I was able to get in a couple trips of fishing this week. I love getting out at this time of year, because you just never know what kind of day you're going to have. Some Summer days turn out great, but on other days fish can be tough to figure out for a variety of reasons.
My first trip was to my home waters the Clinch River. The Clinch can be very fun to fish during late May and into June. My trip was indeed a good one. I began the day up above the weir fishing some deep water as they turned off the generators. In approximately an hour I had brought several fish to hand and lost a few others. The fish up in the weir pool are tough, thick, and fighters. In the weir pool all my fish came on a midge #20.
After fishing the weir pool for a hour, we decided to head down to miller island. Luckily, their wasn't too many people out yet and we were able to jump in a head of all the crowds. I usually avoid miller island because of the crowds, but decided I'd give it a shot since I hadn't fished that area in such a long time. Its always a plus to be the first person to fish the island(front or back). Fish seemed to really be stacked up on the front side. They were everywhere and not just in the normal lies. I didn't spot a ton of really large fish, but there were certainly many willing to cooperate. I caught fish on pheasant tails initially in a couple different variations in sizes #16 and #18. Towards the end of the island there are a couple different pools that I threw some soft hackles and picked up a handful of average fish. By the time I reached the end of the island(approx. noon) I began to see a few sulfurs coming off and I was surprised to see the fish keying on them this early in the day. Historically, the best sulfur hatches are much further down river, but this was a pretty significant hatch. It was a lot of fun getting to fish some dry flies and some good action.
I also took a little road trip and visited Cherokee, NC to do some fishing up on the Raven Fork. I hadn't ever fished the tribal waters and wanted to do a bit of exploring. We didn't fish the trophy waters, but did fish the waters above and below the 2 mile stretch of the prized water. Unfortunately the heavy storms from the previous weekend still left the waters fairly high and swift. We had a bit of a tough time finding some manageable water to fish. We did manage to catch some fish on nymphs and san juan worms.
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| Caught this little guy on the first cast of the day |
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| This was the most productive stretch of water |
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| My little brother Cobie laying out some line into a deep pool |
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The waters up in Cherokee are very nice. Once we had finished fishing, we did some scouting in the trophy section. We spotted some really large fish. Next time we visit that area we may try and get into some of those big uglies. It appeared to be a nice area to do some camping.
