Tearing Up The Toccoa!

We received this weekend fishing report from The Dredger (aka Jeff Durniak) and his fishing partner, Mark Whitney. The pictures will say much more than my words as they had a banner afternoon Saturday on the Toccoa tailwater. In addition to landing one of the tagged rainbows, they also brought to hand a 16" rainbow, and these two 20" plus beauties. No dry flies on this day but with these results, who's complaining.

Jeff had grabbed Mark at lunch in Helen, after Mark's opening day had already made by a 19 inch Dukes Creek brown that morning. From the same pool, Mark had also long distance released two more big browns with one of them estimated at over 20". The wind on the Toccoa seemed to hold tailwater bugs back, so they dredged a few hours and landed about 10 fish between the two of them. What a great way to spend opening day of trout season!

On Sunday, Dredger couldn't find anyone to go fish with him during the storms tracking across the state, so he watched the radar and hit the Toccoa DH in between storms. Doppler Day as he called it.

Here's his report:

Only fished lower end from island up 200 yards to rope swing hole. Decent action all day long. Dredged buggers to start and had a good steady pick, including one bonus fish, a smallmouth bass that ate the prince dropper.

I ended with 2 hrs of #16 soft hackle hare's ear dropped 2 ft under caddis dry. I had to tried several flies to figure out the risers that came up when air finally warmed. Zero on caddis. All on wet as fish rose, in slow eddies along the bank and behind midstream boulders, to unidentified emerger.

The two hours of fly casting were a nice change to catapulting lead all winter. But for big fish, Mike's mohair leech is still the ticket. The red stripes of Toccoa DH rainbows are outstanding.

It's spring! Look for noses poking thru the water surface.

Thanks to Jeff and Mark for this great fishing report. He's right, it's spring and time to get on the river! Hope you can get out often this year.