The fish of 10,000 casts

[David L. Darnell]

you should go with me, I had Yoda in a nice fish on the 15th cast 

[jkilday4]

Nice, Grump!

[Travis C.]

Some kind of "Musky World Championship" coming to the Collins/Caney in March?

The First Annual Musky Fly Fishing World Championships will take place Saturday, March 24th 2012.

http://www.toweeboats.com/blog/6-news/42-musky-fly-fishing-world-championship-to-be-held-march-24th-in-mcminnville-tennessee.html

Guess the masses have or will come now...

[Yoda]

you should go with me, I had Yoda in a nice fish on the 15th cast 

Yea,,, in my fishing hole!   
[/quote


True.

[bd]

Where's all the "Youre just promoting a fishery for money and attention"  talk now?

I don't think anybody said where it was caught, right?

bd

[MikeA]

It didn't come from here Corey.

[bd]

The tourney Bd....

Well then let me be the first to say the tourney is pretty cheesy.  The second, actually - I think Travis criticized calling "the masses" to those rivers in his original post.

I like that this is the "World Championship" tournament.  But it's not a fish-off, or an invitational, or a tournament open to people who have ever won a tournament before.

So everybody with a hundred bucks can plop down a fee and get in the action.  I can't even catch these effing fish, but by god, if I have a hundred bucks and I luck up and hit a good one that day, I can be the WORLD CHAMPION muskie fly fisherman, and all those famous guys like Brad Bohen can suck it!!! 

bd

[bd]

Well, the trout water is all blown to hell right now.  Let's go!  Just say when and I'm there.

I was just laughing at it being the "World Champion" tournament.  It's like if I decided to open a municipal soccer league in Macon County and called our first match the World Cup.

bd

[Travis C.]

I was just laughing at it being the "World Champion" tournament.  It's like if I decided to open a municipal soccer league in Macon County and called our first match the World Cup.

bd

Same here bd, I know where there is a nice Koi pond at an apartment complex. We can have The Exotic Fly Fishing World Championships. It will be equally as tough with all the routine patrols, tight casting as security cameras.

[TWiles]

If Heavy promotion of a good fishery accomplished the attraction of courteous, ecologically aware anglers who respect the fishery and promote it's growth--I would be all for it.
Instead, you get all kinds of folks on your water. Many of which are the last one's you want to encounter.

I've seen it in my 20+ years of growing up on the SOHO.

There's nothing more disappointing than getting that rare chance to sneak away (which gets less and less as your life takes on more obligations), returning to that stretch of water that's fished great years past, and finding a bunch of tourists and guides tramping through runs and edging in uncomfortably close to the water your trying to fish.
Or showing up at the ramp, and seeing a pile of trucks and empty trailers of people claiming that run you're trying to reach.

When videos like this appear on YOUTUBE, others will follow suit, and before you know it...everyone and their brother will be guthooking your trophy fish and extending them by their lower jaw with their new BOGA grip to get their prize photo.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYaVbauTC0

The Collins is NOT a huge fishery, and not many areas for anglers to disperse.  Great Falls is larger, but your not gonna get as much attention to the lake, where anglers have to actually put in a lot of time.

My main point is this:  All those places where you PM me and write:  "SSSSsshhhh!  Don't breathe a word of that spot to anyone".  Eventually you will not be the only one fishing it, and those 49" fish that you work so hard for will be going to the taxidermist or floating belly up from being mishandled.

[jarrod white]

uh-ooooo somebody has upset the WORLD CARP CHAMPION JK BD

[TWiles]

No worries Corey, I know that you only want what's best for your fishery(I never doubt the accuracy of the trophy sized fish you land).  And no discredit to Dwayne, he's a great angler, and he does promote the fishery with respect.  The guys in this video were trying to pay respect to the guide, and share the thrill of the experience.  But I've learned that it was just this type of weekend angler who has filleted 8 and boasted about keeping 8 muskies out of my favorite musky hole on the Nolichucky this summer.  Now no one sees or catches fish here until the next stock grows, and every time I pass, there's a boat working that stretch since the word got out.

It's easy for out of towners to exploit a waterway, without much guilt.  If you draw the wrong anglers in, they can do some  real damage quickly on smaller waters.

[Travis C.]

I wish I knew more about these fish here in TN or in general but its too dang far for me to drive in order to have a chance at seeing one much less hooking it. Barren River or Green River in KY would be easier to get to for me it seems but that would involve another license.

[MikeA]

It's clear there are many fans of these fish here and it seems clear the main goal of everyone who has posted is preserving these fish. Where I think the two camps separate is how to go about preserving it. One camp, and you can include me in this one, wants to preserve the fish AND the quality of the fishing experience. For example, the hot hole is full of trophy sized fish. You'll most likely never see me fishing there because it lacks the most important ingredient for me to enjoy myself, solitude. I don't get off fishing in crowds and would rather not fish at all.

Then there is the other camp that believes the only way to save the fishery is to advertise so that it draws enough attention to make TWRA get more involved.


10 years ago the Caney Fork under generation was pretty much a ghost river. You hardly ever saw people fishing it. Word started spreading and I'll be the first to admit I helped spread the word. Now the river gets pounded daily all year. That pounding brought new money into the region. Someone saw that money and decided to take another angle on the river, canoe hatcheries were born. Now you have to take a number to launch a boat there. Once you launch you have to wait in line to fish the good spots. The fishermen and all the attention got some great regs passed but IMO the experience as a whole has been seriously degraded. For that reason I'm looking at other species and places to fish and take my clients. So, if the hothole and the Caney are the examples of how publicity helps a fishery then I'd have to say no thanks, I'll take my chances on the fishery sustaining itself. But that's just me.


 

[bd]

One distinction, I think, is that muskie fishing is probably never going to draw the same crowds that trout fishing does, because the fish are too damn hard to fish for.

It's one thing to drive two hours to a river when there's the possibility of a "good day" being scores of fish and steady catching through the day, with maybe a trophy thrown in.  It's quite another when a "good day" might mean a fish follows your lure back to the boat.

There are a lot of people who just aren't going to do that very often.  Muskie fishing could get more crowded than it is right now, but it's never going to be in the same league as the Caney.

That said, regardless of the fishing, the only thing saving some of the popular muskie rivers from a commercial canoe operation is limited access.  You don't need trout for a river to get swamped with recreational paddlers - look at the Harpeth.  Maybe I'll buy a postage stamp of land 8 miles or so upriver from the VFW Ramp access at you-know-where and establish my own Hidden Treasure Canoe Extravaganza and advertise it as a weekend getaway for the college kids at MTSU and Tennessee Tech.  That will teach those effing muskies to mess with me.  

bd