VIDEO: Fly Fishing Nashville | The 240 year double cicada brood | Fishing for trout, bass and more

We always have 'em every single year. How the cicadas operate is they live underneath the ground and then they crawl out and then hatch into adults. They're not an aquatic bug. They're completely terrestrial, and then they crawl out onto the trees and hatch, and they're really bad at flying. They're great targets for the fish. This year though, we had a really big event that we will never see ever again because with different cicada broods, there are some that stay underground for a long time, and they're in mass, mass quantities. These broods are huge. This year we had a 13 year brood and a 17 year brood combine and hatch at the same time, and so there has been millions of them just an absolute huge boom year for them. So it's a pretty unique opportunity to come out here and see these awesome bugs. The one thing we've run into a little bit this year though, everyone was super excited about the cicada hatch, this massive brood.

The fly shops were selling loads of 'em buckets, buckets of cicada patterns. Unfortunately, this year it kind of combined with when they hatched and we had a couple floods and it kind of put a damper on the hatch a little bit. Not necessarily the bugs. The bugs were out, but all the rivers and everything were just completely blown out. So when the hatch, they come really quickly and then they leave very quickly. So they started showing up here the beginning of May, and it was, I didn't see very many. And then one day I woke up, went outside, and they were all over the house, the side of the house, the husks were just everywhere, and it was like, it is on. They're coming. And it literally was the flip of a switch, and then they die off pretty quick and come mid-June, they're going to be gone. So it was funny, we had those floods come in, there goes a cicada right across the camera right now. Yeah, those guys, I'll grab 'em eat. So yeah, this year we had this flood that happened right when the bulk of the hatch happened, which put a damper on a lot of people's expectations. Fortunately though, we got a weather window where the flows dropped down. Our rivers cleared up, and the bugs are still out and about. They're starting to die, but they're still out here. And so that's kind of how the hatch has landed this year with our water levels.

One of the best parts about Nashville is there's a ton of diversity and a ton of different fisheries right outside of us. So we guide on six different rivers that are all within an hour and a half of here till we started off day one, we went to one of my favorite rivers. It's the Collins River. It's actually pretty well known in the fly world because it's one of the best muskie fisheries out there for fly fishing. But we went out there targeting small mouth bass, some pan fish. We didn't really chase muskies we did after we saw 'em a couple times. So that's kind of the cool thing with the Collins. It's a small river, small bass fishery, and we float down. It's a pretty great little place. And again, I think on that day we probably only saw a handful of other kayaks out there. So that was kind of the game plan on the Collins was go out, throw top water for some bass.

Day two, we went to the Tailwater trout fishery that's near town. It's called the Kaney Fork. Really popular. It's the most where you're going to see the most fly fishermen in town. But out there, the idea was, Hey, the trout are going to eat 'em too. So we went out and got out there, got after it. They ate them pretty well out there. And yeah, just think of a slow moving tail water, western tail water. It's a little different, but yeah, chasing trout out there, and that's a pretty cool river. How is it that you got into fly fishing? I grew up in between Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. As a kid, I grew up running around the outdoors. My dad took me backpacking, all that stuff. He wasn't really into fly fishing though, but he had a fly rod and he would be chucking it around. And this was like a $30 Fenwick that my grandpa had gave it to him, and my dad had no clue what he was doing. I had two memories of him catching a fish on it. But like I said, we did a ton of other outdoor stuff that my dad was knowledgeable, and then I was going on, I was in the Boy Scout and we were doing a week long rafting trip down the Snake River. We're going to do fundraising, and you have to get all of the money for it through fundraising, so everybody, your parents can't pay for it. So that way everybody has an equal opportunity. So we were going on this trip and the last second they were like, you know what guys? We'll run it for you for 400 bucks a guy. And well, I had already done my fundraising and I'm like 13, 14, and I'm like, well, now I got a hundred dollars. I'm going to go buy a fire rock. I really like fishing, but I had never fly fish. Got obsessed with it. I mean, I didn't catch anything on that trip. My leader was literally straight 30 pound test. I didn't know what a leader was, but I knew you had to have one.

And I tied an overhand knock into my fly line to get it on there. Didn't know shit. And my dad didn't know either. I caught a few fish and then it was game over, man. Then it was, I would do my homework, do my sports, or go to work. As I got older and it was like I'm studying fly fishing, I would sit on a computer and learn as much as I could for four hours a night until midnight. And then when I could, I would go out and try and do it out on the water and watch a ton of, I filled my parents back in the day. It was TiVo, dude. They would get so mad at me because their TiVo would be full of nothing but fly fishing videos.

When I was younger, I only wanted expensive things. I used to dream of the life they'd bring in all the places I'd go. I only wanted to show that I had it better off hi. All the people around me saw my was under Asleep is a wheel again.

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To all these things that I just want to be free.

The Flycraft is absolutely vital for the outfit down here. We couldn't do what we do without the fly craft 100%. There's some fisheries that we have access to due to having this boat rather than a hard body boat. The Harpeth is the best example. There is not a legitimate boat ramp on the entire Harpeth River. It is all really bad access points. There's kayak put ins that the state has set up, but we're talking, this is a staircase going down a steep bank or what we did, dragging it under bridges. There's no way you can get any hard bottom boat in there. The Harpeth for the close fisheries, literally you will never see anybody else on a boat like ours out there. The only thing you'll see is kayaks because nobody can get any other type of boat in there. Same thing on the Collins.

There are boat ramps out there. But the hard thing with the Collins is, again, our rivers fluctuate wildly with the flows and the Collins, when it's at about 1200 cubic feet, you can get a full boat down there, a full drift boat, things like that. But once they drop, once it gets dropped and it's below a thousand, you really can't get any hard boat down it. You're just going to run into the ground a lot of places on there. So these boats really allow me, no matter what the flow is, I can be out there fishing on the Collins and I don't have to worry about getting my boat down anything. What I love most about the fly craft, the weight first and foremost is super important. I mean, I've guided out of other rafts from other companies and there's some launches that just due to the weight of a full-size raft, it's just logistically impossible.

So with us, we're able to have a Freeman Guide, which is a full-size boat. Plenty of room for people to fish, but it's super lightweight to where we can really put it anywhere we need to. The other thing I love about 'em is they're thought out much better than other rafts that I've been in. I've kind of gotten the feeling from a lot of other rafts I've been in that, hey, this is a whitewater raft that we kind of put a frame on that you can fish off of. Things like just places for the line to snag is one of the biggest things with the fly craft that I love. You can tell that it was really thought out well by fly fishermen and people who fish. That was a good cicada heat though, to where, hey, your line snagging a lot less than it does on other boats. So the fact that it's a raft that's really made by fly fishermen for fishermen is ideal. It's perfect.