TN Tailwaters

I fished the Watauga river on Sat. March 29th and only managed a couple of fish. The hatch (or lack thereof) was a real disappointment. I caught all fish on a black fly larvae pattern size 22. I saw just a couple BWO's coming off but the hatch never really took off. After 2:00 I was invaded by a group of bait fishermen and abandoned my spot for the South Holston.

I parked at the Weir grates and immediately started picking up small browns in the riffles using a WD40 BWO emerger size 24. About 3:30 the duns started hatching in earnest and I switched to a BWO parachute size 18 and managed about 4 on top, but not before I had to add about 4 feet of 7x tippet. The better fish were rising in the still water and were hard to fool. Down and across seemed to be the only way to get a good look from a fish.