Fishing Report 11/16/19

The Toccoa Tailwater is fishing well! This time of year, I like to focus on subsurface presentations, but we’ve been seeing some smaller caddis and Blue Winged Olives, so bring along some dry flies with you. Bigger, size 6-10 Pat’s Rubber legs and stonefly patterns, BWO Nymphs like smaller pheasant tails, split case BWOs, and Galloup’s baetis, caddis patterns, and red, black, and cream midges will cover your natural patterns. Have some flashier patterns like lightning bugs and rainbow warriors as well. If you aren’t catching fish, chances are you need to adjust your depth – change your depth with your strike indicator and split shot any time there is a depth change on the bottom!

The streamer bite should be excellent especially on rainy and overcast days, so pack along a 6-8 weight with floating or intermediate fly line on low water. I like to throw flies that have a built in action (dungeons, zoo cougars, etc) on intermediate/streamertip lines to get them down without killing the action. I also like to use either heavily weighted flies or I will throw unweighted flies with 1/16 slip sinkers/heavy split shot (use the non-lead kind!) on a floating line with a 9-12 foot leader, as this allows the fly to sink quickly and fish at depth more effectively than sinking line when fishing shallow rivers like the Toccoa. If you’re not comfortable with big streamers, smaller dungeons, sparkle minnows, and wooly buggers thrown under an indicator work great! Keep your eye on the fly as well as the indicator if you dead drift a streamer and twitch it every so often.

The Toccoa Delayed Harvest has also been fishing well. The river is at good wading flow. Have a selection of egg and worm patterns, wooly buggers, hot bead pheasant tails/hare’s ears, Holy Grails, and sparkle minnows. I also like throwing out some flashier bugs like El Diablos and Rainbow Warriors. If you’re unfamiliar with the Delayed Harvest system, be sure to check out the blog post from last week here!

Small Streams should fish well! Take some small Chubby Cherynobyls and size 10/12 Pat’s Rubber Legs, brown Tungstones, and smaller pheasant trail and hare’s ear nymphs. These streams will be low and clear, so I would recommend fishing 5x and 6x and maintaining a minimal disturbance on the water. Use cover and be mindful of your footsteps!