The Smokies in Jeopardy

The government shut down as of midnight last night. As a Libertarian, I rejoice at the bloated dead corpse of the government becoming a little less bloated. The sour point is that the national parks closed, and this of course could have a negative effect on my trip to the Smokies. While I don't understand how the Federal Government can tell citizens to stay off of land that they owe (remember...we the people own those national parks, not the government!), I must respect the laws. We are coming up with a "Plan B" should the park not open within the next 9 days. Most likely, we will be camping at Ole Bull State Park in north-central PA and fly fishing the legendary Hammersly Fork wilderness. It ain't the Smokies, but it's still wild country with bear, elk, and hilljacks.

Prepping for the Smokies

I'm not one to blow money on fly fishing trips. Mostly, because I have no money. A few years ago, however, there was a few threads on PA Fly Fish about fishing in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. As you know from this blog, I'm a small stream fisherman at heart. My imagination started racing with images of back woods small streams inhabited by wild rainbows. I did something unimaginable. I actually started to plan a trip.
A few searches on the internet, and I had a campsite reserved on the North Carolina side of the park, in the Oconaluftee watershed. I emailed my dad to tell him about the trip, and invited him, my brother, and my cousin to come with me. My dad was immediately on board. My cousin confirmed his attendance a few weeks ago. Last night, I got the call from my brother that he'd be able to come along.

This trip is a tribute to the fly fishing trips I took with my dad, brother, and cousin when we were younger. We learned how to fly fish in Northern Pennsylvania, cutting our teeth on streams like the Little Kettle. We'll be leaving around 3am the second Thursday of October, arriving in North Carolina around noon that day. We'll have two and a half days to hike, fish, and enjoy the park before packing up and coming back to PA that Sunday. Apart from fishing the Oconaluftee, we're planning on hiking up Bradley Fork, fishing several of it tribs.

You can expect a large photo dump and post from this trip, and hopefully that photo dump includes lots of fish, black bears, elk, and other "exotic" wild life. If anyone is interested in doing a trip to the GSMNP, it really is quite affordable. Our campsite is around $20 a night, and it's stream side. A 10 day NC non-residential license is around $10, and as long as you're in the national park, no trout stamp is required. The NC license allows you to fish both the TN and NC side, and I would recommend Little River Outfitters in Townsend TN as a great source of information. Their online forum has bee incredibly helpful in planning this trip. It's a month out, but the excitement is unbearable.

More Big Brookies

I had the chance to show an out-of-town friend around my local gem of a stream. More big brookies were had! Enjoy the photo dump!

Keith gets a good drift

Old restoration work done in the 60s

First one of the day for Keith

Keith pulled out a nice chunker!

Keith workin' the line

And the hookup

Very pretty fish. These brookies definitely have a unique coloration

Here's a big'un for ole' Squatch!

I HATE CHUBS!!! 

The big'uns never hold still!

There he is. A very nice native. I caught him just minutes before Keith caught his chunker, in the same hole even!

Keith's big chunker. Same hole as mine. Unreal.

It Pays to Break the Mold

It's been a stunning August in Lancaster County. Temps in the upper 70s to mid 80s, low humidity, and excellent rainfalls have kept our small streams in stunning shape, and the brookies are benefiting. Monday evening I jumped at the chance to get an hour and a half or so of fishing in on my local Lancaster hotspot.

Knowing I had a limited window, I decided against fishing my normal stretch. My normal haunt takes about 2 hours to fish from start to finish, and then there's the walk back to the vehicle. In the spirit of time and adventure, I decided to break the mold a little bit and try a section of the stream that is just below where I usually start. I've fished a good stretch of this stream, but the stretch I decided to fish, I've never fished before. When starting down stream, I usually stopped just below this stretch, and when starting upstream, I started at the pool just above. I'm very glad I started where I did. There are some excellent stretches in this section, with hefty browns and brookies. I caught several fish and all of them seemed fat and healthy.

The real gem came at the end of the night, though. As I was wading through the pool which is directly down stream of my usual starting point, I saw a rise in what I assumed was structureless frog water. If I didn't see the rise, I would have waded right through the pool to get to the bank and start the treck back to my vehicle. I made my cast just above the rise, and my fly got POUNDED. This fish jumped clear out of the water. All I saw was a pink belly. I thought I must have caught one of the hold-over rainbows that are still in there from the spring stocking. This would have excited me, actually, because I've never caught a bow in the stream and I was ready for a trifecta (even if the bow was a stockie).

