After the Sun Goes Down

No, I'm not talking about nighttime fishing, although I have covered that topic some before and found great success fishing through the night. In this instance, I'm actually referring to the late afternoon and early evening hours on bright sunny days. As the sun sinks below hills and ridges, fish that were almost impossibly shy just minutes earlier begin to feed. 

Interestingly, this is not always consistent, but when it happens the results are striking. The difficulty of bright sunny days is exacerbated in the Smokies in particular early and late in the season. This is due to the lack of leaves on the trees. This year, we lost all of the leaves earlier than has been usual the last few seasons. Thus, we have been dealing with bright sunny days since the last week of October. Last year, I was still enjoying a reasonably decent canopy on Veteran's Day week for my annual fall camping trip. For this year's camping trip, the leaves were all down.

I drove over to the Smokies on Wednesday to camp and fish the Oconaluftee River with my buddy and fellow fly fishing guide, Pat Tully. We had a great time fishing, but the catching was slow. This isn't entirely unheard of this time of year, but the super low water from our recent drought conditions along with the sunny day was making things more difficult than usual for fall fishing. Eventually, Pat had to leave to make it back home at a reasonable hour.

Since I was spending the night at Smokemont campground, I headed over to set up camp. By the time this task was finished, the sun was beginning to sink below the hills above camp. This time of year that happens early each day. I had enjoyed a late lunch, so instead of proceeding to supper, I decided to get back on the water for another couple of hours. That proved to be a great decision.

In the first small run I fished, I had numerous strikes on a small parachute Adams. Best of all, the fish were hitting it within just a few feet of where I was standing. They weren't spooky any more. As I always like to say, fish have to eat eventually. I was about to be rewarded for hanging in there after a long tough day. 

Over the next hour or two, I caught double digit numbers of trout. Two were very nice brown trout for in the Smokies while the majority were rainbows. Often, I was catching what was probably the "best" rainbow trout in each little run and pocket. These fish would have run from their own shadow just hours before. Now, they needed to get those calories in. Winter is coming soon after all.

By the time I decided to call it an evening, I had caught more than enough fish to make up for the slow day. As I headed back to camp, I was reminded why it is worth fishing as long as possible. On some days, responsibilities back home or otherwise mean I quit before the end of legal fishing hours. In fact, it is rare that I have the luxury of fishing as long as I want. Still, it is always good to be reminded to keep after it even when I'm having a difficult day.

And isn't that what drives us on as anglers? The chance of a new superlative, be it a monster fish, a big numbers day, or maybe just an incredibly unique experience on the water. Perhaps a particular hatch keeps bringing you back or even a particular fish. 

I have a brown trout on Little River that I've been keeping tabs on for about a month now. It is built like a torpedo. A super fat torpedo. I'm still not certain it would break 20", but it will be extremely heavy for its size if I can ever get my hands on it, that I'm convinced of. When I go after it again, I'll stay out as long as possible, hopefully after the sun goes down behind the nearby ridge...

Annual Fall Backpacking Trip 2022: Day 1

The last few years has seen me return to backpacking at least once or twice a year. I've developed a habit of visiting my favorite brook trout streams in September. The spring or early summer trip is a revolving trip that visits different streams each time for the most part. This year's September trip was scheduled a little early. Normally I wait until closer to the end of the month, but this year it had to happen a couple of weeks sooner due to a family Colorado trip. Regardless, the brook trout were beginning to color up in their finest fall apparel and were feeding with the abandon that one expects of trout in the fall.

I loosely planned the trip in conjunction with a couple of friends. In other words, we intended to arrive at the same campsite around the same time and hopefully fish together, maybe some or maybe the whole time. Keeping things casual left open more options than if we had a rigid game plan. 

As with most campsites I stay at on these types of trips, this one is right on a stream. That makes things like meal prep and water gathering easy, but you do deal with a lot of condensation. Once things get damp, the high humidity along the creek keeps them that way. Still, the benefits far outweigh any small negative aspect, especially walking out of my tent and immediately starting to catch trout.

David Knapp heading out on a backpacking adventure. ©2022 David Knapp

The first day, our goal was to arrive at camp early enough to maybe catch a few fish. When I saw the forecast, I almost bailed on the trip entirely, but since I had friends expecting to see me, I decided to slog it out, literally.

