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On Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:56:21 -0500, George Cleveland <...@nospam.msn.com
Long car trips aren't my favorite activity. There is the tedium, of
course, and the local auto cultures you pass through, which you
inevitably experience as drivers doing strange things at unexpected
times. There is always the constant, niggling fear that your own car
will experience the automotive equivalent of Sudden Cardiac Arrest
and you'll be stranded hundreds of miles away from "your people"
amongst a population that speaks with strange accents and eats things
like grits or pot au feu. But, as the only alternative is to fly
there (which has its own problems), a person who wishes to experience
more than the corner bar will eventually find themselves with a numb
ass searching for a good station on the radio as the billboards whip
by their window.
Which is what I found myself doing a week ago Saturday, making the
long trip from Merrill to Crossville, Tennessee. We split the trip
into two days, spending the first night in Effingham, Illinois. Late
in the afternoon on Sunday we arrived to mild temps and impending
thunderstorms at my mother in law's house. The forecast called for
rain and then rapidly dropping temps, with a chance of snow the next
day. Considering that the non-resident license options made a three
day license the best fit for me I took the hint from the weather gods
and put off any fishing until Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
So Monday we did family stuff. Went to an outlet mall, took Mason
swimming at the Fairfield Glade pool, laid around and read trashy
novels. Stuff like that. Tuesday was forecast to be a little warmer
but still with a chance of rain or snow. I bought my license on-line
anyway.
Tuesday's sun rose behind gray clouds and spitting snow showers. The
temperature was 28 degrees. I checked the dam release schedule for the
Norris Dam on the Clinch River. With one or more generators running
the river is unwadable. The dam was scheduled to generate until noon.
So while Jacci and her mom went out shopping I sorted through my gear
and watched the snow come down, finally stop and then start to melt in
the upper 30 degree heat.
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Around noon Jacci and her mom came back and I handed Mase off to her
and loaded my stuff up in the Mercury. There was still a little snow
in the woods but the pavement was only wet, not icy, and I was soon
off the side road and on the Interstate, headed east towards Oak Ridge
and beyond.
Crossville is up on the Cumberland Plateau, a geologic feature that
rises 1,500 feet above the plains of western Tennessee and the river
valleys that run along the foothills of the Smokies to the east. That
elevation is enough to keep the temperatures noticably cooler than the
plains. As I descended the Plateau towards Knoxville the snow
completely disappeared from the ground and the occasional flurry was
mixed with drizzle.
By the time I exited the Interstate just south of Oak Ridge, Spring
was much more in evidence, with flowers under some of the trees and
the trees themselves starting to leaf out. I ran into a prolonged
stretch of construction on the highway around Oak Ridge and Clinton.
That combined with a stop at a gas station with an incredibly slow
pump made me about an hour behind my desired ETA at the flyshop that
serves that stretch of the river.
CR Outfitters was a nice shop and the guy behind the counter was
helpful, polite. I could have spent longer browsing his wares but I
was already later to the water than I wished, so I bought a few of the
recommended Zebra midges from him and a spool of 6x flourocarbon
tippet which he insisted was essential. With his directions to the
closest access point memorized I pulled out of his driveway, made a
few turns at the landmarks he gave me and soon found myself the only
car in a large, deserted parking lot.
The river stretched below me. It was as wide as the Wisconsin is as it
flows past the highway north of Merrill. A lot of water. But the flow
was split by a long island downstream from the parking lot. After
pulling on my waders for the first time since last September and
stringing up the 8 1/2 foot St. Croix, which hadn't been assembled for
an even longer time, I waded into the crystal clear, icy cold water.
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I tied on a long piece of 6x and tied on one midge halfway down that
length of line and turned another one on at its tip. I looped a strike
indicator on the leader above the tippet, a little round ball called a
Thingamabobber. I started casting to likely looking runs around
rootballs and in channels that ran in mid-stream. It wasn't long until
the bobber hesitated and a tiny rainbow, maybe 3 inches in length, was
skidded across the water to my hand and released. Shortly after that
and a little further downstream that action was repeated with a
slightly larger rainbow and then with a small brown of identical size.
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I picked up a couple more fish, all under the hooded eyes of a heron
that insisted on standing a couple dozen yards away from me. The
island's trees were crowded with heron nests and I could see several
more downstream, fishing the riffles. One stabbed down with its beak
and a small fish was snared and swallowed as I watched.
