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

Adventures in Popper Making

The other day, while my wife and I were rambling around the Smokies, we made a stop in Townsend, Tennessee at the local fly shop where I intended to pick up some more material to tie streamers with. Of course, being a fly shop, I had to look around a little bit at all the different tying materials. I can honestly say I'm not much of a shopper at all, but put me in an outdoor store or a fly shop and it might take me a while to get out. In the course of looking around, I ran across a display of popper tying supplies. Tying my own bass and bream poppers is something that I have been meaning to learn how to do, and I figured there was no time like the present. Before it was all said and done, I had picked up enough material to tie several different colors of poppers.

My 2nd Attempt - After the Pink Popper Incident

Once we got home from Tennessee, I was anxious to give popper making a try. Up until this point, I had been buying all the poppers I fished with, and just about the only flies that I had ever tied to use in warm water had been the Triple Threat streamers that I used for smallmouth fishing. After doing a little Internet research and looking at the directions that came with the popper bodies I bought, I set out to give popper making a shot.

Yellow Popper

Right away, I was treated to some new experiences, such as the fingernail polish aisle in Wal-Mart. I had read on the Internet that clear fingernail polish with glitter worked well as a sealer for the finished poppers, and that Sharpie markers were handy to use to color the bodies. Armed with that knowledge, it was off to gather materials. I took my wife along with me for two reasons - number one, I wasn't sure I could even find the aisle with the fingernail polish, and two I figured that if she was with me it wouldn't raise as many eyebrows. She thought the whole thing was hilarious, and kept threatening to tell everyone that I was in Wal-Mart shopping for nail polish. Once that ordeal was over, it was off to the vise to give tying poppers a try.

Green Bug

The next thing I learned very quickly about tying poppers is that it takes Zap-A-Gap about .000002 seconds to bond my fingers to the foam popper bodies. After a few sticky situations, I started to get the hang of gluing the bodies on and keeping my fingers off. I also managed to eventually get my fingers all unstuck from each other and functioning again, but it was touch-and-go for a while.

Blue and White Popper

One last thing I figured out on my first attempt was that if I didn't give the marker enough time to dry, my white popper with a red face would turn into a pink popper with a red face with the first application of nail polish. I know that I've got long way to go with the learning curve on popper making, but it's fun taking on a new challenge. Now if I can just get my fingers unglued from this keyboard!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Joseph

Rambling Thoughts on Deer Season

It's been an interesting deer season so far for me. I've been hunting some, although not as much as I would like to. (Isn't that always the case!) I have enjoyed every minute that I've spent in the woods, but so far I'm still waiting for the main ingredient for venison jerky. I thought it might be fun to share some random thoughts about deer hunting I've had this season while sitting in a stand or blind.

Squirrel in the Soybeans

1. First of all, why is it that I am almost sure to see turkeys when I'm deer hunting and deer when I'm turkey hunting?

2. How does an animal as small as a squirrel make more noise coming through the woods than a 100 lb deer?

3. If you stare at an empty soybean field long enough, you can begin to see things that aren't really there.

4. Bushes, stumps, and other objects can magically appear to be deer, especially at twilight.

5. Never borrow a muzzleloader from someone and then take it hunting without shooting it first to check the scope.

6. If you do not follow number 5, be prepared to take two shots and then watch your deer leave the country without a scratch on it.

7. It's fun to walk by your hunting buddy's trail camera and make funny faces on the way to the stand.

8. Those nice bucks that appear on your trail camera in July and August will vanish exactly one day before the opening of archery season.

9. Raccoons must like having their picture taken by trail cameras.

10. Days when you're at work are sure to be the days your hunting partner will see deer.

11. No matter what happens, watching the sun come up over a bean field, or set in the woods as the owls start talking makes every minute spent hunting worth it.

12. There is no such thing as a bad day hunting, deer or no deer.

Good luck to all you hunters out there!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Joseph