Got the Hook

Do you suppose he was trying to eat the whole fly? Or was he just trying to pick a piece off, but happened to get the hook?

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My First Brown Trout: Upper Chattahoochee WMA

Mornin' Folks,

  I wanted to share a few pictures I took while fishing the Upper Chattahoochee WMA last weekend. Its a really beautiful area up there, and it seems to be quite popular. My time was limited, so I didn't want to venture too far from the road and the car, so it was actually a bit difficult to find a spot that wasn't already occupied. There had been some pretty good storms in the area the night before and it had been raining most of the morning while I was there. I try not to let weather keep me from fishing, if I get an opportunity to go I try to take it. I thought the rain might improve the conditions as there had been some pretty low water up there. 

  I went armed with the TFO Finesse Half Weight and the Galvan Brookie fly reel to get some more testing in for their upcoming reviews. I was very happy with the performance of each and look forward to the next trip with them. I fished a few different flies, but I seemed to get the most interest from a size 14 Elk Hair Caddis. When it comes to trout, I'm still very much a beginner. I'm pretty certain I missed a lot of strikes. Trout tend not to be as aggressive on the take as the bluegill I usually fish for! At least not in my experience thus far. 

  After a few hours with as many splashy refusals, I was fishing around a large pool catching nothing but raindrops. I started working some large rocks and finally got a good take!  I landed a beautiful little rainbow!  He was a feisty little guy! And, fishing a half weight, it was a ball to hook up on this little trout!  With the acrobatics he performed, I don't think he had any idea that he was only 6" long!  

  I returned him to his pool and hiked back up to the car to seek out another spot. It was already after noon, and carrying the one-trout-per-trip curse, I was starting to consider heading home. I absolutely love spending time in the woods, especially in the north Georgia mountains, so I was reluctant to leave. I found another spot that just had a "fishy" look to me ( Thanks to Tom Rosenbauer, I have a better idea of what that looks like now!). There was a parking area with a staircase down to the water, I tend to shy away from those places because I figure they're pretty heavily pressured, so I crossed the road and headed upstream a ways. I don't have any waders yet, so I tend to bushwhack along the bank until I find a spot to fish. I got in the water and started fishing, working the rocks and riffles as I made my way back down toward the car. 

  The car was back in view and I'd been fishing way longer than I intended (the Little Girl was on her way home from being away for the weekend and I like to be there when she gets in). After about 20 "one-last-casts", I got my caddis caught in some submerged branches. When I tried to break my tippet in frustration I felt the line move. A lot more than it should've being hung on a stick! When I got my first glimpse I couldn't believe my eyes! Not only was it not a stick, it was a trout! And a brown one at that!  I had to work to get him around all the rocks and branches to bring him to hand, but I sure was happy when I did. This was my largest trout to date, it was my first brown trout ( a stunningly beautiful fish) and I caught it on a five foot long, half weight rod! I wish I could've gotten some better photos, but I like to return fish to the water as quickly as possible. 

  I had a great day fishing the Upper Chattahoochee WMA and definitely plan on returning. Next time I want to do some more exploring of the smaller streams. The TFO Finesse Half Weight and Galvan Brookie both did a great job and a shorter rod made fighting through the brush so much easier!  

  I hope you're all doing well,

    Tight lines and dry feet!

      -Nick

I wonder if there are any trout holding pools upstream?

Fantastic combo! TFO Finesse Half Weight and Galvan Brookie. 

Stunning colors on these little rainbows!

Steady rain. 

My first brown! What a beauty!

Gorgeous scenery in the Upper Chattahoochee WMA. Fall color is just beginning. 

Fly Fishing Duke's Creek

Good Mornin' Folks!

  I just wanted to share some pictures with you of a recent fishing excursion.  I had read online that most people fish Duke's Creek inside the Smithgall Woods boundaries, which means private, trophy managed waters and very smart/picky trout, but there are very nice, native fish to be found between the boundary and the Duke's Creek waterfalls.  