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The hits were coming slower and slower and I started to see occasional
rise forms. As hard as I looked I couldn't see any adult bugs coming
off the water but soon the Zebras were being ignored and I was
surrounded by feeding fish.
I snipped off the midges and tied on a Pass Lake . It elicited a false
rise from a few fish but none took it well enough to be hooked. The
same thing happened with a #20 Parachute Adams and a couple other
flies I tried. The fish kept coming up but obviously were only rarely
breaking the surface to suck down a unseen insect. Instead they were
rolling, there backs breaking the surface but their mouths closing on
prey that was just below the waters surface.
I opened my small wetfly box. I tied a small bead head caddis pupa at
the mid point and put a small Waterhen Bloa soft hackle wet (a
present) on the point. Immediately I started getting hits and, after
adjusting my strike to give the downstream fish more time to take the
fly, started hooking and landing fish. They were about the same size
as the earlier trout, maybe 6 or 7 inches. But they were finally
staying hooked and they were all taking the small soft hackle.
I fished the sizable pod of trout that were making the riffle below me
look like a hatchery at feeding time. I had probably been at that one
spot for half an hour when I looked upstream and saw an older man
fishing the next riffle above me. He saw me looking at him and asked
me how I was doing. I said that I was catching lots of little ones and
he responded that he had noticed that. I had seen a few larger rises
downstream from me and I had no idea how long he had been waiting for
me to move down, so I offered to let him fish through down to the
bigger fish. He didn't respond to the offer except by turning around
and wading upstream to the other side of the island.
Somewhere in there I had managed to lodge my cast of flies in a tree
limb during a backcast. I was firmly tangled and had to snap them off.
I didn't have any more Bloas but i did have some small BWO soft
hackles I had tied myself. They also took fish. I slowly worked down
to the bigger rises. The fish were more spread out in the calmer water
and the predominant rainbow pods gave way to more scattered browns.
They were still small, probably recent stockers, although there is
some natural reproduction in the Clinch.
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As the afternoon edged into evening, the relatively warm 40 degree
temps were punctuated by gusts of much colder air flowing down from
the mountains. My hands, already cold from the water that never got
above 45 degrees, started to get numb and stiffen up. In addition the
fish had slowed quite a bit in there active feeding. Getting ready to
pack up and still without a fish over 8 inches or so I snipped off the
small wet and tied on a #14 Beadhead Pheasant tail soft hackle. this
sank quite a bit deeper and after a few swings a bigger fish grabbed
the fly. It was a rainbow that may have made the 10 inch mark on a
ruler. A few casts later, its twin came to hand. They were both fat,
healthy looking fish.
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It was close to 7pm. that was the time to Norris Dam was scheduled to
resume generating and the river, therefore, was destined to rise above
safe wading levels. In addition my hands were actually hurting from
the cold. So I reeled in and splashed the couple hundred yards back up
to the parking lot. The other fisherman was just pulling out as I
climbed out of the water. A couple of grazing geese hissed me away
from them as I reached the car. It had been a fine first day fishing
for 2009. While I felt a little sheepish putting 120 miles on my car
to catch fish that were small and probably stocked in the last few
weeks, it was, in the end, worth it. The next day we were going to
Gatlinburg/ Pigeon Forge for two days. I had a kitchen pass to fish
both days if I wished.
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In preparation to this visit to Tennessee I had pulled out my battered
copy of Harry Middleton's "On the Spine of Time... An Angler's Love of
the Smokies" and spent a pleasant couple of days during breaks at work
with Arby Mulligan, Tewksbury and Effie Sopwith. In the end there
isn't much fishing info in the book but there are some fairly strong
opinions about the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Having only
seen Gatlinburg as we sped through it during the night 32 years ago on
our way to Florida to engage in stupid hippy crap, I didn't have any
real experience to prepare me for what I saw. Middleton's book made me
think of Pigeon Forge as having the shape and feel of a long Carny
Midway with a road running through it. And with the exception that the
road in question was a six lane highway, that is what it essentially
is. There are of course things other than Hillbilly Golf, Dollywood,
Country Comedy Shack, etc., etc., etc.. For one, there has to be the
highest density of hotels that exist on the planet, resulting in
exceptionally cheap hotel rooms. Second there is a layer of commerce
meant to skim the pockets of those of us who are "too good" to be
taken in by Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium. There is an Orvis
store with many more clothing items than fishing equipment, expensive
restaurants that sell food that you could buy in any local diner in
Knoxville at 1/3 the price and expensive Spas/Resorts, whose prices
would keep the upper classes from having to mingle with the hoi
polloi. But even with all those things, what you end up with is the
feel of a place so desperate for your cash that not having barkers in
front of the buildings wheedling you to enter seems to be the only
method of co-option they passed up. And for all I know, during the
summer months they hire guys who dress up like mountaineers (with
stubbly beards and a few strategically blacked out teeth) to whine and
insult the tourists into their bosses' attractions. But I'm getting
ahead of myself.
