08-30-04 Fishing has definitely slowed down on the Smith River.  I guess success has spoiled me. A few years ago I would have been very pleased with the number of fish brought to hand, but the numbers and quality this past weekend were nothing compared to a month or so ago.   Saturday afternoon I fished along the upper end of the hayfields. I started in a run that routinely produces double digits and this time caught a single fish. It was a nice brown trout which measured 14 inches. This turned out to be the largest fish for the weekend. By the time I reached a good exit point I had struggled to catch eight fish.   Sunday morning I was the first fisherman to fish up through the riff area at the lower end of the Special Regulation Section.  I was by myself and really took my time. I went a long ways before catching my first fish. Things did not get much better. I threw caution to the wind and experimented with a double nymph set up. That did not last long because I don't have the patience to untangle the inevitable tangles. By the time I reached the easy get out point adjacent to the old field I had caught eighteen. Not bad but not good either.   I was surprised to see that at least a third of the fish caught were rainbows which were hold overs from last springs stocking.  It was also disappointing to note that at least half of the remaining brown trout were less then six inches in length. The water was very clear on both days. I also noticed the beginning of the leaf drop which makes for frustrating fly fishing.   One positive note. It is about time for me to switch gears. Deer hunting is just around the corner.

08- 17-04 Sunday and Monday of this week found me and a fisherman from Fayetteville, NC on the Smith River chasing those elusive trout. We had planned to do the trip a couple days earlier but postponed it until the hurricanes blew through. I anticipated the river, downstream of Town Creek, would be the color of coffee with all the rain but was pleasantly surprised to find it only had a slight stain.   We spent Sunday afternoon on the upper end of the Special Regulation section. The first pool we fished had a lot of surface activity but being the stubborn nymph fisherman that I am we stuck to the Allieworm and did fairly well by casting above the rises and allowing the nymph to drift back to the fish.   It is important to note that you have to be careful not to allow the fly line to pass over the fish or they will be spooked. An up and across approach seems to work best. Once the indicator is well past where you anticipate a strike, gently lift the line off the water and go right back at it again. Place two or three casts to each rise or likely spot and then move on. Do not spend a lot of time trying to catch a fish that is not interested in eating what you are presenting unless you are prepared to do a lot of experimenting with everything you have in your fly box.  Another cautionary note would be to limit your false casting. A lot of false casting over fish in very clear, calm water spooks the fish.   Monday morning we started down by the hayfields but did not do well so we move further upstream and found some fish more willing to bite. All our fish were caught on nymphs. The bite is not as strong as it was about a month ago but I am confident that if you are willing to pay your dues you can still catch a good number of fish on any outing.   One last  cautionary  note. You have not fished a slippery river until you have fished the Smith River. The mineral content of the water has combined with a predominately ledge river bed to form a very slippery moss covered bottom. We both took unanticipated cold baths. Lesson learned - if you are carrying a cell phone or camera, be sure it is protected by a Ziploc plastic bag.

07-04-04 If this past week was any indicator I would say the "big bite" on the Smith River has reached its peak and is moving down the other side. I fished the river three days last week and was able to catch a good number of fish, but nothing like in the recent past. There are still plenty of fish in all areas of the river but you have to catch them one at a time. Runs that recently produced a half dozen or more fish are now only yielding one or two or maybe even zero. Two weeks ago the majority of fish caught were stocked rainbows. My guess is that most of these have been harvested because browns are now the dominant catch..   On a very positive note the fish appear to be a bit larger this year. The little fellows that were so prevalent in years past are not being caught with any regularity. Most fish are now in the 8-10 inch range and ones that will past the 12 inch mark is not unusual. On Friday I got lucky and was able to measure a brown that was an honest 16 and one half inches. This was my second brown that passed the 16 inch mark in as many weeks. I also talked with a fellow whom I trust not to stretch the tape who said he caught one that exceeded 16 inches on Saturday. Things are looking up my favorite river.     06-22-04  I just returned from another good weekend on the Smith River. The bite continues but appears to have it's peaks and valleys and can be frustrating at times.   I arrived late Saturday morning and found my first two choices of fishing locations already occupied. I finally settled on a section of the lower river south of Bassett. Within a short time I was catching fish and enjoying life. Things were going real well until I arrived at a section which was too deep to wade. There was a decent looking run just upstream that I was determined to fish.  