North River Outing

April 1st, 2008 Buster

The North River Outing with MTFF is one of my favorite outings of the year. Every March, the club heads up to Tellico Plains, TN to do a little dry fly fishing for rainbows, browns, and brookies in the small mountains streams of east Tennessee. This year would be no different. Before my trip to the mountains, I made sure to have all of my dry flies: Caddis, Adams, Blue Wing Olives, and Stoneflies. I grabbed several fly rods, a two weight for the brookies, a four weight for the rainbows and browns, and a six weight just in case we fish the Tellico River. The club camps out at a group campground and a few other stay at a cabin. Lucky for me, my fishing buddy’s family owns the cabin, so naturally I stayed at the cabin with a few others. We also have a pot-luck dinner on Saturday night with this outing which is real nice. Everyone gets together to talk about the day and swap old fishing stories.

Friday was the first day of fishing. I left Nashville at 3:30 in the morning to make the three and half to four hour drive to Tellico Plains. I arrived at the cabin about shortly around 8:00. Scott and his wife were still sleeping but Stan was up and getting ready for the day. So I unpacked my truck and waited for the others to rise and get moving. When I am fishing back on my home waters, I am usually on the water at 6:30 AM, and fish in the net within in the first 30 minutes if I am not paddling up the river. But in the mountains, it is a different story. An angler can actually sleep in because the sun needs to come out, warm up the air and the waters some. When this happens, bugs will begin to come off the water and hopefully the fish will begin to feed.

We hit the North River around 11:00 and soon after that the rain came. It rained off and on all day and it didn’t stop until that night. We fished that afternoon some of the higher elevations of the mountains, but not in the brookie water. Scott, Stan, Vernon, and I, (Scott’s wife stayed back at the cabin), split up on the small mountain stream giving each other a hundred yards or so of separation so that we could all fish and be to ourselves and this is typical when fishing in large groups on the mountain. I managed to get a handful of strikes on a caddis adult dry fly but I only hooked up on one, a small rainbow. We fished the rest of the day with little success in numbers of fish, but everyone did catch a rainbow.

Saturday morning the weather was nice and clear. Scott gave a dry fly fishing class at the campground and on the stream. Scott has been doing this for the last four years or so. Soon after the class, the rains came again, but this time, it was followed up by thunder and lightning. We were able to fish a little bit but not much. During spells of rain, we tried to fish the upper end of the river for some brookies; Stan has never caught a brookie, so we wanted to get him one. We separated out again. I fished the river near the vehicle, and Stan and Scott went down the river a small piece. I caught a nice three or four inch brookie within the first fifteen minutes, and I am sad to report, Stan did not his brookie.

After the rains kicked up again, we packed up and started to head back for the cabin, along the way, Scott asked Stan, “If he had ever seen the (Indian Boundary) lake?” When we pulled up to the lake, the rain was gone, the skies were calm, the wind was gentle and there were fish hitting bugs on the top of the water. We all grabbed our gear and set out to catch whatever would eat our flies. I was the first to catch a fish, a small bluegill about four or five inches in length. Next Stan pulled in a nice bluegill and shortly after that Scott had a nice bluegill on the end of his line. We continued fishing without much luck and just before we decided to go, Stan had another fish on, but this time is was about a seven or eight inch bass. We didn’t get to fish much longer, the winds began to kick up, the water was choppy, and a storm was on its way. We packed up for the final time that day and headed back to the cabin.

We did have the potluck dinner that night, but not at the campground. Scott invited the campers up to the cabin to cook and eat there and not have to worry about a fire, rain, or wind. There was plenty of food to go around. There was chicken, salmon, chili, hotdogs, a casserole, and several desserts. No one went to bed hungry.

I had a meeting to attend on Sunday, so I packed my belongings up early, cleaned a bit of the cabin and headed back to Nashville. There were not as many people on the North River Outing this year as in years past, but fun was had by all who attended the event. I can’t wait until next year to fish the North River again.

Entry Filed under: Buster the Fly Fishing Guru, Fly Fishing, General