I'm just back from a two night camping trip. I took a day off from work on Friday. I drove up to Backbone Rock area to camp for a few nights. I set up camp Thursday evening under threatening skies. No rain yet though. It was to come the following day. I have wanted to fish Beaverdam Creek for several years now and my plan was to fish Beaverdam after South Holston. Well, it didn't happen. I had to fish S. Holston both days. Mind you, they were very good days but I was really wanting to spend some time on Beaverdam and one other creek in the area. The rain moved in Friday afternoon and put a stop to that. I got back to camp around 5 pm and it was raining hard. Beaverdam looked like chocolate milk. When I got up this morning to take a look at it, it wasn't much better. I decided to spend both days on S. Holston instead.
I got to the river on Friday morning at around 7:30 am. I and maybe six other anglers were on the water. They had scheduled a pulse at 1 so I had time to fish until about 1:45 pm or so. I began with a 22 zebra midge dropped off of a BH pheasant tail. I immediately began to connect. I fished this way until about 10:30 when everything seemed to slow down. I was tired and hungry so I decided to call it enough and go back to camp. I caught a total of 17 fish in three hours. Two were 15" rainbows and several browns in the 12" range. A very good morning indeed. It didn't look like the others were catching that much. I think they fishermen who are willing to go down in size on midges will do better than if you insist on dries the first thing in the morning. There were no sulphurs on the water at all.
Today, Saturday was more of the same, I fished with the same set up. A black zebra midge with red ultra wire dropped off of the bh pheasant tail. It was somewhat more action today but the sizes of the fish were down. I did managed to catch a couple in the 13" range but most were 10" or so. I caught about 23 today. I had a couple come up and push my dry so I'm sure later in the evening for the ones who wait out the pulse, there would be opportunities on the dry. All in all a good couple of days on the South Holston. I still hope to do Beaverdam one day. I probably will wait until the Green Drakes next year.
