Light tackle rules the day.
I do a lot of fly-fishing on the South Holston River, near Johnson City, Tennessee. I go with four guys I've been fishing with for over ten years, so we know the river quite well. It's as close as you can get to Western fly-fishing without getting on a plane; it's very wide, and it generates lots of water. More importantly, the trout are big and wild.
The Tennessee Valley Authority regulates the flow of the South Holston at the reservoir, which absolutely brims with shad. In October, the lake turns over and the shad die. They end up getting cut up in the turbines and sent into the river below, where the fish feed on them like mad.
In July, you get these big sulphur hatches, and blankets of bugs come down the river. It's just awesome. The fish really key in on it; they instinctively sense what bug species has the most protein, and ignore everything else atop the water, no matter how inviting or tasty.
On one trip with the fellas, we weren't hitting anything, really slow. I had this teeny tiny 4-weight rod with super light test that I took and tied onto a rabbit-strip streamer. I sent it out into the water, stripped it one time, and was instantly hooked up on a huge trout. The rest of the guys followed suit, and soon all four of us were hooked simultaneously on 20-26 inch fish. It was an epic day of slamming 'em with light tackle. Goes to show, never be afraid to mix it up.
-John Irwin
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