Zach Matthews
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I would respectfully submit, then, that “trout-killing 69 degrees” was unclear in its meaning.
Fair enough.
Rick –
The Cumberland is in bad shape and getting worse. You are going to need the raft, because they’re sluicing water right now per my contact with Kentucky Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. It isn’t looking good; they just increased the take limit on bows to 10 fish throughout the system, and they reduced hatchery capacity due to bad DO in the water coming through. As of today, the turbine water is a trout-killing 69 degrees (but they aren’t running), while the sluice gates (which are on the bottom there) is at 57-degrees (about 5 degrees hotter than would be ideal).
I would put in at Winfrey’s Ferry and plan an all-day float to a private ramp at Bakerton Bar. You will need to pay $3 at Bakerton to use the ramp/park the shuttle there. I’d try to do that the night before, because it’s a long ass way from Winfrey’s to Bakerton. The place to pay is the lone gas station/grocery store in “town.” That corner of Kentucky is about as underpopulated as any place I have ever been.
Bring shooting heads with sinking lines and big streamers for bank-bashing, and don’t neglect to run some stonefly nymphs very deep under indicators in mid-channel. I’d probably bring 5 weights for nymphing and 7-8 weights for bank bashing. The browns won’t be gathered up on the shoals yet but they should be making their way there; typically they begin to cluster around the first week of October.
By putting in at Winfrey’s, you are missing some of the upper water, but I have been told there’s no reliable way to get a raft down from the Dam to Winfrey’s with these water levels. You might check with Fly South in Nashville or a Louisville shop for some better intelligence on that upper section – I have never fished above Rainbow Run.
Note: just saw that you will be there in Mid-October. That’s spawning season. Watch the redds; don’t stomp on them, but keep in mind that there is no natural reproduction in the river per Kentucky DFW. Bring jelly eggs and small nymphs, 6X tippet and light indicators. Target the shoal dropoffs at that time of year to pick up fish that are not actively spawning but will be eating the spawners’ eggs.
Zach
Triploids fall into the same category as pellet fed pigs, fat chicks, and mopeds: “A lot of fun ’til your friends find out.”
My take is that scarcity value alone is the basis of our reverence for bigger animals. We celebrate the 14-point buck, the seven by seven elk, the 40 lb. brown trout, simply because not everyone can catch these things. Is it any harder to kill a 14-point buck than a 6-point? In the wilds, yes, it is; that 14-pointer got that big by being more wary, luckier, and genetically better suited to stay alive in its environment than every other deer in the woods. A 40 lb. brown trout caught in American waters has managed to evade at least 15 years of serious angling pressure, all while feeding and becoming increasingly harder to hide itself. Again: a trophy.
Now let’s look at pellet fed pigs and triploids. These are fish which have been engineered by humans (either with supplemental feeding or a third chromosome) to be more plentiful. The 15 lb. PFP rainbow did not get to be 15 lb. by carefully protecting itself while eating only at the best times. Rather, it sat in a pool like a fat slob at a Denny’s and ate what was literally shoveled into its mouth. Triploids live in wild places but they are engineered to grow like eunuchs: larger, fatter, less sexual development, sterile.
Finally, let’s look at hookers. Seriously. Hookers are often very attractive ladies. If a man was partnered up with that lady naturally, we’d respect the man; he must have some things going on (fitness, good personality, great earnings capacity) in order to convince that woman to date or marry him. But, if you put money on the table, all respect goes out the window. Any rich a-hole can hire the highest-price hooker in town if he is just pathetic enough to put his money to that purpose, if only for one night.
PFPs and Triploids are the fishing equivalent of prostitutes. Scarcity value has been devalued thanks to tinkering with the system. Claiming a triploid as a trophy is thus totally bogus; there is no way to measure the devaluation in difficulty/scarcity to catch a big triploid, but we can all agree that some amount of that difficulty has been erased.
Are PFPs and triploids good for something? Sure: practice. They’re the donut on a baseball bat; a padded tackling dummy. They can make you a better angler if you learn to fight them properly. Just don’t expect any respect for it.
Zach
Jay –
They require off-hand casting in order to qualify for the Master Fly Casting Instructor certification from the FFF.
Hey guys –
Quick run-down for you.
Scott’s concept is the Fiber Hammer, which is weird as hell but kind of cool, too.
Mike –
I’m relaying conversations I have had with guys in line labs at several companies, who have tested those lines on micrometers for consistency.
All right, here’s why I use high end fluoro-carbon tippet. I’m surprised to see how many people are badmouthing this stuff.
(1) High-end fluoro like Rio Fluoroflex or SA Fluorocarbon II tippet is extruded with much tighter tolerances than level baitfishing line, intended for spinning or casting rod use. This means when the label is marked “.005” (6X tippet), the odds of any given length of the material actually being around that listed five hundredths goes way up.
(2) Fluoro has lower opacity than monofilament. I’ve heard it roughly stated that 6X fluoro on a bright day will reflect about as much light as 7X mono, meaning you effectively gain an X class when trying to fool fish. This matters; I’ve switched from 5X to 6X many times and seen a noticeable and measurable increase in the amount of bites.
(3) Fluoro has a higher specific density than monofilament, meaning it will tend to sink through water quicker for a given thickness. This is advantageous when nymphing because it helps prevent the U-bend effect. Sinking fly lines are advertised as “density compensated” these days; that means there are more grains of the sinking powder (usually tungsten dust) in the tips than in the bodies of the lines, so that the tip actually plunges down in a straight line. Because the tip of the line has less overall material than the body, it necessarily has less dust in it; without density compensation, it would be a challenge to get a fly to swim on a level plane below the surface. This exact same thing applies to fluoro tippet. When I rig a nymph system, I use mono through my 4X connection, then switch to fluoro for the 5X or 6X tippet; the last three feet or so. This causes my nymph systems to sink ever so slightly straighter, meaning I can set hooks on quick takes.
(4) Finally, and very importantly, fluoro is far more resistant to UV light degradation than mono. That means that while a spool of fluoro might cost you three times more than equivalent mono, when you start tying knots with the stuff on the bottom of the spool three years from now, it isn’t going to be breaking like rotten spider silk in your hands. Mono has been touted as more environmentally friendly because it breaks down; this is BS. Polymers never completely degrade; they simply break down into fine plastic fibers or dust which are picked up by filter feeding organisms and then pass back up the food chain. The only environmentally safe way to handle fluoro or mono tippet scraps is to pack it out and recycle it. Less UV-based failure means less line in landfills; we all know how treacherous an old bird’s nest of fishing line can be to wildlife.
All in all, I think fluoro is worth the expense, especially in anything smaller than 5X. It’s all I use.
Zach
Thanks Cole –
I think I have the writing pretty well covered up at this point, although I have a couple scientists to interview.