Sitting in a motel room less than two miles from the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – no matter how good it is for you – is an excruciating exercise. Like medicine that tastes bad, eventually you might decide the disease is less painful than the cure. Besides, I wanted to see if I was healthy enough to fish for brookies tomorrow, and under overcast but warm skies, and I simply drove along the Little River until I found a run I'd never fished, and fished it.

Without any time pressure, I fished lesiurely. I was casting my 8' Beasley-built Leonard 50DF taper, which is an extremely smooth rod perfectly suited to flicking dry flies on the Little River. Fishing a #14 Hare's Ear parachute for about two hours, I fooled a dozen or so Tennessee trout, half of which were brown trout (my first of the year), the largest being a 10" brownie.

Proving conclusively that I can be trained, I spent more time out of the water than in it, slinking around like I hadn't paid taxes in years. The results were gratifying, and after covering the run, I decided I'd had enough for one day (tomorrow I fish 4x as long). I'm looking forward to tomorrow's expedition to Brookie water, and to getting water spots and brookie slime on Raine's 7.5' 4wt hollowbuilt.

One astute reader wrote to ask about the status of the great Tennessee slaw dog/Amaratti's burrito comparison, and I admit that my digestive tract has been in a perilous enough state that the slaw dog comparison seemed very unwise. Tomorrow is a possibility, but Monday is a more likely test date. I'm flying out Tuesday, and I am definitely not throwing down a slaw dog and getting on a plane. As always, the Trout Underground will risk it all in our never-ending quest for the truth. See you at the Phillips 66 station, TC