UO Fishing Report- 5/15/26
Sorry for the late report, folks, but we were busy in the Sautee shop today. Here you go:
The drought continues and streams are shallow, but cool. Headwater trouting is still good on top, stockers are abundant, the tailwaters remain cold, and the GA Delayed Harvest season ended yesterday. NC DH streams will still fish well for travelers.
Rivers are clearing and bassing is good. Same holds for ponds, while lakes are slowing a bit as the water warms.
Early Rockies travelers shared some fine trout tales, while Wes has a GA carpin’ expert lined up for a live show on Monday night. Catch all the details in our full report, here:
https://www.unicoioutfitters.com/fishing-reports
(Link in bio)
Stop in either UO shop for your late spring flies and directions to successful sites. Good luck!
Unicoi Outfitters: Friendly. Local. Experts.
www.unicoioutfitters.com
Sautee: 706-878-3083. Open 8-5 daily. (2454 GA Hwy 17, Sautee-Nacoochee.)
Clarkesville: 706-754-0203. Open 8-5 from Monday thru Saturday.
Wes’ Hot Fly List:
Dries: #14 water walker, tan and black Micro Chubbies, 409 Yeager yellow, humpy, yellow stimulator, black Para-ant.
And dusk hatch matchers: para light cahill, yellow sally, emerger caddis, and sulfur Drymerger.
Nymphs & Wets:
Squirmies, Mops, and buggers for stockers. Soft hackles, fly squirrel, micro girdle bug, lightning bug, duracell, jig CDC pheasant tail.
Mountain streams: Pheasant tail, prince nymph, small Frenchie, sunken ant, and soft hackle partridge for blueline wilds.
Streamers:
Sparkle minnow, jig mini bugger, bank robber sculpin.
Reservoir Bass & Stripers:
Cowen’s somethin else, low fat minnow, game changer, Clouser.
River bass:
Topwater: Boogle popper, stealth bombers
Streamers: Thrasher, leggy boi, feather changer, clouser minnow.
Bottom bouncing flies: crittermite, crawfish jambalaya, jig bugger.
Bream:
Boogle bugs, gill scorpion, bream reaper, girdle bug, prince nymph.
Headwaters:
Real skinny, super-clear, but still cool and fishable through the day due to our chilly nights. Warmer weather next week might slow the afternoon bite a bit. Little wild fish will jump on just about any dead-drifted dry, as long as you don’t spook them in your stalk. Start with 5X leaders, but be ready to go to 6X if the current is slow and the pool is glassy. Small foam chubbies, caddis, and para-ants are a few of our favorites. Pray for some rains to recharge these streams.
Delayed Harvest:
The GA season ended today and will return next November 1st. Grab a kid and a bucket of nightcrawlers and hit a DH stream this weekend. Catch some great memories and some supper before summer’s hot water seals the fate of these fish in the marginal trout waters.
UO’s newest buddy, Giselle, returned to Smith DH last weekend. She reports: “Hey Unicoi, They’re still loving that micro chubby. I caught 4 like this one. Hope all is well with y’all.”
Rabunite Dredger did a “last call” on Chattooga DH last Monday evening. Thanks to the clouds, the fish cooperated right at his 5PM start. The action wasn’t hot, but it was steady on his #16 tan elk hair caddis, tossed into faster water at the heads of pools. He caught some on the dead drift and others via the skitter. He had the whole river to himself, except for one dusk angler, who had camped on the upper end. Only a few cahills danced at 7PM and there was hardly any dark-30 action. The camper said his surface action was hot in the morning, probably due to colder water.
Thanks to higher mountains and colder water, NC’s DH season extends til the first Saturday of June. Their hatches usually run 1-2 weeks later than GA streams, so some caddis, cahills, and sallies should still bring fish up at dusk. Bring a headlamp.
Stockers:
The stocking season is still going strong. Check out the newest stocking list here and sign up to get your own copy each Friday afternoon.
