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Fishing
Report - March 12, Trophy Section
Date: 3/12/08
Location: Watauga Trophy Section
Conditions: Mid 60’s, Clear Skies, High
Pressure
Guide: Justin Shroyer
I floated the Watauga trophy section with our
great guest and friend Charlie from Statesville. The weather was
absolutely beautiful for our 4-mile float. We started fishing
midge and blue wing patterns in fast riffles without much
success. As we moved out of the riffle into the tail out 20-30
ft. downstream we hooked up immediately. This tailout produced
five or six fish, all caught on little blue wing wet flies
nymphed 5 ft. deep. Often when your usually productive riffle is
not producing, look to the edge water or tail out, as fish will
often move to different feeding lanes depending on the
situation. In this case the fish moved to the slower tailout and
were picking off drowned blue wings. We moved into caddis riffle
as a little midge hatch began. I tied on some peacock midges and
we landed fish after fish until lunch, the biggest being around
16 inches. The biggest fish of the day was lost at the net, a
20+ inch rainbow with a size 22 midge in its mouth. The TVA
released a little water in the early morning, which hit us
around 12:30. We started streamer fishing in the area called the
ledges. We had a great time stripping black streamers around big
rock outcroppings, pulling out fat rainbows and a couple small
browns. As the water dropped the bluewings showed back up. We
immediately tied on our blue wing pattern that produced in the
morning and caught fish consistently throughout the rest of the
day. One hole towards the end of the float produced 7-8 fish
within a 3’X 3’ area. These fish were stacked behind a ledge
gorging on blue wing emergers. It important to key into the
specific hatches on the Watauga tail water, as these fish wont
just go and smack any fly. Luckily for us our size 18-22 blue
wing and midge patterns came through very nicely.
Reported by: Justin Shroyer
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