Richard and Timothy...

Timothy Hooked-Up with His First Fish

 ...and Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy was roaring up the East Coast. With the hurricane making its move North we experienced some high winds on our Sunday trip. The outreaches of Sandy produced 15-20 mph winds on the river, with gusts of 20 + mph. What is a person to do with winds this high and temps in the mid 50's? Go fishing anyway.

Timothy's First Fish on the Fly Rod

Richard, who owns The Timothy Demonbreun House, which is named after his Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather,  who was the ”The First Citizen of Nashville” and “The Patriarch of Middle Tennessee”, made time to spend a day on the river with his son Timothy. Timothy had never fly fished and with the wind this day would have its challenges. But, before the day was over Timothy achieved a good distance casting and he was casting with accuracy. Also he learned "how to fly fish", which is a whole other ballgame. I told the guys before leaving the ramp "if you learn to cast on a day like today, a normal day will be a piece of cake." 
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We started with a roll cast, then went onto basic casting, and casting into the wind. Naturally we worked on mending and achieving a good drift along with hook-set, then we worked on catching fish. We fished structure early. The fish were tight to the structure and tight lipped. Mostly we worked on the basics, but we still wanted to catch fish. We moved to the middle of the river and within a couple minutes Timothy was hooked-up with a feisty brook trout. We snapped some photos and moved on.

Something happened between the first and second fish. Somewhere within those next 10 minutes Timothy understood the different steps of fly fishing and how they apply to catching a fish with a fly rod. We floated into a section of river that is fairly shallow and heavily fished. Timothy's cast extended an additional 10-15' and he was mending properly. That's when he began really catching fish. One fish came to the net, then another and another and another. At one point each time I asked for a fly placement in a certain spot, Timothy would hit the spot and shortly he was rewarded with fish. The wind would prevent us from fishing some of the usual spots and at one point the winds from Sandy were making the water whitecap upstream. The guys stuck it out and as the float approached the 3/4 mark we tied on a Tutto.

Father - Son Trips

The Tutto has been a good Fall producer for us. The fly is made of everything that was laying on the tying bench late one night. Click Here for the back story on this fly. As we entered the 3/4 mark of our float, we pulled up to a spot in the river that has produced a fish or two and usually we don't have to wait too long for a response from a brown or a bow. We pulled in, Timothy stripped off some line, measured his cast and dropped the Tutto right where it needed to be. The indicator dove and Timothy set the hook. He slid the fish in the net and Richard commented "did we have an appointment with that fish?" That was one of the funniest fishing lines I have heard all year. With that, we stowed the rods and made our way to the takeout, against the wind of course. If the day was measured by catching, we had a good day. If the day was measured by a father and son spending quality time together, well, this day was a great day.