MKFS: Fishing Conditions Archive

July 14

Despite some welcome shifts in the weather, despite lower water than anybody can ever remember, despite profuse tube hatches and greenwater rafting trips and air so hot you can fry an egg on a guide, despite all this, the fish just keep coming. Yesterday's trip went out in high blue skies with a solid breeze, with a client who needed to be off the water by 3:30. Totals: about sixty fish, including two 15's and an honest 17 taken in midday conditions. I never would have guessed.

Then met MKFS guides Murphy and Frondorf for a cigar-smoking fly-chucking half-float into the darkness and we bagged a dozen fish in the fifteen range and an eighteen-plus that topped 3 1/4 pounds caught at dark on a buzzbait--in mid July.

Bug hatches are profuse, verging on scary, with huge blobs of sulphurs, midges, caddis, and dobsonflies over water after dark and a sighting of a thin bank of White Millers at Knoxville Falls.

River levels are scary low. Movement outside of the river channels is difficult except within ledge lines or over freestone bottom, but wading should be excellent. Long-concealed objects are visible, such as the old bridge debris dowstream from Harper's Ferry. I think I located Meriwether Lewis' iron-framed folding boat in a deep hole below Whitehorse Rapids, though it may just be a bedframe.

Large mats and mops of star grass now dominate the open river areas from the 340 bridge on down, and in high sun there is a bass on each one. The free-floating algae blobs in the Brunswick area seem to have moderated somewhat but it was pitch dark when I was there last so I may not have noticed.

Bass are still aggressive for larger, louder lures such as sliders, poppers, and big hair bugs. The client caught his big fish yesterday on a small yellow popper cast after fish herding minnows in the shallows (and on a 2-weight rod!) but the best success by far has come on a small white buzzbait thrown far and run fast over open water. Fish have been crushing buzzbaits in spectacular strikes. Something about the annoying but consistent path of the bait, I guess. I even moved a behemoth near Knoxville that made a massive two-stage splash on the bait and nearly sprained my wrist--probably a tiger muskie.

It may be the first time I've ever had more big fish than clients. We have open boats. E-mail me about discounts.

Dave Motes

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