February 2nd, 2008

The day started early watching the Weather Channel and getting flies ready for a float with Brent Fuller and Mark Smith from Chattanooga Tennessee. During the stop for gas, coffee and an apple pie my phone rings. I look at the clock and it is 5:30 a.m. Mark is on the line and they are at the ramp…one hour early. They have the bug bad, which is evident from a couple of things. One, it’s dark at 5:30 and two; it’s less than 30 degrees. But, having “it” bad is not always a bad thing.

I strung up the streamer rods and put one in each of their hands. With one generator running we began pounding the banks for opportunistic browns who want to attack unsuspecting bait fish. Brent and Mark have spend more time nymphing than anything else and on this day they received a crash course in Streamer 101. I would rate their grade an A considering they didn’t know what I was going to get them into.

Brent was the first to hook up and soon had what he said was the biggest brown he had ever caught. Mark wasn’t too far behind catching browns. We fished down the river and Mark’s Wooley Bugger found a tree limb sticking out over the water. He finally shook it loose and we floated on. Mark missed several fish against the bank in an extremely good stretch of flat water. After a quick inspection of the Wooley Bugger we found the point was missing. So we stopped and changed flies and fished a run above Lancaster where we picked up a couple more nice browns. Brent caught another brown, which was larger than his previous record.

Below Lancaster we stopped while Mark picked up a few by swinging a midge pattern through some swifter water. I re-rigged the rods and we floated into the middle of a real life Caney Fork traffic jamb. We picked our way through the boats and people and stopped at Camp Crossover for a good shore lunch of burgers, chips and drinks. Anthony Williams made a drink delivery in his canoe to help quench our thirst and to join us for a burger.

The water had pretty much fallen out after lunch, so we tried a couple different nymph and midge patterns. These patterns did not reveal huge results, so we got back on streamers and picked up a couple more browns.

Overall it was a pleasant day. Brent and Mark were fun to fish with and their excitement was notable. Thanks to Anthony for stopping by with the drinks and snapping a couple photos as well.