A 25" BENDER

The following report is from Rex Gudgel:

We had a great time at The Bend yesterday! Fishing with Tony Land and Rick Hill (long time patrons) for a half day. The action was just about non-stop. Lots of hook-ups and most of these made it to the net. You could tell these guys have spent time together as good fishing friends by the way the ragged on each other all day long. If you can't rag on or poach your friends, then who?

Great day, guys! I hope you'll come back soon. By the way, I will be down to St. Pete to do some inshore fly rodding with you.


Tony, congrats on the 25 incher!


Rex Gudgel
FFF Master Certified Casting Instructor

More Toads from the Frog!

Today I fished with K X 2...Keith Calhoun and Keith McFarland at Frog Hollow. The morning started out great with lots of takes and several fish landed. Then it s-l-o-w-e-d down! We caught fish through the day but they were hard to come by. The last hour made up for it. K. C. took several fish up to 20" and lost a couple that were on the plus side of 20"....on DRY FLIES. K.M. quietly kept casting, mending, stripping, drifting, repeating and caught a couple. Then, Oh My ! I can't even explain what happened next, because you wouldn't believe it...it was one of those things where you just had to be there ! If we had a video of it we would get a million hits on UTube. Lets just say that big fish can swim up waterfalls and this old guide can still walk on water to land big fish ! All in all "I'd rather be lucky than good" any day ! Great job to both Keiths and here is a picture of KM's 26 1/2 " by 18" 10 pound rainbow. 

Rex Gudgel

FFF Master Certified Casting Instructor

Father - Son Fishing Report

A weekend report in from our guide Hunter Morris, half of a Father/Son guide duo here at Unicoi Outfitters:

Given that I spend many of my favorite days on the river with my Dad, it was especially enjoyable to guide T. and Telfair Parker, a father and son from Charleston, SC, on Saturday at Nacoochee Bend. And it didn't hurt that the fish seemed to be having a very fine day as well. Both father and son landed nice rainbows before 9:30 a.m. and the action kept going strong right up to lunch. The afternoon was slightly slower, but given that we estimated at least 50 hookups in the a.m., it would have been difficult to match that again in the afternoon. We caught fish mainly on size 14 olive soft hackles, size 16 rubber-legged prince nymphs, and size 10 olive flash-a-buggers.

Thanks to T. and Telfair for a wonderful day on the river and here's a photo of the elder Parker with a beautiful Nacoochee Bend rainbow...

Tie 1 On

It's time to "tie 1 on" again and I'm looking forward to it. Our May fly tying session will be Tues., the 3rd at Unicoi Outfitters in Helen at 6:30 PM. Since soft hackle flies were talked about in a previous blog and seem to be a "hot" fly at this time, we will be demonstrating different methods for tying these. We also hope to tie a hackle back dry fly.

This would be the perfect time to start tying your own flies or just to renew your interest in this activity--nothing like hooking fish on your own flies.

Unicoi provides all equipment & supplies, for which we are grateful.

Hope to see all the "old" crowd plus some new "tyers" this Tuesday.

I would also like to say "thanks" to those who helped out with the Nancytown Kids' Fishing Rodeo--we saw a lot of smiling faces.

Thanks again,

Ron