Wednesday dawned, actually dawned. The sun was out and although the
temps were around 25 degrees when we woke up by the time we pulled out
of Fairfield Glade they were already around 40 and rising. We followed
the in laws' red SUV through the sprawl that is Knoxville and, with a
brief pause, into the sprawl that is Sevierville and Pigeon Forge. We
let the in laws do the hotel shopping. They rejected a couple for
what, to me, seemed dubious reasons but in the end we rented a couple
of rooms in a clean, small, high rise motel overlooking the Little
Pigeon River. Total cost per room with two double beds... $33.
My mother in law is a good hearted soul and worried about me having
fun on the trip. She encouraged me to go fishing whenever I could. She
did so that day also. But the passes had all been closed over the
Smokies the day before by snow and the local fly shops' fishing
reports for the last few days were of the "you should have been here
last week" variety. In addition, believe it or not, I do like to spend
time with my family. So I passed on an afternoon astream in favor of
accompanying Jacci, Mason and Maw and Paw Smith to Gatlinburg and
Ripley's newest attraction, "The Aquarium of the Smokies".
The road to Gatlinburg runs through a few miles of forest alongside
the Little Pigeon River. It was juicy looking water. Fast but hardly
intimidating. I suspected it was well stocked with fish, as Pigeon
Forge and Gatlinburg require you to buy a $9 fishing pass to fish the
municipal streams. But even with stocked trout I could see how it
might be a pleasant way to fish away an afternoon on a stream such as
this.
Gatlinburg itself was a smaller, slightly less brash version of Pigeon
Forge. The highway had been replaced by streets and many of the shops
would have been at home in Minocqua or the Dells. Maybe a place that
I wouldn't care to live in but certainly one that I could spend a day
in.
We parked the cars and paid for our tickets into the aquarium. It was
dark and cool inside. Several gigantic skeletons hung from wires from
the ceiling, one of a fossil turtle, another of an extinct crocodilian
from the Age of Dinosaurs and another of a modern Right Whale. There
were various exhibits scattered about, tanks of pirhana, jellyfish and
small artificial coral reefs. But the piece de resistance of the place
was the gigantic central tank. A moving walkway took you through the
belly of the thing in a tunnel of curved plexiglass. As you slowly
moved along you had sharks and barricuda glide over your head. An
occasional redfish or tarpon finned about and everywhere tropical fish
confettied through the rocks and artificial coral heads. For someone
like me, who expected to be overwhelmed by brash commercialism, the
display was impressive in its apparent decision to let the animals and
setting speak for itself. It really did feel more like a museum than a
commercial attraction.
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We spent a couple of hours there. Afterward, with a couple of hours of
daylight left to spend, we decided to drive up through the park to
Newfound Gap, in order to add another state (North Carolina) to Jacci
and Mason's life list. We could see the snow capped crest from the
parking lot.
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The boundary line between Gatlinburg and the National Park was as
sudden as Middleton makes it out to be in his book. On instant you are
in the glitter of downtown Gatlinburg, the next you are in amongst
some truly old deciduous trees.
The road twisted up along the mountainsides, with the West Prong of
the Little Pigeon making occasional appearances roadside. Up here in
the park it was serious pocketwater. The flow was interrupted by small
falls and massive boulders. It looked to be intimidating wading.
Halfway to the Gap we began to see snow by the edges of the highway.
It increased in depth until it covered the guard rails near the
summit. By the time we made the parking lot at Newfound Gap there were
plowed banks nearly head high.
