Knots

[AKSkim]

Fishing fast was never my forte. To fish some of the streams in The Great Smoky Mountains you have to fish fast. 1-2 casts and move to the next plunger pool.

You don’t change flies while fishing a plunge pool; you change after fishing a plunge pool and then quickly change it before moving on. In my two trips down there with guides showing me the ropes on how to fish these streams was perhaps the most important lesson I learned down there.

Looking at these pools you can see why you only get one and maybe a second cast.

Before the trip this year I hit the PA streams hard for three weekends straight. I mainly concentrated in keep false casts to a minimum, most importantly concentrated on accuracy. “Put it 5 inches to the right of that bubble line” was the instruction from last year and repeated again this year.

One lesson that I seem like I didn’t learn was on my way home from VA. I decided to head straight up into PA and fish one of my favorite spring creeks. No guide needed I believed, until my second cast with a searching pattern and my rod jolted with the surprise of a broken shoe lace. A couple of head shakes and off it went, as I was trying to get him on my reel the line and rod went suddenly slack. I LOST HIM!!! As I brought in my line a very nice Rainbow just a matter of feet off to my left just leaped out of the water into a high arch and splashed back down. WOW…I have seen smaller trout do that chasing caddis hovering just about the surface, never seen one that big of a trout do it.

As I looked at the end of my tippet where my fly use to be I discovered the reason for it.

The Rainbow wanted to try to dislodge my fly from its mouth.

Judging by the pig tail look of it, it was easy to deduce that they fly had been poorly tied to the tippet.

Lesson learned; go back to slowing down and fishing the way I am use to.

And above all, pay attention to your knots.

As always, have to learn the lesson the hard way.

AK Skim