  When it comes to trout fishing, I'm still very much a beginner.  There is something very special about being alone in a tiny mountain creek stalking these beautiful fish.  With my trusty TFO 2 weight in hand, I set out.  I was in the water just after sunrise and fished steady until just after noon.  I managed lots of strikes, and hooked up a few times, but I was only able to land one, a gorgeous native rainbow trout about 8"-9" long.  That one fish made the whole trip worthwhile, and it's my largest trout to date.  

  I had an absolute ball fishing Duke's Creek, but I wouldn't recommend it.  The terrain and hiking in and out of the canyon makes it very dangerous.  There are far easier places to fish in North Georgia and you will probably be more successful.  I'm glad I fished it.  I feel a bit redeemed, after being skunked twice in Smithgall Woods I finally pulled a trout out of Duke's, but I won't be fishing this stretch again.  Go for the beauty of the falls, but find another spot to fish!

  I hope you're all doing well.

   Tight lines and easy trails!

        -Nick

The sign marking the Falls' parking area.

That's Mount Yonah (or Yonah Mountain) in the distance, just as the sun was starting to come up.

One of the waterfalls on Duke's Creek as seen from the lower viewing platform.

The upper viewing platform with the other waterfall beyond it.

Taking some photos of my Tacky Fly Box for an upcoming product review.  Gotta love moss covered logs, right?

One of the gorgeous little pools on Duke's Creek.  I got several strikes here, but just couldn't get them to hand.

It's definitely a scenic area.  There's lots of tumbling water and little pools. The sun coming through the trees is quite striking as well.

There he his in all his natural, native color! I caught him on a rusty brown colored bead head wooly bugger.  I need to find a better way of taking fish pictures when I'm alone, any advice?

I actually saw several of these cairns on the creek.  Apparently I wasn't the first person to fish here!

This is where I decided to leave.  The creek drops about 8' below that log and it's almost shear canyon wall on both sides.  I had to backtrack a ways to get up out of the water.

Ran up to Cartersville the day before to check out the Cohutta Fishing Co. and pick up a new fly line and some flies.  They've got an awesome store with a ton of gear.  Check them out if you're in the area!

Skunked.....again!

Good morning folks,
  It's been a little while since my last post, but I have a good reason. Much like the rest of the country, Georgia has been getting an awful lot of rain lately. Since my last post, I've only been fishing twice.  I got skunked both times. I've been spending some time learning to tie flies and packing for my upcoming move to a new apartment.  We've been pretty busy at work recently and on top of that, there's only a few weeks left until school starts back.  Where did the summer go?
 I took the kayak out to Lake Lanier the Saturday before last.  The morning was very overcast, there was a pretty stiff wind on the lake and the water had a pretty good chop to it.  I had my 2 weight TFO rod and fought the wind with every cast.  The fish must have been down deeper than I could get with my floating line. After 3 hours on the water I only had two soft strikes. I didn't hook up once. I threw every fly I had that my two weight could handle. Then started throwing the flies that it couldn't!  Finally, I tied on this big, black streamer-/woolly bugger-type fly that I bought too long ago to remember and noticed bass nipping at its tail. I'm a fan and follower of the teachings of Tom Rosenbauer and the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast and one of his most often reiterated pieces of advice is that if the fish are showing interest, but make a last second refusal, change size first!  Well, that's all well and good, but I didn't have another size of that pattern. After about 20 minutes of watching the small fish try to school with my fly, I paddled back to the launch and called it a day. Skunked. But, with a plan.
  I spent the next few days listening to the rain fall and researching fly patterns and tying recipes (when I wasn't at work, anyway).  I decided to try my hand at tying up some woolly buggers, but most of the recipes I could find were for larger hooks, sized 6 through 10.  I wanted something smaller.  I determined that I could follow the instructions I had found, and just scale it down to a smaller hook.  Then, I stumbled upon instructions for tying wooly buggers on a size 14 hook and I decided that it could be done, pretty easily.  I bought the needed materials (I thought tying flies was supposed to be cheaper than buying them?) and spent an evening at the tying vise.  I'm a beginner at fly tying, so it took me a few hours to come up with a half dozen flies, but it's a very easy pattern to tie and probably a very good one for a beginner like me to get started with.   I've read that black, brown and white are the three preferred colors for wooly buggers, so that's what I tied.  I didn't use bead heads, but did put lead under the body to weight the fly down.
  So, armed with a half dozen, newly tied mini-buggers, I hit the lake again this past Sunday. The weather seemed a bit more cooperative, big clouds about, but mostly sunny and not nearly as breezy as the weekend before.  I spoke to a couple gentlemen bank fishing and learned that the fish weren't biting.  In the two hours they had been there, they only caught one fish a piece, both catfish on bait.  I pushed off from the boat launch and started to paddle back to one of my most productive spots so far.  I stopped and fished some along the way, but got no bites.  I was amazed at how few fish I could see in the water.  Normally, it seems, you can see bream and small bass swimming amongst the rocks in the shadows.  I paddled into a grassy area to fish around a fallen tree that has produced good bites in the past.  Not even a bite.  At one point, the best fish I had seen in a while showed themselves.  In about 2 feet of water there swam three carp that were each, easily, 18" long.  Swimming directly under and around my kayak, with I good net, I could have grabbed them!  They showed absolutely no interest in my size 14 wooly buggers.

