This Place

I went fishing yesterday at this place that I would like to tell you about. It was a great day to be in the mountains, and one of the too infrequent trips that I got to make with my Uncle Greg. I know that sometimes I'm a little scarce with the details of where I fish, but this time I wanted to make an exception. This place is just too wonderful not to share. Sit back and let me tell you all about this place.

This Place

This place is a wonderful place to get away from the heat of a July day. It's not that hard to get to. Just drive a little further up the road, gaining elevation as you wind your way up the mountain. Cross over the Eastern Continental Divide, and under the Blue Ridge Parkway. Once you turn off the highway, follow the Forest Service gravel road as it leads you deeper into the mountains and farther from the black top. At the end, park the truck and walk past the locked gate and up the road until you find a spot to enter the river. As you make your way up the road, take the time to enjoy the rhododendron, bee balm, Turk's cap lily, and other wildflowers blooming along the way. Watch out for the stinging nettle though! Stinging nettle are one of the reasons I started wearing long pants to wet wade many years ago.

Turk's Cap Lily

After a short walk up the road, I entered the river. Greg and I decided to split up and each fish a section of river, then meet up in a couple hours and compare notes and decide if we wanted to move upstream, downstream, or head somewhere else entirely. After plans were made and a rendezvous point picked, Greg walked up river and I found a path down from the road to the river.

Budding Rhododendron

Let me tell you about the river at this place. It is a nice sized trout stream, big enough to hold lots of possibilities, but small enough to be able to read the water and pick out the majority of the good spots to fish. This river has always seemed to be clearer, and a little colder than some of the places I frequent, even in the heat of summer. The air is cooler up here at this place, and I hardly broke a sweat hiking in or out. The stream itself is very rocky, even for a mountain stream. There are impressive boulders strewn along it's length, and the rocks in the stream bed all seem to be tilted at different angles from each other. It can make for some interesting wading at times, especially if you aren't paying close enough attention to where your feet are. 

Wild Rainbow

Now that you've been introduced to the river, allow me to tell you about the fishing at this place. This place is not somewhere I would go if I wanted to catch a trout on every cast or two. This isn't that kind of place. This is the kind of place that you go if you want a nice day in a beautiful spot, and a stream full of wild rainbows, browns, and brook trout if you get high enough into the headwaters. This is the kind of place that can be a challenge to fish, with crystal clear water and spooky trout. It's the kind of place that you can fish all day with a size 12 Adams dry fly (I did yesterday) and expect to have success. It's also the kind of place where the trout seem a little bigger, fight a little harder, and can at times be pickier than some of the other wild streams I fish. 

Fungi

The trout in this place can also be particular, both about presentation and fly selection. I tried one of my go-to summer patterns that I catch a lot of fish on in other places, but these trout were having none of it. That particular pattern has calf tail wings and is a bulkier dry fly. Once I switched to the Adams with it's smaller profile, the fish seemed to approve. This is the kind of place that has plenty of deep pools that would be ideal for a dry-dropper rig or nymph fishing, but I seldom go subsurface here. I know I'm missing opportunities by staying on the surface, especially in the deeper pools, but the surface strikes were frequent enough yesterday to keep me from reaching for the nymph box. I fish it slowly and don't rush, but before I know it the two hours are up and it's time to check back in with Greg and see how his morning has gone. We meet up and compare notes, and decide to walk upstream from where we had been fishing and give it a couple more hours. We've both caught fish and want to continue on upstream.

Swallowtail Butterflies

This time it was my turn to walk upstream, and I tried to make sure and give Greg plenty of room to fish. As I walked, I took the time to observe the environment around me, seeing plenty of bee balm (thank you Greg for identifying it for me), Turk's cap lily, and rhododendron blooming. One of the stranger things about this place is that it seems like I always find some type of funky fungi growing on the trees. This time I saw two different types, and both were on live trees. This place is full of surprises, and it seems like every trip up here reveals something new. As I made my way back down to the river, I came upon a large group of Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies, with a few Eastern Tiger Swallowtails mixed in. They were beside the river drinking at a small pool of water. I saw both species of butterfly all up and down the river today, along with some smaller butterflies that I couldn't identify. I didn't see any insects hatching on the stream, but from the size of trout that this place produces I feel certain that they are finding something to eat. 

Wild Brown

Once I made it back down to the river, I continued on upstream through a stretch that seemed to be shallower than the previous stretch I'd fished. There were still plenty of small pockets that were deep enough to hold fish, and I did catch a couple as I made my way farther up stream. I had quite a few refusals and short strikes, and a few of the fish I hooked managed to throw the hook after a second or two. The trout in this place seem to be wizards when it comes to escaping, or at least they did yesterday. Once again time seemed to slip by just as quickly as the waters of this place, and before I knew it I was heading back down the road to meet up with Greg and head back home. I didn't catch any of the brook trout that this place sometimes gives up, but I did manage a couple brown trout and several pretty rainbows. Several Adams were donated to various rocks and rhododendron, and now I will be back at the tying desk replacing them, anticipating my next trip to this place.

Bee Balm

There, just as I promised, are all the details about where I fished yesterday. There are also a lot more pictures from yesterday's trip to this place on the NC Outdoor Ramblings Facebook page. As far as the name and location of this place? Sorry, my lips are sealed.

- Joseph