I seem to have a reputation for fishing the Elk River, among other things (insert your own personal jab here). But yesterday I spent a blustery afternoon chasing trout on the Caney Fork. Now I’m no stranger to the Caney, I’ve been guiding clients there since way back in my CT days, the Elk just holds a special place in my heart.

I’ve got some clients on the Caney this week and I figured I’d better give it a run at it’s current level to see what kinds of snags I might run into. So a couple of my pals and I dropped my drift boat in at the dam yesterday afternoon. We started late hopping to miss all of the shenanigans that go on on a normal Sunday morning up there. The late start combined with the cold and windy conditions helped tremendously. We had the normal “white bucket” brigade below the dam, a few at Lancaster and only a couple of other boats. We fished while we floated mostly only stopping to wade fish when we would bottom out.

The majority of reports coming into the shop lately about the Caney have not been that great. Fishings slow, got shut out, caught a couple, things of that nature. It wasn’t the Valhalla it was during the cicada hatch of last year but we managed to catch fish from the dam all the way to Happy Hollow. All on nymphs. Browns and Rainbows and one nice Sunfish but no Brookies. I’m sure as we get deeper into Spring the fishing is only going to get better so if your gear ain’t ready you’d better get it that way.

Here are pics of two decent browns I caught yesterday. My advise is, if you’re not catching fish maybe you’re not holding your mouth right.