Fear No Ice!

Me and Skip put the motor on his ClackaCraft the other day and went fishing. We wanted to see if our big lake rainbows had moved up into their spring time haunts yet. We knew it was a little early, but our curiosity got the better of us. As expected they had not moved up yet, but man what a ride! We came across this ice flow and just motored right through creating our own path. We did go slow and we were careful, but it was still fun.



Nantahala DH

Just a few pics from the Nantahala Delayed Harvest waters. The DH is still in full swing, so don't forget that we are still offering guided trips to that area. There are still plenty of 20 inch and better fish to be had there. And the scenery speaks for itself.        

HA now on Facebook!

Well we finally took the plunge and set-up a facebook page. We have had several requests from customers to get a page and finally got time to set one up. Come by and check it out!

Hiwassee River Generation

TVA continues to run 2 generators for most of the day through the weekdays, but seems to let up a little bit on weekends. That may be to allow some wading fishermen to get a quick fix on the weekends. I don't know for sure, but I like to think that they help us out when they can. Anyway, if you get a chance to go with favorable flows, take advantage of it. The fishing has been very good with lots of brown trout coming to hand lately. No really big ones that I know of, but at least they are biting. It's probably just a matter of time before someone lays into a nice one. This is the right time of year to catch one. So get out when you can.

Fishing Report

Fishing continues to be good on the area trout waters. The fish are cooperating, the weather is the problem. I don't mind fishing in the snow, but when the roads are as icy as they have been lately, you just can't get to the decent areas to fish. And you can forget about backing a boat down the ramp, unless you want to lose your truck in the Hiwassee River.
If you are going to catch good numbers of fish in the winter, you can't be afraid to put on some split shot. And a double nymph rig for that matter. Midges are also important. The same standard flies that you use throughout the rest of the year will work fine. You just have to get them down. Not just deep, but on the bottom.
I would stick with BHPT's and Princes for the most part. Using them on a double nymph rig is hard to beat. You can also use one of these as your lead fly and drop a zebra midge off the back. If you want to throw a streamer, I would go with a white or olive bugger. Probably an olive one in size 6. Hard to go wrong with that one.
This set-up will work good on the Tellico or on the Hi. Just be sure and wade carefully. This is not a good time to get water down your waders. But sometimes you just have to risk it in order to spend some time with these little guys.



New Look

Took advantage of being stranded in the house yesterday and updated the look on here. Put a new design on the blog, which was a much needed addition. I got tired of the old design and wanted to change it up a little. Hopefully I will be able to post more often this winter. Not a whole lot going on around here lately to write about. We are still fishing, but there are a select few of us that take advantage of this time of year. So I don't report that much on our trips, since not many people are going to use the info. and get out on the water. So I use that time to tie a few flies and to market the business in other ways.
Marketing has always been an interesting activity to me. There are so many ways to promote a business, but only a few that really make it worth your time. Especially in this business, because there is a very limited customer base to begin with. Not to mention the fact that you have to compete with the big box stores in order to attract the few customers that are out there. I know exactly how the "mom and pop" stores must have felt when the first Wal-Mart stores began to appear in their areas.
I don't mind the competition, in fact I think it is good for the industry. It gives people alot of choices on where to spend their money in order to practice their sport. The thing that I don't understand is why someone would order off the internet from a big box store website and pay the same price for an item that they could have bought from their local fly shop. Then they have to pay shipping, which can get expensive.
I understand the convenience of internet shopping, but I hate to pay for shipping. Most fly shops that I know of, us included, don't charge anything for shipping. That's because we have the items drop-shipped directly from the manufacturer to the customer's address. We would have to pay the shipping anyway to have it shipped to the shop, so why not just ship it directly to the customer? We make a sale and never have to touch the merchandise. It's a win-win for everyone involved. Plus you would be supporting your local fly shop, which is a good thing.
I know alot of people don't think much about supporting a local business. Especially a fly shop. Most people probably don't give us a second thought, until they are on their way to the river and need a leader or a quick fishing report. Cabela's can't help you much then.
Didn't mean to rant here, just thinking out loud, trying to make sense of it. Posting a pic below of what we woke up to yesterday morning.



Pre-Spawn Bows

Won't be long now until we are booking trips for our annual pre-spawn rainbow pilgrimage. The pics below were taken during one of last years trips when me and Skip snuck off for a day.
These are WILD fish! Not private, farm fish that you see on other websites. These fish begin staging in March and wait on Mother Nature to tell them when to move up onto the gravel bars to do their thing. We don't bother them once they move to their beds. But we know exactly where the deeper water is that they use for a staging area. This is where you can stay into big bows for most of the day.
Give us a call if you would like to experience this for yourself. We never know how many openings we will have each year for these trips. Who knows when they will decide to move up onto their beds. And once that happens, WE ARE DONE!

Wintertime on the Hi

Expecting another winter storm to move in this evening. That's what the weather guys are saying anyway. I hope they are wrong about this one. It sounds like a pretty good snowfall is expected. Below is a pic of our rental cabins after the last one we had. Most of the snow is gone in the pic, but it may be coming back.



Happy New Year!

Wanted to wish everyone a happy, safe and prosperous new year. Hope everything went well for you in 2010 and that 2011 will be even better.
We had our best year ever at the fly shop. Our sales were up in the shop and our guide service had its best year ever. Despite having 4 guides on the payroll, we still had to turn some people away last year that we just couldn't find an opening for. We hate to do that, but sometimes we are just completely booked up. We do refer these clients to other services that also have good guides. We know that they will also do a good job for the customers. I guess that being completely booked up is a good problem to have, but we still hate to not be able to fish with these people.
In 2011 we are going to bring more product lines into the shop. We are definitely adding Simms to the line-up. We are also going to add a new line of reels, we just don't know what company yet, probably Hatch or Lamson. I'm leaning towards Hatch, but we are not sure yet. We still have a little time to decide, so we'll see how it goes.
We are also going to change a few things on the guide service end as well. We hope to add some new destinations to our list of waters that we guide on. We also REALLY need to add at least 1 more guide to the list to help out this year. I know without a doubt that this year is going to be busier than last year. We are going to need more help, that's for sure. But at this point, I have no idea who we will hire. This is a tough decision. A guide has alot of responsibilities when it comes to customer service. Being a good fisherman is a very small part of the whole picture. There are many other factors when it comes to being a good guide. That's what makes it so hard to find someone that you trust well enough to put them with clients. Especially when you don't have the time to train them. That's why we tend to pull guides from other services to help out when they are not booked at their "Home" service. We also help other services by guiding for them when they need help at a time when we are not booked. It is a common problem for guide services to be short handed, especially during the busy season or when you have a corporate booking that requires several guides in order to fish alot of people on the same day.
So this will be a challenging year to say the least, but I hope all goes well again this year. For everyone!