Posts
Tuesday I was greeted by 75 degree temps and a mixture of sun and clouds. It felt great to be back into the foothills with a 4wt in hand after a couple months in a row of throwing 7 and 8wts. I went to one of my old stomping grounds where I use to spend alot of time and I have to say that this stream is a fragment of what it once was. This stream was hit by an F2 tornado back in 2005 and the damage it sustained is still evident today. The main problem is that much of the deeper water has filled in and now your hard pressed to find water over thigh deep. The number of fish, and even more importantly the size of the fish, also seems to be a fraction of what it once was. Still I had a good time and was fortunate enough to have some decent dry fly action. The first calm pool I came to had several feeding fish and it didn't me long to get a few hook ups on a #22 BWO emerger. I missed/lost more than I landed but I didnt care...casting a dry fly again felt magical. That bite didnt last long so I switched to a para-wulff style dry and a small copper john dropper. I worked my way through the broken pocket water and took a handful more fish both on the dry and the dropper. Nothing of any size but I did catch my first ever brook trout from this creek which was pretty cool. Please excuse the junky cell phone picture.
By 4pm things really slowed down and I decided to call it a day. Sorry no real pictures on this day, taking the DSLR out of the dry bag while fishing solo and catching small trout hardly seems worth it. I think I will start carrying my old point and shoot for just such occassions.
My main day for fishing came on Black Friday. Brad from the GSC happened to be in NC for the week as his folks live in the mountains and invited me up for some fishing on a nice stream the runs nearby. The drive up was incredible and seemed to go by very quickly.
**Disclaimer** I have been sworn to secrecy on this stream so please do not ask me where I was. I received a couple emails on FB asking about the photos but as I stated then and will state now...this is not my stream to give away. All I'll say is no its not a DH stream and yes it is public water. Now back to the regularly scheduled program :-)Brad and a few friends have been fishing this piece of water and finding some quality fish, mostly browns. Technical nymphing in low clear water was the name of the game. We located a pod of decent fish fairly quickly and I stuck this chunky brown on a micro glo bug.
I followed a few minutes later with a small brown that again ate the micro egg. About that time Vandy (also from the GSC) joined up with us and immediately hit a handful of brookies fishing a small streamer down and across. A short time later we noticed what looked like some quality fish eating on the surface in a deep flat upstream from us. Vandy went to check it out and within a few minutes he was yelling for a net. His 5wt was doubled over and the fish was running him all over the river. After a couple minutes the fish finally settled down and Brad slid the net under her.
Who says the south doesn't have steelhead? What a fish! Fish was just over 20 inches and fat as could be. The fish sustained a bloody lip from the battle but was just fine and swam away hard when released.
That was all I needed to see. I caught one more decent brown on the egg and then decided to get out of my nymph rig and tie on a dry. I didnt have any terrestrials with me (this is what we suspected they were talking) so I tied on a brown humpy and clipped the hackle flat on the bottom. That fly did the trick just fine and I was able to land 3 brook trout in short order, including this guy that went about 14 inches....not bad for a speck!
That top water action didn't last long and soon it was back to a nymph rig. Around that time Brad drove Vandy back to his cabin and I fished for a while waiting for Brad to return. All of a sudden I realized that the was rising....rapidly. Before I knew it the water had come up probably 2ft and there was some debris and color added to the flow. Brad came back shortly after and confirmed they must be releasing water. We waded around (carefully) and I was able to stick a decent rainbow on a copper john before we realized the water was coming up even more. We scrambled to the bank and thats when relaity hit. We were on the wrong side of the river and there are NO bridges for miles in either direction to get back across. We found a path and walked on it for a while. Every once and a while we would try and cross but the water was too deep and fast and it felt hopeless. Finally after almost an hour or failed attemps we found a very shallow gravel bar and were barely able to make it before our feet were swept out! We did what any sane fisherman would do....we hiked back upstream to the spot we had seem some big fish and fished from the bank with nymphs. I'm glad I did! First was this 18 inch bow that clobbered a pink san juan.
A few minutes later as we were getting ready to go I hooked an even better fish and the fight in the high water was on. Several jumps and hard runs ensued and I missed with the net more than once.
The fish was hooked solidly though and soon I was looking down at a fat 20 inch bow! Not a bad way to close out a day on the water.
We hiked back to the truck and called it a day. We then went into town and I was treated to some good southern food in the way of a chuckwagon sandwhich, fries, and a big glass of sweet tea! Thank you to Brad and Vandy for showing me around and I look forward to fishing with you guys again down the road.
0 comments:
Post a Comment