Don’t know what it is about snow and dry fly fishing. The two go together like peaches and cream.  Don’t think I have ever been in snow that fish didn’t rise. No different Saturday.  Looking back on memorable afternoon dry fly fishing , I cannot remember but one afternoon that was as good as Saturday. That is in terms of fish size. One afternoon on the Watauga 10+  winters ago , will stick in my brain, til it stops producing cells.  Five fish over 18″s rose to my Olive Comparadun. I actually landed all five.  I remember the smoke coming from wood stoves hovering low in the valley as I was leaving. If I close my eyes,  can still smell the wood smoke. That is the kind of memory that is.  Well Saturday on the South Holston will be second in my brain for dry fly fishing. There were olives on the water as it was going down from generation. So the first hour was easy to figure out. If fish are rising as the water is going down, they will eat your dry fly. What happened from then on was the good part. I stayed with an olive dry fly for the next two hours. Good fish continued to sip it. Please understand there were no olives on the water at this point. But fish continued to eat the dry.  They were not rising but they ate the olive dry. I never changed patterns. Just continued to throw the dry against all odds and it worked.  It cannot be too shallow looking to hold fish here. Fish were in shallow runs . Fish were in all runs, no matter how fast or slow the water movement was. The big fish sips were no different from the 10″ fish sips. Very gentle with very little ring. So do not judge fish by the size of the ring.  The biggest rainbow’s take was the most subtle of them all.  He was a great fish of 3-4 p0unds and was hot as a fire cracker.  He jumped five times and his runs were mighty.  All of the bigger fish were caught in an across and down way. Caught fish on  curve casts upstream, but they were the smaller fish.  If there was a little trough, with a slight flow to it, there were fish.  The bigger fish were in those small troughs.

Snow and dry fly fishing burns in my soul. And makes little niches in memory places. Should be good food for my feeble years.

Tight Lines,

Rod Champion