Our DNR friend Colt, at Burton Hatchery, said the agency has a small batch of brookies that have reached stockable size. They are being mixed into the truckloads headed for GA’s larger, more popular streams.
Rabunite “Gabby:” Had a good Tuesday afternoon on Tallulah. Caught all rainbows (really pretty stockers), all on a Frenchie except for my last fish which took the giant orange foam bug that was holding up my dropper. Otherwise nobody was looking up. Not much flying but midges. Some dark-colored caddis around 6-6:30 pm. Water temp 60F at 1PM. Flow was the lowest I’ve ever seen there.”
Young Hunter Cass from Senoia is already quite the bass angler. But he came north with his family, on a mission to catch his first mountain trout. After stopping in to UO for intel, bait, and lures, he headed to the recommended destination of the upper Hooch. And succeeded.
Here’s his first rainbow trout, which fell for a rooster tail. Congrats Hunter!
Private Waters:
Low and slow. We had few trips last week, as several of our guides were on vacation.
Tailwaters:
No recent reports. They should fish well for recently stocked rainbows. GAWRD had the best intel in today’s agency report.
Warm Rivers:
Rivers have cleared up here and the bass bite should pick back up. Bigger rivers south of us are still stained, but fishing well.
UO buddy RSquared: “The Georgia Bass Slam is rocking along. Thursday, my son Matt & I fished with Quint Rodgers on the Flint River. We caught several Shoal Bass & a couple of invasive Alabama Spotted Bass. However, the fish of the day was a 4ft Gar that my son Matt caught & landed. Matt was spin fishing & I was fly fishing. The hot fly of the day was a black Hellgrammite. A chartreuse rubber worm rigged wacky-style caught fish on the spinning rod.”
Athens Jay: “Couple of natives from 2 piedmont streams that approved of my streamers.”
Ponds:
No recent reports. They should still be fishing well. Be on the lookout for bream beds and toss a Boogle amnesia bug over them.
Lakes:
No recent reports. GAWRD had sone good info on bass, walleye, and stripers in today’s blog (see Tailwaters, above, for the link).
Afar:
UO owner Jimmy just returned from our yonder and filed this report:: “Alan, John, & I made a quick run to Yellowstone last week for the early opening of the Firehole, Gibbon, & Madison Rivers in the Park. As you may imagine, the weather was a little schizophrenic, requiring sweatshirts and jackets in the morning and shirtsleeves in the afternoon. The fishing, however, was certainly consistent enough to keep us entertained for 5 days. My most productive fishing was a dry/dropper combination of an orange Stimulator (in hopes the fish would take it for an early salmonfly) with a soft hackle Pheasant Tail below it. The dry and the dropper both produced equally well. Once I'm in a more solid emotional state, I'll tell the story of the one that got away!”
UO buddy Gayland:
“I was fly fishing in Montana on the Missouri River at Bull Pasture last week and I had a great day fly fishing with nymphs. This pretty rainbow took a #16 Root Beer midge. I fished in snow showers on Armstrong Spring Creek one day and it was 72 degrees several days later! I saw Jimmy at the airport in Bozeman and we had the same flight back to GA on Sunday. Small world! There are super nice people in the fly fishing community. “
Megan with GA Women FlyFishers shared this pic from Notellum Creek.
Events:
Don’t miss another session of Instagram Live with Wes next Monday night! Grab all of the hot intel for summer carpin’ on the fly. Details:
We’re slowly sliding toward June and the end of good spring trouting. Get your last dose of large stream action in the next week or do, before your have to trek north or to the Rockies for higher mountains and cold trout rivers.
Same goes for spring bass and stripers. Get them in the shallows soon before the lakes heat up and they dive deep for cold water.
Stop in either UO shop for good conversation and even better flies, lures, and recommended destinations!
Unicoi Outfitters: Friendly. Local. Experts.
www.unicoioutfitters.com
