You always wonder when the two anglers you are guiding have a double hook up on their first casts of the trip and whether or not that will put a dark cloud over the fishing for the remainder of the day. I choked with this father and son team of John and Steve that it is bad juju to catch a fish on the first cast of the day let alone two smallies right out of the gate. One of the two fish pulled the hook before it could find its way into the net so in my opinion the jinx was off at that point and my hope was that we were going to have a productive day on the water. All joking and superstition put aside that is exactly what happened as we worked our way up the Little Pigeon River. Last week at this time the water temperature was in the mid to high sixties, but due to the unseasonably cold weather that we had at the beginning of the week the water temperature had dropped dramatically back into the low to mid fifties. I was concerned enough that it might kill the fishing for today’s trip so I hit the water for a few hours on Tuesday to see if the fish were shutdown. The water temperature was fifty-two degrees at noon and the water was clear with the gauge in Sevierville reading about 2.6. It didn’t take me long to find out that the smallies were hitting in spite of the change and I was confident at that point that the Little Pigeon should fish well. That is precisely what happened and by the end of the trip Steve and John had landed thirty-two smallies. There were a variety of sizes caught throughout the day and several hard fighting sixteen and seventeen inch fish thrown in the mix. The big fish of the day was caught by John. Its was 19 ½ in. long and weighed 3 lb. and 11 oz. I will add that it was extremely windy and Steve and John did a great job of catching that many smallies under less than ideal conditions. They were great guys to have on the boat and I thoroughly enjoyed putting them on the fish.
River Smallie Adventures Fishing Report April 18, 2018
