Caney Fork Follies

It was a hot and humid weekend on the Caney. We camped at Long Branch campground and tried to stay cool....I should say, tried to avoid heat stroke.It started out rough with a Friday night thunderstorm, then gradually tapered into one of the hottest, muggiest weekends of the summer.
The good news is we got to reorganize our camping gear, and we got to do a lot of fishing with the generation pumping minimum flows.

The #20 zebra midge tied with copper wire and brass head did the trick. In addition to Trout, Bill caught a small mouth and I got my first Bluegill at the Caney. Between the two of us we landed all three Trout varieties. We were dehydrated, but the fishing was good.

The familiar river came with several unfamiliar events, mostly involving boaters, who are getting completely out of hand, by the way. Caney weekends are flooded with more and more floater traffic, and I'm seeing more and more careless, inconsiderate people. First, I was run down by three teenagers obviously on their maiden canoe voyage. The same afternoon, Rob Roy in his over-powered Jon Boat came screaming through, leaving a huge wake in the middle of several smaller fishing craft. He ran-ground a few seconds later. I recognized the sound of the rotor-plowing-earth, so I didn't have to look up to know what had happened. That gave me a chuckle.

As we were preparing for dinner, we heard an awful whine of some motor only to peer over the bank and see two spin-reelmen fighting to make it back, up-stream against the generation flow. They didn't make it. Unfortunately, the engine seized and they tied-off their vessel to a downed tree. When they returned with more rope and the Boatswain's Mate, the generation had stopped and the water level was dropping. The end result was a boat essentially caught in a tree.

Finally, On our way back to to our vehicle we noticed two people sleeping in the bed of a truck with an empty boat trailer attached. A few minutes later, a third crew member showed-up with a slimjim then began the task of trying to unlock the truck door without keys, of course.

Perhaps the highlight of the weekend were the rack of Ribs Bill cooked for everyone on Saturday night. He shared with me the rub recipe that I cannot publish, but believe me when I say it was worth the 5 hours it took for them to roast over Hickory coals.....except next time, I think we'll do it in early Fall.