I've had a pretty darn good year fishing several times every month up until December. Work, weather, and everything else conspired to keep me off the water. I kept looking at the TVA generation schedule for an opening long enough to justify the 3 hour drive over the mountains. I knew the big fish were on the move and December is always a good month to hook into one of them. With the TVA you never know for sure until the evening before what the next days exact schedule will be, when I checked the the TVA app I saw an opportunity for 5 or 6 hours of fishing, with more rain in the forecast, I knew it was likely my last chance for 2013!
Unfortunately every angler from TN, VA, and NC had the same idea and the parking lot was full when I arrived. Anglers dotted the river from the weir dam on down out of sight. I began walking the trail hoping to find a good spot to jump in with out being obnoxiously close to anyone else. I eased on in and managed to catch a few while waiting for the water to fall on downstream.
Around three o'clock I hiked back up to the car, rigged the rod for deep nymphing and drove on down to a favorite spot. Others had similar ideas and were beginning to wade out into the slowly falling water. As I got to my spot, I hesitated to get out in the raging water and sat and waited for 10 or 15 minutes.
I started off with some BBs and nymphs and picked off some better fish, and hooked some badass fucker but it ran in between some submerged rocks and broke me off. “Fuck a bunch of #22 flies and 5x,” I thought, “I’m going to throw streamers!”
On the second or third cast, pay dirt!
Yes, I had a nice fish to end the year! I didn't need to catch another one, but I continued to cast until it was dark.
On another front, I've been working on the Mexico Returns book, finally all the pieces came together and I got it published on Amazon. I was hoping that the conversion process to e-book would be seamless, but I struggled with idDesign formatting for a while before I finally got the Kindle version up on Amazon as well. Proceeds from the book go to benefit the
Bonefish and Tarpon trust.
Mexico Returns on Amazon.com
Have a Save and Happy New Year!
