Cumberland River 1/6/18

[Moveon]

Fished below the dam Sunday. Shared the water with one other boat. Lot of flow early and cut it down a bit around 11 to better fishable conditions. Had a heck of a day catching all trout species, including a bucket list 10 plus pound brown trout for myself. Also managed to scratch out a couple nice walleye and a striper. Heck of a day. Caught most of them casting but picked up a couple rainbows trolling cranks.

I've seen some big trout in the Smokey Moutains along Little River road. I was standing up on the road looking down into some of the larger pools of water on the little river and could see them in the water below the roadway. Never could get closer to them though. They have seen a lot of baits over their lifetime and are very shy and hide a lot in the day light hours. I'm told that they are more active at night and dusk and dawn. I caught some little rainbow trout and never any browns in the Smokey Mountains. But when I graduated from Purdue, Mark Rider and I went to his Grandparents home in Wisconsin and fished for trout in some of the streams up there in the woods. I had a blast catching some small brown trout on a fly rod with live worms as bait. It was May so we used live bait as that's what Marks Grandfather told us to use. Later I learned to fly fish with trout flies and had success catching small large mouth bass out of lakes and ponds. Also landed a few bluegills on fly rods at my local fishing lakes and KY and Barkley Lakes down in KY. Fun times. So I can only image what it was like for you to land such a huge brown trout. Congratulations on a great bucket list fish.

[luvtohunt]

We caught a bunch of rainbows that also dropped a few eggs in the boat. Female rainbows have a beautiful color right now. Or did last week anyway.