Caney Fork on Memorial Day

[jad2t]

Finally the river was wadeable again so I came equipped with the flyrod and two spinning rods. I expected that place to be on fire since it hasn't been fished much in the past 3 or 4 weeks. Wrong. Only caught three trout, in addition to a largemouth and several small hybrids. Everyone and their mother was in the river that day, maybe that made the fish nervous. After generation I headed to the bank just below the dam to walk a while and fish for larger trout. I caught several pretty big skipjack on a 2.5" grub, pumpkin seed with a green tail. No large trout. Just letting everyone know how it was. Did anyone else venture out there on Monday?

[bd-]

My experience has been that the river always goes through a rough patch for a while after coming down from a long period of heavy, sustained generation.

The fish get freaked out because the habitat they have grown acclimated to since February is suddenly high and dry, and the water is bouncing up and down all day instead of holding steady. Their food sources change radically too because the bugs and baitfish behave differently at low water than at high water. For one thing, it's rare to see a midge hatch on 2 generators, and even if it happens, trout have a hard time traveling through 8 feet of water column to eat them. For another, any shad that were coming through the generators at 2 gens suddenly aren't anywhere near as abundant when they cut generation down.

In addition, smaller trout just don't survive heavy generation well. The staple of the 9-inch Caney trout's diet is midges, and like I said, it's difficult for trout to forage on midges at 11,000 cfs. In addition, the smaller trout don't have as many places to hide on heavy generation. The shallow shoals where they take shelter at low water are suddenly very deep and easily accessible by big brown trout, stripers, and walleye that want to eat them. If they stray out of their hiding places near the bank to feed, they are instantly on the menu.

Long story short, the big holdover fish make it through heavy spring generation okay, and they're still around, but they aren't really in the best mood to eat when the generators turn off after running hard 24/7 for nearly five months. The smaller fish will eat readily at low generation, but there aren't as many of them, and it'll take a little time for TWRA stocking to fully replenish them.

As long as we don't get more rain and everything stabilizes, things will settle down by mid-July or so.

Welcome to the hard part of fishing a trout tailwater in a heavy rain year. :(

bd

[thehick176]

Well said bd. Thanks for the explanation