When in Doubt....Throw the Meat..January 26th, 2008 ...

I reviewed a Department of Biology, Tennessee Technical University study which states “there is no evidence that brown trout reproduce in the Caney Fork River”. This may be true, but if this is true the brown trout, that are stocked in the Caney by the TWRA, are doing relatively well by anyone’s standards.

I floated Saturday with Anthony Williams and Mark Roberts of Murfreesboro. We launched below the dam on a cool and cloudy morning and after a few pulls on the oars we were hooking up with several brown trout on streamers. Once someone gets a taste of browns on streamers it is difficult to sway them back into any other type of fly fishing. The strike is as exciting as anything in fly fishing and the reward can equal quality fish. Some days, like Saturday, these rewards came early and often.

We fished everything from sleek Clousers to big bushy bunny strip flies. Down river, Mark decided to change flies and selected a big bunny strip. Anthony and I could tell by the jumbo jet sound the fly made, when it came by our ear that this fly was meant to drum up the big fish. Several healthy browns had been boated, but Mark was in search of big game. Twice the fly was flashed by big fish. The bunny strip didn’t let us down and the big fish of the day, a rainbow, came from the deepest part of the river. The fish hit (fishing term: Hit- "tried to kill") Mark’s fly and won a chance to have its photo on the internet.

After the shore lunch of juicy hamburgers we got back into the boat and onto the river. We struck out for a while, just watching fish chase the streamers back to the boat and refuse at the last second. Seeing the chase is part of the fun, but seeing the take is the Cool Whip on the Key Lime pie, and toward the end of the float we rallied catching a couple more browns before the take out.

Despite a misstep in the forecast by the weather guessers, overall it was a very good day.