Popper of Plenty

After losing my last Gartside Soft Hackle Wet Fly to a hungry brown trout on the Caney Fork, I sat down to tie some more. Naturally, after tying up a number of small nymphs and wets, I wanted to try them out, so the next day I headed down to a spot that I learned about from a local fisherman, Jeremy Simms. In the spring, we had caught plenty of fish there on small drifting nymphs, and though the water is too warm for trout this late in the summer, I was confident that there would be plenty of hungry sunfish. I was right, and though I did catch a couple of bluegills on one of my new nymphs, my little popper was really the star of the day. There were plenty of people fishing unsuccessfully while my little green machine landed fish after fish. People kept asking me what kind of fish were in the river, I think they were hoping for bass or trout, and I told them all I’d seen were sunfish. This was mostly true. In fact I kept seeing carp swim by, but I kept that to myself and made a little mental note to go back and visit them soon.