TR 03-05-16 Opening Weekend

[JestersHK]

Made it down for opening weekend with my cuz fmcbrandon here on the boards.  Headed out Friday late afternoon, got down, got setup, and while watching the generation flow at Taneycomo continue to slow down we decided to drive down and hit the trophy area on a gamble at around 10:00PM.

Sadly the gamble did not quite pay off   It was a hard night of fishing and I only landed one rainbow about 15inches down by the dam.  Water was dropping, but still not quite enough to really get out there so we packed up and headed back to Bennett and got in around 4:30am

Saturday morning we fished the whistle up at the dam. (who needs sleep right?  )  Started out great, but the morning bite was over pretty quickly so we headed down below dam and proceeded to work our way downstream.

Was a bit crowded, but nothing obscene in the early hours, but then mid morning hit and it started getting pretty packed.  We'd find a spot here and there go in catch a few then move farther down.  

Picked up a few little browns along the way, and was nice seeing them in there again.  Tons of small rainbows from the flood are in there along with chub shad, and goggle eye are in great abundance too.  Saw a guy catch a smallmouth too under the bridge.

Around 11ish we were down where the outlet empties out in zone 2.  We got a good spot and went to work, and Brandon landed a really nice rainbow over 20inches, close to 24 but I'll let the pics do the talking!  I'm sure he'll be along to post pics but it was a beautiful big male that he finally got in on his 2lb maxima.  After a few quick pics we got him back in the water and he was on his way to fight another day!  After a few more catches we worked down to the whistle bridge, picked up a few more stockers, and then headed out for lunch.

After lunch we hit up zone one and my normal spots were either crowded, or we did not see hardly any fish holding in them like last year.  I had heard some rumors about all the fish being in zone 2 and turns out there was some truth to that.  There were fish there, but not like they were stacked up in 2.

We headed back to zone 2 and hit up the deeper runs before the bluff wall and started catching them pretty consistently.  Noticed a few areas that were once pretty shallow have a deeper channel now carved out of them from the floods.  The rocks were also slick, but neither of us ate it and stayed dry(knock on wood). 

All fish were caught jigging on a variety of maribous and wooly buggers.  Plus some new deer head jigs that Brandon tied that was my go to for most of the day. Deer hair with a pheasant tail that really mimicked a minnow when I could get it swimming right, and it was just slaying them. Most jigs were on the heavy side 1/8th and 1/16th oz. so we could bounce the bottom.  The maribous (mostly white or brown in 1/8 or 1/16th) we literally were dragging the bottom with them to catch fish.  Fish were really rooting the bottom, and staying down low.

All in all a great start to the season, fish were a mixed bag to a bit larger than what we saw last year.  

I did not get too many pics (dead phone batteries...) but Brandon took some, and we both were running gopros, so once I get some editing done we will get some links up.  Cuz also fished Friday and Sunday so he's got a few more stories to add as well.  We also tried out the bobber for the gopro and got some good underwater action to boot.

Tight Lines guys,

[Foghorn]

Thanks for the report -we were gong to stop at Bennett on the way back from the opener at Roaring but had some business to attend to.

[fmcbrandon]

Great report DJ.   I caught several in the first half hour Sunday.   All in a green deer hair jog.  See pics below.  

 

It it was a gorgeous weekend and the water is in great shape!

Here is some underwater footage!