got it righted and continued on up to the Forester. All the while I was thinking, This is way too much work and trouble. However, I'll know about that branch the next time I carry the canoe up that path, and maybe I could move the Forester a bit closer to it so they'll be less distance to carry it.

I'm already thinking about going back again next week. Now I know to forget the canoe drift but instead start wading in the wooded area below the rocky beach. I'll probably wear my waders next time, no matter how hot it is when I first put them on. I just wish I could figure out what I could use to imitate whatever it was those fish were chasing late in the afternoon.

June 16, 2007

It's been a couple years since I've done a Rock House-Winfrey's Ferry canoe trip on the Cumberland. But with all the uncertainty about the trout fishery in the Burkesville area, where I usually fish, I decided to try the middle stretch of the river. I've been reading reports of spectacular fishing in that area, because the river is so low and the trout therefore so exposed.

The Rock House-Winfrey's canoe run is pretty rugged for me--not because of the river itself but because it requires that I hump the canoe and my gear about 300 yards down a steep and rocky trail from my vehicle to the river. I then drive my vehicle to the take-out at Winfrey's and walk the mile and a half or so back to the bank near the Rock House where I've left my stuff where I can begin my trip.

I wasn't quite sure what condition I'd find the river in, as the Army Corps of Engineers is able to release very little water through Wolf Creek dam at the moment due to the current drought and the need to keep Lake Cumberland at the 680 foot level. But when I emerged through the Rock House with my canoe on my head and shoulders I found a good pool of water in which to start my trip downstream.





Once I put in, I floated past one wading angler whose car I'd noticed back at the RH parking area. I saw him pull a trout from the river and, as I paddled around behind him, I remarked that the river seemed a bit higher than I'd expected. He said that it had been lower last week.

I fished a little bit with spinning tackle along the limestone banks downstream of the RH. But my real goal was a long shoal called Rainbow Run, where I could get out of the canoe and cast with my five weight fly rod, about a mile below the RH. The main problem with Rainbow Run for me is that on a float around to Winfrey's Ferry it occurs near the beginning of the trip. I have always found it the most productive stretch on this part of the Cumberland. But no matter when I leave it, I've still got four or five miles of paddling to get to my take-out point. Even when the fishing is good, I'm thinking about the job still ahead of me to get back to my vehicle.

Rainbow Run is generally pretty crowded with other anglers. Not so yesterday. I had it completely to myself. The river level now is too low to allow boats with outboards to reach it from Winfrey's Ferry, which is the nearest boat ramp. Only canoes, kayaks, inflatables and possibly drift boats can set anglers on this stretch of the river. I beached my canoe and got out to wade with my five weight. Even if the air temperature is 90 degrees, the water is usually too cold to walk in without waders at this time of year. But now, because so little water is coming downstream from the dam, the temperature is in the low 60's. I had my waders with me yesterday but ended up wet-legging it all day. I made my way slowly downstream along the rocky beach that parallels Rainbow Run, casting a prince nymph suspended below an indicator. I saw occasional swirls below me, indicating feeding trout. When a trout striking the nymph yanked the indicator below the surface, I had my first fish of the day, a brown trout of 9-10 inches.











About one o'clock I broke for lunch. There was still so much of Rainbow Run to fish that I decided to do it from my canoe. I cast the nymph 15-20 feet below me and allowed the current to sweep me over the gravel a couple feet below my boat. I soon had a strike and brought a second brown trout to hand. At that point I knew my game plan for the next two hours would be to float down to the end of Rainbow Run, picking up a trout every hundred yards or so, and then paddle back upstream and do it all over again.

That was a moment or two before I noticed the river surface was dimpling with rain drops. The sky had become increasingly overcast over the previous hour or so. The clouds overhead were somewhat broken up, showing blue sky between them. This was just a momentary shower, I figured, until I heard the first crack of thunder. Before I'd left the house this morning I'd checked the weather for the area: 20% chance of showers--not much to worry about. Now I was stuck and there was nothing to do but wait out the storm.

Well, it hung around for an hour and a half, not putting out much rain, just continuous lightning, which kept me cooling my heels on a fallen long near the edge of the woods. Between the thunder, the occasional showers and the gusting wind, the trout stopped swirling. A couple times I ventured out in the canoe for a few seconds before another close lightning strike sent scuttling away from the open river and beach. Overhead, the clouds ambled slowly--too slowly-- southward.

By the time the wind and thunder stopped, it was 2:45. Of course, I still had most of that four miles still to paddle, and once I got below Rainbow Run, there wouldn't be much current to push me along. The storm had cost me the opportunity to milk this section of river. I had one more strike about halfway down Rainbow Run. It was so violent that the trout took everything--indicator, tippet and my last prince nymph. I tied on a copper john but never did raise a fish with it.

As I approached Winfrey's Rocks, I switched back to spinning tackle. On my first cast with a silver Kastmaster spoon I stuck the fish of the day--a fifteen inch rainbow that launched itself into the air three times in rapid succession, before breaking off. In a fit of conscience about a month or two ago, I had clipped off two of the three treble hooks that these lures come equipped with. I generally don't keep trout and treble hooks are so difficult to extricate from their tiny mouths that you end up mutilating them. But what I'm discovering is that you just can't hold a fish with a treble hook reduced to one. I've had numerous strikes on Kastmasters since I altered them but I don't think I've gotten a single fish into the boat.


I switched back and forth between the spinning tackle and the five weight for the next couple hours. I had one brief hit on a hare's ear nymph and many follows and a few actual takes on the Kastmaster. That heavy spoon clearly drives trout crazy. Almost every retrieve lures a curious trout almost back to the boat. But they rarely strike, for some reason.