Things started out nice and dry as I got my pre hike selfie in. I got about a mile up the trail before it started raining. In the next couple of miles, I walked through one of the worst downpours I've ever experienced while backpacking. The only one that compares was a cloudburst while hiking up Clingmans Dome out of Forney Creek. That hike wasn't as bad as this one, mainly because I knew I had a change of dry clothes waiting in my car along with climate control. 

When I arrived at camp, I told Buddy that I knew exactly when he arrived to set up camp because the sky had opened up on me. His camp was up although damp. Thankfully the rain eased off and gave me time to get my stuff set up without the massive downpour. Having a dry retreat during a wet backpacking trip can really make things seem much better. 

After setting up camp, I decided I might as well go fishing. I certainly wasn't going to get any wetter in the creek than I already was. The water was up a little and stained with the dark tea color. The tannins in the leaves and pine needles more or less makes tea out of the water. Hoping that a flood wasn't imminent, we worked our way up the stream catching fish here and there. 

Buddy working his Tenkara USA rod on this Smoky Mountain stream. ©2022 David Knapp

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself catching more brook trout than rainbows. While I usually catch some brook trout, I usually catch a lot more rainbows. On this evening, that script was flipped. It reminded me of my first trip to this drainage where I caught several beautifully colored brook trout.

Closeup of a native southern Appalachian brook trout. ©2022 David Knapp

Native brook trout are absolutely incredible. ©2022 David Knapp

Eventually, things started to revert back to normal and the rainbows began to dominate as we worked out way upstream. We each found a few fish with some coming from surprisingly skinny water. The fish were still largely in summer mode. The riffles were producing at least as well as the pools and deeper runs.

Wild Smoky Mountain rainbow trout. ©2022 David Knapp

With the threat for more rain and potentially rising water, we soon decided to head back down to camp and start supper. That task was completed before more rain caught us and I was able to enjoy getting into a dry tent and dry clothes for the night. I was lulled to sleep by the sound of the creek charging past just to my left. My dreams were of brook trout attacking dry flies that I would hopefully find on the morrow...

Dull and Bright: Thinking About Color and Light in Your Scenic Shots

As a followup to my last short photography piece on light and dark in your fish pictures, here is another quick photography tip to help you think more broadly about framing your pictures. This will apply whether you are shooting quick cellphone pictures or taking more time with some quality camera gear. No matter what you are shooting with, you should always consider your subject, framing, and the light. In these particular examples, I was just snapping quick pictures with my cellphone while out fishing for hiking. 

In this first example, I want to point out something that is so obvious as to be often overlooked. First, let's look at the picture. 

As you can see, the peak fall colors made my job as the photographer easy. This is an unedited picture straight from my cellphone. What really makes this picture work is the golden reflections on the surface of the water. You can see more pictures from this day from my friend and client Simone Lipscomb via her blog post about it. It was an incredible day with the mountains showing off in their fall finest. 

Still, a couple of small details bring this picture together. In addition to the aforementioned golden reflections on the water, also note I more or less considered the simple and ever popular rule of thirds with Little River disappearing around the next bend about where the intersection of one of those lines of thirds is. The golden light was also crucial. Positioning myself in such a way to see those reflections made this shot much more than it would have been otherwise. If I was on the wrong side of the creek, those reflections would have been nonexistent. 

So, what about when the fall colors are past their peak? How do you draw a picture together when the subject isn't showing off as well? Here is another example to examine. 

In this picture, the one bright burst of gold really sets an otherwise somber scene off. Furthermore, instead of finding the reflections, I framed the picture from an angle that shows the clarity of the low water of autumn in the Great Smoky Mountains. Rocks alongside Little River add texture and pleasing shapes to an already interesting scene while the main subject, the golden leaves, are positioned approximately following the rule of thirds. 

In this last picture, an otherwise drab scene draws your eye in because of the bursts of bright green. These magnolia trees were somehow still green while almost everything else was well past the peak colors. With so much brown and rust around us, these green explosions made me stop and snap a quick picture on my phone. The large rock bluff/outcropping on the left bring another interesting element into the picture as the trail curls off in the distance around the bend. I don't know about you, but looking at this scene makes me want to see what is around the next corner, kind of the same as when I'm looking up a trout stream.

I hope these tips help you take better pictures. All of these were taken with a cellphone, so remember you don't need a fancy camera to take great pictures these days. The fancy camera opens up some further possibilities, especially in post processing, but a cellphone does much better than the first point and shoot camera I took with me on fishing trips back around 2005 or 2006 or so when this blog was just getting started...