The view from the Gap was just fine. Mountains stretched off to the
horizon. The parking lot was filled with families and couples. Kids
were throwing snowballs and people were taking turns with photo
snapping chores with complete strangers. Touristy, I suppose, but
nice.
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With the sun starting to set and the air temp dropping towards the
freezing point we retreated off the mountain before the hairpin turns
became skating rinks. Back in town we debated via cellphone our dinner
options. We ended up going to a restaurant that sold things like
Chicken Fried Steak and Fried Chicken for a premium price. The food
was o.k., but hardly awesome, and the tab came to almost 3 times our
hotel bill.
The next day Jacci and Mason would accompany the In-Laws to Dollywood
courtesy of 4 free tickets from a friend. I, in turn, would go
fishing.
I split from the group early on Thursday morning. I took the highway
down to Townsend, TN. Originally I had planned to fish the West Prong
of the Little Pigeon upstream from Gatlinburg. But the amount of snow
we had seen the day before had convinced me that the water temps on
that stream would probably drop as the day warmed, due to melting
snow, rather than edge to the magic 50 degree mark.
I pulled into the Little River Outfitters fly shop around 10 am EDT. A
very nice shop. A picked up a few odds and ends and, as I was paying,
talked to the proprietor about the fishing prospects for the day. He
agreed with my estimation of the Little Pigeons conditions but, after
letting drop how well the streams had been fishing prior to the recent
cold weather, averred that the East Prong of the Little River would
probably fish best. He directed me to proceed until I crossed a stone
bridge, then chose my fishing spot.
I drove back up into the park and then turned south to follow the road
towards Elkmont camp ground. I crossed several bridges. Finally i
crossed one with stome abutments. Was this the right one? Looking for
an empty pullout I found one a few hundred yards above the bridge. I
strung up the 9' 4wt. Diamondback and forgoing waders, clambered down
the bank to the river's edge.
The water was a clear green. It was also cold, measuring 43 degrees on
my digital thermometer. I started out with the same set up I used on
the Clinch, a couple of Zebra midges under a strike indicator. I
fished through a couple of beautiful runs with nary a bump. I switched
to a beadhead PT soft hackle and received, possibly, a light tap for
my troubles. Aside from that, the sight of a fish flashing deep in a
pool and a few small caddis flies were the only fishy occurrences at
this stop. I climbed the bank to my car and proceeded upstream.
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I would stop and fish every couple of miles, varying my flies from
nymphs and wets to streamers. Other than another half-hearted bump
from a pool beneath a small waterfall, I didn't connect with or see
anything.
Around 1pm as I neared the turnoff to the Elkmont campground I crossed
what undeniably was a stone bridge. Had I been fishing in barren water
all the time before that? I didn't, and still don't, know. But I
traveled the campground road, which paralleled the river, until I came
to a well used pullout. This time I wadered up and walked a quarter
mile or so up to another bridge. I planned to fish down to my car.
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The first thing that greeted me at the waters edge were some caddis
flies, plus some tiny mayflies (size #24 or less). There were no
rising fish. I again went with the Zebra setup and after failing to
interest the fish with those varied my rigging with different flies
and leader combinations. I tried small stonefly nymphs after seeing a
solitary stonefly clatter off into the bushes. Nothing. Mayfly nymphs
after a few dark #18 duns started to emerge. Nada. I took off the
strike indicator and sank the flies to the bottom with a gang of split
shot. Zero interest. I was now within site of my car and pullout. I
retied my tippet and put on a cast of flies with a soft hackle at its
midpoint and a March Brown wet at the point. I swung it behind some
slack water behind a boulder and got a hit. A second swing brought a
hook up and a small rainbow was skidded to my waiting hands, firmly
attached to the March Brown.
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Thinking that maybe the worm had turned I continued fishing downstream
almost all the way to the car, with nothing more to show for it.
Finally at the big pool at the pullout I got another taker. A brown
this time, it was no bigger than the first fish. But as I unhooked the
fish I started to see actual rises. Cutting off my wets, I tied on a
small Bivisible. I drifted the fly over a consistently rising fish. He
made a false rise and miss. And then on the next drift came up and I
hooked him. Another brown, maybe marginally larger than the last, was
landed and released.