I reached the ramp at Winfrey's around 5:30. I noticed that the ramp had recently been extended by ten feet or so in order to reach the water at the river's current level. It's still a tricky ramp to launch a boat from, as it's not broad to begin with and the the bottom half of makes a dogleg turn left as you're backing down toward the water. Once you reach the river, though, there's plenty of deep water both downstream and up.

I've been reading reports in the newspaper of once in a decade fishing on the Cumberland. That certainly wasn't my experience on Friday. But then I did get unlucky with that storm. And maybe I'm just not as skilled or smart as other anglers. I hope at least the upper and middle section of the river will be able to sustain trout over the summer. The water seemed cool enough, even with air temperatures well into the 80's. I did, however, float over at least four or five trout belly-up on the bottom. It's possible that they'd been caught and released but just couldn't survive the stress.

To see more of my writing, check out: http://writing-by-jim-witham.blogspot.com/

St. Patrick's Day, 2007

Still pretty cold out but I really wanted to try my new fly reel and five weight line someplace. Too much generation going on at Wolf Creek Dam right now, and since my Gheenoe (with outboard) is still in storage, a trip up to the Dix River would have required a long paddle up there in my canoe. My best bet looked to be the Clinch River, down in Tennesee. The Tennessee Valley Authority would be running water until about noon, then shutting off the taps until seven p.m. I haven't fished the Clinch in several years, having concentrated mostly on the Cumberland for trout fishing. But with the Cumberland looking to be problematic this year and for many more to come, due to the repairs being done to Wolf Creek and the need to keep the lake at a very low level, I've been thinking I need to consider the Clinch as an alternative. I used to wade it at Miller's Island and upstream of the Rt. 61 bridge and sometimes would do OK. But I didn't trust TVA to keep to the posted generation schedule, having once nearly been caught out in midstream when an unexpected surge of water came up. Now that I've got a boat with an outboard, I don't have to worry about that so much. One thing I do know about the Clinch, however, is that when it gets low between generation cycles, it gets really low--so low that you couldn't float a tire tube through certain sections of it. This presents a different kind of problem, if you're in a boat and one of those sections lies between you and your take-out point. I'd heard that the Peach Orchard access point on the Clinch offers deep water even when the gates are closed upstream at Norris Dam. So I decided yesterday to scout out that access point for possible use in the future and bring my waders and fly tackle and try for some trout at either the Rt 61 bridge or Miller's Island.

I got to the Peach Orchard boat ramp around 11 a.m. At that point the river was still running high from the morning's power generation. But it did look as though there was plenty of water upstream and down. I will definitely be bringing the Gheenoe there in the coming season. The river was too deep to wade, so I drove on over to the Rt. 61 bridge.

It must be 4-5 years since I last fished the stretch of river near the Anderson County Jail, which sits just above the bridge. There was a time you could park near the Jail and walk along a grassy bank that extended half a mile or so upriver. But as I discovered yesterday, a large church has been built on what used to be a meadow. On a Saturday the parking lots in front and in back of the church were empty. It was tempting to park my Subaru near the river bank and hike on down to the river. I saw only a few "Keep Off The Grass" signs; nothing about whether or not it was OK to park and fish. But I somehow had the feeling I wouldn't be welcome to leave my car parked there now. I knew that the Miller's Island access point, several miles upstream, was state-owned and worry-free. So I drove there, rather than risk a note on my windshield, or worse, fetching my vehicle from an impoundment after having been towed while I was fishing.

The river was already dropping when I stepped into it about 20 minutes later. My vehicle was the only one in the parking lot, although later on I did have some company on the river. I started with a hare's ear nymph tied below a strike indicator. The new line cast beautifully and the reel felt very smooth as I pulled out line. Downstream I spotted an angler casting his own nymph and indicator rig. He pulled out two trout within 15 minutes of my first spotting him. Of course, it always makes me jealous to see someone else catching fish. But it also assured me there were trout in this stretch of the river. Seeing someone else hauling in a fish prompted me to switch flies. I put on a small wooly booger and stripped it across the current. Within a few minutes a baby trout like the one I'm holding above struck it.

The water continued to drop. I like to use streamers such as wooly boogers and Clousers when there's a bit of current, such as what you find where the Cumberland narrows a bit at Traces on the Cumberland. But pretty soon the Clinch had little current to speak of, so I switched back to a nymph. Baby trout were starting to slash the surface--or at least appeared to be. Actually, they were probably chasing miniscule subsurface bugs and shooting up out of the water in pursuit. I put on a size 18 zebra nymph, which seemed small enough to me, but apparently not the fish, as they ignored it. I have a few size 20 and 22 pupae flies and tried to tie on a couple. But they are so tiny, my 56 year old eyes and cold hands were not up to the task. I gave up and tied on a slightly larger bead head prince nymph and continued on downstream.

The tiny trout continued to show themselves all afternoon. Once in a while one I'd feel a peck on my fly at the end of a drift. I did manage to catch three more of these troutlings before I called it quits, around 4:45. I'm not sure if these fish are planted as "sub adults" by the state, or if they are actually born and bred naturally there. The Clinch has much bigger trout than these, I know--later in the afternoon, I watched the guy who'd been catching fish when I first arrived scramble up the bank toward the river road with a stringer of much larger trout.

There was strong sunshine most of the afternoon but it still is mid-March, and the air temperature never got higher than the mid 40's. Earlier this past week I sprang for the $83.00 Tennessee out of state fishing license, so I plan to make many more trips to the Clinch this year, and maybe the Smokies as well.