Guided Trips
Now booking Tennessee Tailwater trips for 2023 on the Watauga and South Holston Rivers.
Guided Trips Targeting trophy Brown Trout
I am now booking guided fly fishing trips on the South Holston and Watauga River tailwaters beginning in the summer of 2023. These trips will be primarily streamer fishing and sight nymphing, targeting the large brown trout that call these rivers home. If you have any questions feel free to get in touch, I’d love to get you in my boat!
Come Fish The Tennessee Tailwaters With Me
South Holston River
The South Holston begins just outside of Bristol, TN, and flows for about 13 miles into Boone Lake. The river is infamous for its hatches and dry fly fishing but this tailwater has a lot more to offer than dry fly fishing. In fact, most of the giants that this system produces are caught nymphing with relatively small bugs. The opportunity for streamer fishing here also exists when the conditions line up, but I do prefer the Watauga for streamer fishing.
I often describe the Soho as a mini White River. If you’ve fished the White in Arkansas, I think you’ll find a lot of similarities. In my opinion, versatility is the name of the game on the Soho as the damn is an all-or-nothing generation damn which causes large fluctuations in the water flow. This keeps the fishing interesting and requires you to adapt to quickly changing conditions.
I like to fish the Soho looking for large brown trout. I do this with sight fishing nymph rigs, and streamer fishing. I’m also always ready to break out the dry rod when coming across risers. Generally, the bigger fish often are not caught on dries.
Anyway, I fish the Soho out of my Clackacraft LP drift boat and would love to hunt a giant brown with you. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more and I’ll be happy to answer any questions!
Watauga River
The Watauga, or “taug”, is my preferred river out of the two. I describe this river as more “wild” than the Soho. I say this as it has many more rapids, more streamside cover, more bluff & cliff walls, and more complex current. I’d also go as far to say that the fish are more “wild” as well. They also tend to be more aggressive towards large streamer offers, which happens to be my favorite way to fish. The nymph fishing can also be super solid here as well, but I don’t tend to nymph fish it as much. Dry fly game here is also killer and, on most days is an option.
The Watauga often gets overshadowed by the Soho but it has a fantastic opportunity and giant browns as well. If you’d like to experience a beautiful river and catch some fish, I’d love to have you in my boat and try to get you on a big one.