I got up on my tiptoes and maneuvered both left, right and up the middle but this only resulted in a good bit of chilly water spilling over the top of my waders. I finally crawled up a steep bank and busted brush to where I could enter the water at the bottom of the run where I hit the mother lodge. I pulled about twenty out of the run before once again being forced to hit the bank to bypass another deep section. By the mid afternoon my tally hit the mid forties.   Sunday morning I fished with a fellow for half a day who wanted polish his skills and regain his confidence. We fished a short section at the lower end of the "Hay Fields". Once we got on the water it was obvious that all that was required was to point out obvious spots and offer encouragement. The fish were not biting as well as the previous day but my fellow fisherman placed his hands on eighteen and was very pleased with himself. I picked up nine by following along and fishing the lesser holding areas.   Sunday evening I returned to the river with the intention of adding a good number to my annual tally. I fished very methodically up through a section that had given up high numbers of fish the previous week and was barely able to hit double digits. All fish on Saturday and Sunday fell prey to the Allieworm.   Monday morning found me at the base of the riffles at the lower end of the Special Regulation Area. I struggled to catch ten by the time I arrived even with the culvert. I was tempted to climb the steep bank to the railroad tracks and call it a day but stubbornness forced me to press on. I added a Gray Squirrel Nymph about 8 inches below the bend of the hook on my Alliewom and immediately began to catch fish after fish. I caught about twenty-five fish in a row on the Squirrel Tail before they all of a sudden switched back to the Allieworm. The noontime generation surge forced me off the water just shy of the fifty mark. Not bad for what had originally looked like a dismal outing.   06-13-04 The Smith River bite is on!  I'm a pretty good fisherman, but the results from the past three days were truly exceptional. My suggestion is to go now. Go with me, go with someone else or go by yourself. The operative word here is GO!  I don't know how long this will last. In my opinion there is no section better then others. Right now it is all good.    I fished three different sections of the river and had no problem catching into the high double digits on each occasion. On Sunday I caught 15 out of a single run less then twenty feet from my starting point. Friday I fished at midday, on Saturday and Sunday I was on the water at about 7am. I was only able to spend about three hours on the water each day because I had a beautiful woman waiting back at my cabin and I have learned from past experience that I should not neglect her for too long .   06-8-04 The Smith River continues to fish well. That daily shot of cold water coming out of Philpott Dam makes the river very productive all summer even after most trout streams have become too warm for fishing.   Myself and another fellow caught about fifty on Sunday. Half of them came from downstream of the Stanleytown Bridge and the rest were from the lower end of the Special Regulation section. The following day we fished behind the Mirror Factory in the morning and only managed 15 between us. We spent about an hour during mid-afternoon near the Hwy 220 bridge and added a few more to our tally.    That evening we swapped stories with others at the Smith River Trout Unlimited picnic. Some reported having good luck with dry flies, others were slaying them with sparse hackled wet flies. All of ours were fooled by my signature nymph the Allieworm. Bottom line is that everyone who has fished recently confirmed that the river is fishing very well.   05-28-04  I fished the lower Smith River on Thursday and did very well on my favorite nymph, a beadhead Allieworm. The river was stocked with rainbows about a week ago. However, two thirds of my twenty plus fish were stream spawned brown trout.   Friday was an entirely different day. Myself and a NC fisherman got a late start behind the Mirror Factory and I am ashamed to report that we did not do well at all. A cooling trend appeared to knock the fish off their feed. There was a hatch of something real small coming off. The fish were not exactly boiling the water but there was enough surface activity to make us switch to the smallest fly in our box. We got a couple of looks but no hook ups. A switch back to a smaller version of the Allieworm and Ray Charles produced a total of three fish. To add insult to injury, after we finished for the morning I talked with a fellow I've fished with before who fished the same water just a bit upstream of us. He said he had caught 21 on a very small Light Cahill. Hmmmm, back to the fly tying bench.     05-16-04 The Smith River continues to fish very well. They generated with one generator all last week which made the water as clear as gin and a good foot lower then normal. This super clear water requires long leaders, long casts and careful wading if you hope to catch a respectable amount of fish.   I was on the water Friday afternoon at about one o'clock and fished the Dam Section of the river until forced off by the three o'clock generation surge. The upper section is currently full of freshly stocked rainbows and it was fairly easy to meet my goal of double digits without too much effort. I would caution folks who wade the upper section of the river to wear cleats or corkers as the bedrock river bed is very slick and the water is also a very cold mid 40 degrees even at this time of the year. A fall could be painful and will likely end your fishing for the day.   