I had acquired an audience. The pullout was big enough that people
would park there and eat and watch the river. I kept drifting the
Bivisible with only short rises to show for it. Remembering the #18
mayflies I tried using a size 18 Parachute Adams. The fish splashed it
but didn't stay hooked. So I switched to my smallest Adams, a #22. On
my first drift a brown smacked it. When I had him in my hand there
came a smattering of applause from the picnickers ashore and, after
unhooking the fish and returning him to the water, I gave a slight bow
in response.
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Again thinking I had these fishes' number I kept casting the small
Parachute. But again, I was only rewarded with splashes and short
risers. The tourists, having better ways to spend their time, became
bored and left. Becoming frustrated I switched to a Pass Lake dry. A
rainbow took it on the first drift but after that nothing. I tried
other flies, all of which were ignored by the rising fish.
My time was running short, I had agreed to meet Jacci at 5pm. Now,
four days after the fact, the identity of the last fly I used to catch
my last fish is forgotten, but the small 'bow took it just a few
minutes before I climbed out of the 47 degree water to my car. And my
Tennessee fishing was done.
As I dewadered an SUV pulled up and a guide and his sport hopped out.
I watched as the guide had his customer drift a fly over the rising
fish to no result. As they walked closer to me he asked how I did. I
replied that I'd only been able to come out with five but that there
were lots of fish down there including some nice ones. What flies had
I used? I repeated the litany of flies I had tried and eventually came
to the Parachute Adams. "Thats the fly!", he exclaimed. "It always
works." His client continued casting [i]his[/i] Parachute Adams (about
a #14), to no avail. The guide comforted me by saying that this
particular hole probably got pounded harder than any other on the
river, due to the easy access. Taking him at his word, but still
feeling that I should have done better I drove off.
I had about 20 minutes to make it back to Pigeon Forge. A couple miles
down the road there was a pullout and down at the bottom of the valley
were the towers of Gatlinburg. I hurriedly checked my cellphone, and
wonder of wonders, had a signal. I punched in a call to Jacci's mom.
No answer. I tried again. No answer. My hope was that they were not
done with the Dollywood adventure and I could maybe finagle another
hour or so of fishing. My third and fourth calls went unanswered and I
reluctantly continued down towards town, wondering how we'd manage to
meet up when I got there.
I tried the phone again when I got to Pigeon Forge at precisely 5pm.
Jacci answered. They were still at Dollywood with Mason wanting to
take one last ride. They'd hook up with me afterward. Why don't I go
and wait for them at the Orvis shop? Be there soon. An hour later,
after I started to feel uneasy criss-crossing the sales floor under
the eyes of the sales clerks there (but getting a great buy on some
#18 barbless dry fly hooks on clearance), I left and called again.
They were just leaving the tram to the parking lot. I'll meet you at
the Walgreens by the fly shop, I said. 45 minutes later they arrived.
We ate a quick bite and then raced the setting sun back to Fairfield
Glade (the sun won). We turned in shortly after we got there, meaning
to be on the road at 6am next morning.
The denouement.
We were delayed by severe thunderstorms passing over Crossville at 6
in the morning. We left at 7:45 and just barely missed getting slammed
by a tornado in Clarksville, the bad storms passing only 10 miles
behind us. As it was, we passed through numerous periods of heavy
rain, sometimes slowing down to 40MPH or less. We finally left the
Interstate at Salem, Illinois. There was a lightening of the gray sky
visible to the west and old Highway 51 was in that direction. It
turned out to be good move as we soon left the rain behind.
We were scheduled to stop for the night at our friends' house in
Poplar Grove, Illinois. Mason got to treat his pet withdrawal symptoms
by spending time with their collie, Chase, and by letting one of their
cockatiels perch on various body parts in an embarrassing manor.
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I spent part of the evening being eventually convinced that vinyl
records played on a good setup outperform CD's played on the same
setup. The two glasses of whisky, one of Laphraiog Cask Strength Islay
and the other a 30 year old Scott's Single Malt, probably helped with
my conversion experience. At least they made my after dark tour of
their new neighborhood a pleasantly wobbly affair.
The next noon found us back in Wisconsin. The tension of being on the
road far from home faded amongst the familiar landscape. Slowing down
to 55 mph on the county road leading to Merrill was a bit of a shock
but not as much as slowing to 25 mph in the city proper (most of the
speed limits in Tennessee were 10 mph more than they are in similar
situations in Wisconsin).
The dogs went nuts when they met us at the door.
GeoC
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