With deft oar strokes, Bill Stranahan steered his high-prowed Clackacraft through the first set of shoals below the put-in. I stood behind him, legs braced for balance in the rear of the gently rocking drift boat. Stripping fly line off the reel, I made a tentative first cast and watched a foam grasshopper bob downstream over the riffles.
That fly carried with it stresses of the unprecedented situation that ensnarled us all in late April. And at the end of the drift, when I raised the fly off the water, concerns over COVID-19 drifted right on downstream, washed away by focus inherent to the sport. For the moment, all that mattered existed between the banks of the Hiwassee River in Reliance, Tennessee.
This stretch, about an hour east of Chattanooga, is one of the best tailwater trout fisheries in the Southeast. Fed with cold, oxygenated water from Apalachia Lake, the Hiwassee rolls wide and shoal-broken through a mountain valley in undeveloped national forest. It is beautiful, and an abundance of aquatic insect life has earned the “Hi” a reputation for excellent dry fly fishing.
Simply put, dry flies float on the surface. They mimic the adult winged stage in the life cycles of insects, when bugs are carried helplessly on the current like a conveyor belt of fish food. Trout rise to pluck real flies from the surface film, and it’s possible for an angler to indentify and target specific fish with artificial flies.
This style of fishing is considered by many to be the purest form of the sport, and it sure is fun when conditions are right. On the Hiwassee, there is a time window pretty much every day when conditions are right to fish a dry.