15 May 2021
I sure hope everyone has been doing well. I certainly have been lacking in the journal this year. My apologies to anyone that still stumbles onto this write up. A few reasons I have for being unable to fish this year, eventually I hope that I do get to go a bit more, but for now, things are just what they are I reckon. Anyway, I did sneak off Saturday to hit the river.
It would have been a great day to take out the boat, I admit that and considered it, but didn’t have a great deal of time and if I put the boat in, I like staying a few hours anyway. So I grabbed my fly box that needs to be restocked, my fly bag, fly rod, and waders and headed to South Holston. Now my expectation was low, it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I was just hoping to find a place to cast. To my surprise, there were only a couple cars there. As a matter of fact, I saw one other person fishing, while I was fishing.
I thought, I’ll just hit the grates for a few minutes, very few were rising, so I just left my San Juan Worm on the line. A few cast into it and I got one, good little fish, 10” or so, maybe bigger, but I didn’t risk the phone for it. I was pretty pumped and a couple folks hollered at me from the bridge in there car. I could not hear a thing, my hearing is not great, and all that water at the grates, it was just impossible to hear. So I told myself they said that was a fantastic fish (if you read this and know what was said, please don’t tell me, they were probably laughing seeing how happy I was with catch).
The bites stopped so I switched up baits……kinda. I had in mind what I wanted, it was small. I remembered that I had dropped my clippers in the river last time out (the line holding them had broken), so I had to bite the line. Well, biting the line does not allow me to put the line in a size 20 or smaller hook. Hmmmmm, I was in a bit of a pickle, so I just used bigger stuff, eventually going back to the San Juan Worm and proceeded to get zero bites the rest of the day.
Yep, I need to prepare better, however, let me say, it was sure nice to get back out there, somewhere, anywhere and wet a line. We’ll see how it goes, but I sure hope you folks have gotten out and caught a few. May God bless, and I hope you hear from me soon.