Sunday morning found me at the Philpott Bridge where I hoped to fill an order from Mrs K. for a limit of stockers for the skillet. As often happens when I am on such a mission I caught brown trout after brown trout and did not catch the first rainbow until I was well into double digits and had given up on taking any home. I ended up with 17 browns and 2 very lucky rainbows. All were returned to the water.   05-09-04 Saturday morning I fished with a fellow on the lower end of the Special Regulation Section of the Smith River. The fishing started off very slow. Initially there was a lot of dimpling of the water but we could not interest anything in the "Allieworm". I finally switched my client to the "Ray Charles" and he started catching fish. One was as good a rainbow as I have seen all year. We were not in a good spot for measuring fish but I would estimate it would easily go +20 inches. Snapped a photo of it before it slipped out of ours hands and back into the river for someone else to enjoy. By noon the client was well into double digits. I also added a few to my annual total by following my client with a dead drifted "brassie".   Sunday morning found me walking the rail road tracks adjacent to the Mirror Factory. I was on the water at 730am with high expectations of working on my self declared annual goal of 600 Smith River trout. By the time I reached my previously determined "get out point" I had brought one fish to hand. This was the same stretch of water where a week ago I had caught 22 in less them two hours. Even though I had told my wife I would be back at our cabin by 1030am, my ego forced me to press on. I switched to a small "Copper John" and was rewarded with an even dozen before reaching the next exit point. I sheepishly arrived home to a concerned wife about 45 minutes late.   05-01-04 Invited a soldier from Ft Bragg to share my cabin Saturday evening so that we could get a early start fishing the Smith River the following morning. Being retired military myself we spent an enjoyable evening comparing todays army to the old army of my youth. After a good nights sleep we hurriedly down breakfast and were fishing the lower end of the Special Regulation area by 8am. We took our time and were rewarded with about 40 fish by the time we arrived at our "get out point". All fell prey to the "allieworm" fished about 18 inches under a yarn strike indicator.   After watching my soldier guest mow my lawn as payment for guide services before he hit the road back to Ft Bragg, (Hey, no free trips here!), I was plain tuckered out and took a nap. I was revived by 530pm and was at the Mirror Factory shortly thereafter. I walked down past the mirror pool and fished back up to about the middle of the field. I questioned my judgment when it started to rain but I was there, and so fished anyways. It must have been the dinner hour because a lot of nice browns were positioned in the shallow riffs and readily grabbed my "allieworm" as it drifted down the buffet line. Added 22 to my morning count. All in all a pretty good day on a river which has a reputation for being tough water to fish.   04-22-04 Was in the Bassett VA area earlier in the week for some turkey hunting and fishing. The turkeys did not cooperate but the fish were eager to please. The Smith River generation schedule of 10 am to 11 pm also factored in on previous well laid plans.   On Tuesday after a morning in the turkey woods a buddy and I drove up near the Blue Ridge Parkway. We hiked back in a considerable distance before splitting up to fish a small "no name" stream that was just chuck full of rainbows and a few brown trout. Our set up was a short leader, bushy dry fly and a small nymph hung about 8 inches under the dry. The fish were aggressive feeders and just about every run and hole brought a strike. We wore our arms out catching fish and our legs out scrambling over large boulders and fallen logs. And then there was the long walk back to the trailhead.   The following day we decided to forego turkey hunting so as to fish the Smith River prior to generation. We fished up near the dam and did very well. Soon after our arrival the water started dimpling with fish rising to some sort of midge hatch. My buddy told me when this surface activity started he wasted an hour of precious fishing time trying to fish with a small dry fly but could not draw a strike. I could not see anything taking flight from the surface of the water so stuck with what I know best which is nymphs. I cast the allieworm about three feet upstream of a raise and more often then not the strike indicator would take a dip within the first few seconds of it's drift. I put my hands on 21 trout before linking back up with my friend who caught about half that number before the generation surge forced us out of the water.   04-04-04 At about 4 o'clock Sunday morning I woke from a sound sleep to the howl of winds from a cold front passing over the oak ridge where my cabin sits close to the Smith River. I prayed that it would die down before I was to meet a client for a day of fishing on my "home water". The temperature hovered at 40 degrees and the wind had kicked up to gale force by 8am when we  linked up at Papa's Pizza parking lot.     By this time you can probably fill in the blanks for the rest of the story, right? But you would be very WRONG.     While neither the client nor I had high expectations, we were there and had to give it a try. I had recently fished the Special Regulation Section of the river and hoped the fish I had caught and returned to the water were still in the same general location. The client soon caught a fish. So far, so good. He then caught another and I knew things were going to be all right.      