Size 14 Mini Bugger

  I paddled on to fish around the rock dam where I've had some luck before.  I pulled up into a small inlet where I've caught a few bream in the past, and dropped my anchor right in the middle of the mouth.  From this spot I could fish almost the whole inlet.  There's a sloping dirt bank on the left and a steeper rip-rap stone bank to the right.  I was starting to see some more fish swimming around, so I thought, surely, I'd have some luck here.  The water was nice and clear and smooth and I could really see the action of my mini bugger as I stripped it in.  I was working it in every way I could think of, long fast strips, short slow strips, short fast strips, long slow strips, you name it, I tried it.  I would occasionally see small bass following the fly, but no bites.
  In the three hours I was on the lake fishing, I got two soft, but splashy, strikes.  I had things to do at home, so wasn't able to put in any more time.  By the time I made it back to the car, I had paddled almost 5 miles.  You tend to feel paddling that kind of distance more when the fish aren't biting.  I loaded up and went home.
  I got skunked, two weekends in a row.  See now why I haven't posted?  So, what have I learned?  If you're not going to catch fish, you should at lease learn something about fishing, right?  I need to do some more research, but I'm guessing that due to the cloud cover over the lake the fish must have been holding deeper than I could reach with my mini bugger and floating line.  At one point I had crimped on a small split shot to my line.  That seemed to garner the most attention.  I think I'm going to spend some time tying some more mini buggers, but this time I might try some tungsten bead heads.  I also might have to look into investing in a spare spool and some sink tip line.  One of the purposes of the original wooly bugger was to imitate leeches.  From what I've read, freshwater leeches tend to prefer living in and around rocks.  I need to tie my mini buggers so they will get down into the crevices of the rocks and can be worked in and around.  The buggers I tied had 5-7 wraps of .015 lead wire, but with the chenille and marabou it just wasn't enough to take the fly down more than a foot and a half or so.  Even to reach that shallow depth required me to wait probably a full minute.  Being that I'm still new to fly fishing, coming off of years of fishing Texas rigged worms on spinning gear, I'm not used to waiting so long for my lure to reach the bottom.  A bit more weight on the fly and a sink tip line might just do the trick.
  Hopefully soon I'll have some caught fish to share with you.  I'll post a photo tutorial on the mini buggers that I tied.  I'm still working to get them right and practice my tying skills, but you folks can critique me on how I'm doing so far.
  Thanks for reading.  Tight lines and Happy fishing,
      -Nick




Jim Misiura - Wooly Bugger Tutorial
Tim Cammisa - Wooly Bugger Tutorial
The Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast

Today's Equipment

Flyrod: Temple Forks Outfitters 6'6" 2wt
Fly Reel: White River Fly Shop 3/4
Line: Rio 3wt WF
Flies:
    #14 Mini Wooly Buggers asst. colors

Knife:
Kershaw Ken Onion Scallion