A good friend of mine was given a guided smallmouth trip as a gift from his wife (great wife!). He invited me to join him, even though I was unwilling.
Unfortunately, the river we had intended to float was flooded due to the power company generating electricity there this past weekend. So instead, we opted to wade the East Fork of the French Broad River (right outside of Brevard). Man were we ever in for a surprise. We were catching Rainbows, Brooks and Browns on nearly every 5th cast. It was ridiculous, in a good way. We must have caught-and this isnāt a fish story-over 120 fish between the two of us on Saturday and Sunday. Other flycasters were coming up to us asking what we were doing differently (lots of other guys were streamer fishing). We were fishing beadhead nymphs with a dropper (another beadhead or San Juan worm) behind it. We also used a small amount of lead to get the flies down quickly. Additionally, we used strike indicatorsā¦without those we probably would have only caught 1/4 of what we ended up with.
We went again on Sunday (without a guide this time), and hoped we could boost our egos by having the same amount of success on our own. Sure enough, first cast I caught a nice rainbow. It was like a mirror image of the day before. My hat goes off to Walker Parrott of Davidson River Outfitters to show us āhow itās doneā.
āThe Department of Redundancy Departmentā