
Well, well, mother nature gave the Upstate a real shot of winter last weekend and she has something a little different in store for this weekend. Looks like rain on Saturday and Sunday, but all hope isn’t lost. Temps will be considerably warmer this weekend with highs in the 60s on Saturday and around 50 on Sunday and the lows remain well above freezing. There is one more glimmer of hope. Even though the rain chance both days is rather high, it appears that actual rainfall totals won’t be too high. Possibly a half inch on Saturday and maybe a tenth of an inch on Sunday. That’s fairly tolerable, but then again that’s putting a lot of trust in the weather man.
The SCDNR was back at it this week, stocking over 3,800 trout into several locations including the Chauga River, Chattooga River, North, Middle, and South Saluda rivers, and the Lake Murray tailwaters.
Fishing was tough last weekend. A combination of a small bead head nymph with an even smaller nymph dropped behind just didn’t produce anything on wild trout water. Generally stocked trout are a little more eager to bite, and don’t shut down in cold weather quite like wild fish do. I’d go straight to a #16 hare’s ear with a #18 or #20 zebra midge or Copper John dropped behind it, or possibly a San Juan worm with a small nymph dropper. A small BWO parachute may come in handy as well, as this type of weather is often their preference. If none of that works on hatchery fish, try a woolly bugger. If that doesn’t work, get out of the rain and go home before you catch a cold.
Be sure to keep an eye on water levels too. Right now everything appears to be right at average, but that could change if there are some locally heavier rainfall totals in places. I’d go 6x tippet on wild water and the usual 5x should be fine on stocked water. If the bite seems awkwardly slow, drop it on down to 6x on the hatchery supported water as well. If nothing else, there should be some decent NFL playoff games on this weekend.




