Edwin's Big Brown

 

 

 

2-7-03 Hiwassee River Trip Report
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My Birmingham friend Edwin Lamberth had emailed earlier in the week and wanted to know if I could fish on Friday. Of course I could. I met him at RF&T about 9, and we discovered that they don't sell licenses. For some reason I thought they did. We drove to the Corner Market. They have changed ownership, and were not set up to sell licenses yet. Edwin got his licenses by phone (they give you a number ).

We drove up to the powerhouse in the Echo and rigged up. We tried below the powerhouse first, only got a bump or 2. Most of us have been doing better recently down at Fox's Cabin, so we hiked down there.

There is a run right next to the bank where we wade in that sometimes yields a good fish, so I told Edwin to take a shot at it while I lit a pipe. He waded out and started casting, and shortly I saw his rod bend. He told me it was a good fish. Then it rolled at the surface, and he was right, it was a REALLY good fish. It appeared that this was going to develop into a kodak moment, so I started wading toward him with my camera. The fish kept trying to get into a brush pile, and Edwin got a sore arm keeping him out of it. By the time I reached him he had landed the fish. Edwin measured it against a mark on his rod, and determined it to be a beautiful 21" male brown, complete with kyped jaw. After getting back home and checking the marks on his rod, turned out it was a 26" brown.



Edwin released the brown and we fished a while longer. He got one small rainbow, I was fishless, and the wind was brutal, so we decided to go back to the car for lunch. It was 1 pm when we crossed the swinging bridge, and we noted that TVA did not shut off a turbine, as the release schedule had called for.

After lunch we went back down to Fox's Cabin and decided to try the shoals below the pool. Edwin waded out to the edge of the deep water, and I started working my way down the bank. Shortly I had my first fish of the day, beautiful fat 12" rainbow. I was finding fish in pockets on the flats. I lost another, then while playing a fish I managed to get some cold water in one of my hip boots. I had 4 fish when I noticed that the water was dropping. By the time I got to the bottom of the shoals I had a limit.

I waded back up to see how Edwin was doing, and he also had a limit. We watched a family of otters playing below the shoals for a while, and then waded out. We were both a little tired.

On the way out we stopped at the top of Colonel's Island for a bit, and each picked up one more fish, then called it a day. It was a good day.