The sun played peek-a-boo with the clouds and did not offer much warmth. The high of the day reached 50 degrees. The winds did not abate. Sometimes it was to our back, sometimes quartering and often directly in our face. My client, although relatively new to fly fishing, was able to time his casts to the wind and placed his "allieworm" in the appropriate spots. I must admit that even I was surprised as he hauled in fish after fish.     The weather was so brutal that we were forced to get out of the water and  walk up and down with our hands under our armpits to get the circulation going again. On one occasion it got to where I seriously doubted my fingers had one more double surgeons knot in them. Throughout all this we were catching fish. My client was a real trooper. He figured he had driven a long ways and as long as the fish were biting he was going to make the most of it. He set a personal record for himself and I added a few to my yearly tally. When it was all over we were pushing the 50 mark and could have made it had we wanted to punish our bodies a bit more.     So much for a cold front putting the fish off their feed.   03-04-04 Was in the Bassett area on Thursday, March 4th checking on my cabin and took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to wet a line in the Smith River. Went up near the dam which has been good to me lately and observed a few good old boys sitting on five gallon buckets at most of the "stock truck holes". I inquired as to how they were doing and most responded that they were just killing time until the state stocked again, which they hoped would be very soon.   I found a spot to enter the water and promptly missed a good fish. I then proceeded for a long ways before running into a pod of brown trout which produced five fish in just about as many casts. It was then absolutely nothing until I arrived at a good "get out point" about 300 yards further up the stream.   I moved about a mile up the river to within sight of the dam and found a pool with lots of dimples that indicated feeding fish. I cast to the dimples with an Allieworm backed up with a brassie hung about six inches below the Allieworm. This combination produced one brown and 3 rainbows in quick succession before the action came to an abrupt halt.   Because my goal is to always catch ten fish in any outing, and I was one short,  I stubbornly continued to fish for about another hour without as much as another tiny bite. Can't really complain. It was another great day on my favorite river.     01-30-04 I was up checking my cabin in Bassett VA on Friday and it was such a pretty afternoon that I decided to tempt the fishing gods by heading for the upper hatchery supported section of the Smith River. I arrived at about 2pm and much to my surprise there were very few fishermen on the water. I soon discovered why. A stiff breeze blowing down a snow covered valley was making some for some very chilly air temperatures.   I slid down the snow covered bank to the stream bed and by timing my casts to lulls in the breeze was able to get the "Allieworm" in most of the good spots. I immediately caught a nice brown trout so wasn't worried about having to call my  polar bear excursion a skunk. I went a long way without another hit. Just as I was at a good exit point I started to catch fish. I pushed past the easy exit point and ended up catching well into double digits before I came to the next opportunity to exit. Along the way I snarled my leader in good shape and would have cut it off and crawled out of the stream, but as is often the case on the Smith there was no way to exit. Instead, I carefully picked the knot apart and got it down to where I could cut it one time. I figured my fingers were good for one more double surgeons knot. It took me awhile but I got it all back together and proceeded to catch three more fish.    On the drive back I observed a fisherman I have fished with before, pulling off his waders. We talked a bit and agreed that even though he had also caught fish, that maybe we were getting too old for these sort of outings. Thankfully neither of us had fallen in. Brrrrrrr!   01-19-04 This past Sunday I had the opportunity to guide the crew from Southern Outdoor Adventures Television http://www.southernoutdooradventures.com/ as they shot footage for a trout fishing show on the Smith River in Bassett, Virginia. This show is being sponsored by High Country Outdoors Guide Service http://www.highcountryoutdoors.net/ where I have the privilege of being listed as their Smith River Guide.     After meeting the folks and receiving an admonishment about no cussing or smoking while the camera was rolling, neither of which is a problem with me, we headed for the upper or dam section of the Smith. This was an area where I knew we could catch a few fish and not drown the cameraman in the process. The show's host, Mark Gromlovits put me at ease by telling me to just treat him like any other fishing partner. Our objective was to have fun and record it along the way. We did just that.   Despite cool temperatures and an occasional rain shower, a mixed bag of sixteen rainbow and brown trout answered the casting call and made a brief guest appearance for the camera. Several more started to audition but were too shy to be caught on the small screen. All of these aspiring aquatic starlets were enticed to reveal themselves by an Allieworm dead drifted about eighteen inches under a yarn strike indicator. Careful wading, long casts, long leaders and "watch the indicator" were the order of the day.    The show will run on local southern TV stations later this spring.