Had a Toccoa River float trip this past Saturday with clients Ernie and Jim.  We had the river to ourselves until 10:30am and then the canoe rentals started coming down in full force.  All of them had stringers of trout trailing behind the canoes, with one boat that had harvested a 22-inch rainbow.  To say the least, it made me sick, but what are you going to do?

For a hot August day the fishing was pretty good.  Jim was a first timer and picked up the fly casting very quickly.  He ended up landing a very nice 16-inch rainbow later in the day.  I’m sure he’ll be picking up the sport full-time.  Ernie hooked into a good number of big rainbows.  The hot pattern was a small brown mayfly nymph in the 18-20 size.

Toccoa River Tailwater Photo

While I’m posting about the trip I did want to share with you guys a situation of bad etiquette we experienced on the river on Saturday.  Ernie was playing the biggest trout of his life, which we had battled for a while and were about to net, when three fly fishermen in a Yellow Clackacraft drift boat rowed right over the top of Ernie’s fly line and trophy size trout he was fighting.  The Clackacraft spooked the trout under their boat into a snag and broke us off.  I couldn’t believe what I had witnessed.  Then the guy had the nerve to turn around and ask us if we landed the nice fish.  I responded, “No we didn’t land the fish, you spooked the fish into the snag because you rowed right over our fish!”  They never reeled in their lines or quit fishing this entire time.  Then they fished at a snails crawl down the river.  In all my years fly fishing and guiding I’ve never witnessed such a tragedy and blatant lack of river etiquette.  I had no problem with them passing us, but I sure expected them to back row and wait until we landed the trout.

Prior to this horrible situation, I had taken the time to educate my clients on how important it was to treat other anglers on the water with proper river etiquette.  We reeled in our lines when we approached wading fishermen, and I explained to them how they needed to make sure they rowed around other anglers wading.  In one situation, I rowed to the other side of the river and pushed my boat over a shoal to ensure I did not disturb a riffle another angler was fishing.  It’s kinda ironic, considering I kept saying, how would you feel if you were the wade fishermen and someone came down in a drift boat and didn’t show you good etiquette?  Let’s just say they got to experience how it feels.

All in all, my clients and I had a great time floating the Toccoa River.  Everyone caught fish, and they learned a great deal during the day.  We were busy fishing as much as possible before the generation hit us, so we didn’t break out the camera to take any photos.

Keep it Reel,