What I brought to hand was even better, though! Landing the fish, I discovered that what I caught was a very large native brook trout. I've always though the ruler on the Eagle Claw Featherlights were cheesy and put there for the bait slingers who picked up the EC rod in an attempt to "try fly fishing". I was glad to have them on this night! I held that brookie up to that ruler, and it measured 12" dead on the nose. This is by far my largest brookie to date! I quickly took its picture and released it. When I got back to my car later and looked at the picture, I feared I mis-measured. My Sasquatch paws made that fish look tiny. So, just to reassure myself, I took a picture of me holding a 12" ruler haha! I sure am glad I decided on something different this night!

Christening of "The Box"

I had an experience early last week in which an older friend gave me all of his fly fishing equipment. He'll never fish again. It was a ceremonial event, at least in my mind. We both knew this day would come, we both weren't looking forward to it, but time and age are cruel mistresses. I'm honored to receive his gear. This is a man who learned to tie and fish from the great Joe Humphreys. He was at Penn State when Milt Eisenhower was there. He's got stories of Ike stopping by the college to meet his brother before heading out to the region's legendary spring creeks. He's been tying as long as he's been fishing.

I don't take this lightly. The closest thing I can liken it to is when Johnny Cash gave Bob Dylan his guitar...except while I have no problem likening my friend to Johnny Cash, I ain't no Dylan.

Still, he gave it to me. Fly tying supplies, hand made rods (the only graphite I'll fish with!), old click pawl reels lined with Cortland 444 DT lines that are still quite usable, boxes of leader material, and the crown gem of them all-a hand built Richardson fly box filled with his flies.

Most of his flies were rusted out, and it pained me to throw out so many flies, but I was able to salvage quite a few, and I've been fishing this past week with a mixture of his flies, my own ties (which are getting better!), and ties made by a friend of mine.

I've been told the best I can do for this fellow, who I'll never ever be able to pay back but I'll sure try, is to send him pictures of my fishing adventures. He takes pleasure in knowing that his stuff is still being used, so here you go old friend. This stuff is built to last, don't be surprised if my own children use it some day!

Frustrating Weekend.

I found this weekend to be incredibly frustrating. My wife was very gracious, as she let me go fishing three nights in a row. Thursday night began with me skipping out on band practice to hit up my local favorite.

Here's the deal. I fished a stretch that last year I did very well on, but haven't fished that much this year yet. Last year it was easily 95% brookies/5% small browns. Something happened this year. In the two hours I fished, I only landed 5 trout (well under par), and 4 of them were browns. I don't like the idea that browns may be pushing out the brookies in this stream. Further sampling may be needed.

Friday night I fished another freestoner. It's listed on the Class A as a solid wild brookie stream. I can't understand this stream. I had a stellar day on it a few months ago and it convinced me that this stream is indeed a Class A stream, but since that day I haven't had great fishing on it. I couldn't have asked for better conditions on Friday night. A bit overcast, water was a little stained, but you could still see well, but the strikes were low. If I took you to this stream, you'd think every hole should have trout in it, but I had to work very hard for every strike. The biggest concern again-mostly brownies, only one brookie.

What is going on? Are the brookies just being stubborn? Are the browns taking over and pushing out the native fish? I've never known a scenario where the brownies will rise and feed more willingly than brook trout. I pray that things aren't shifting to favor the brown trout population, but I fear that is the case.

Saturday night I drove 30 minutes to fish a spring creek-this time intentionally seeking wild browns. I arrived at the stream, geared up, heard "scattered showers" on the weather report, stepped in the stream and the sky opened up. I'm not one to be scarred off by a little rain, but this was no "scattered shower". I sat under a canopy and waited for 45 minutes for the rain to end...when I left it was still dumping buckets.

Frustrating weekend for shizzle.

Long Overdue

I know it's been quite some time since I've made a post. Part of that is laziness, part of it is being insanely busy, part of it is I feel like I rehash the same experience time and time again. "Oh I fished for brookies last night, caught x amount of fish, it was fun." I'm a small stream fisherman. It's what I do. It ain't that exciting to most people, but it's what I love. Squatchin' around in the woods, catching natives, it's perfect to me.

So in early June I headed up to Potter County (God's Country) with the family for a week long vacation. This was the highlight of my summer so far. You can see my photo dump from the trip below. Since this was a family vacation, my fishing time was limited. My wife wasn't keen on sitting around the cabin all day every day with a toddler and a 4yr old while I'm out pounding the streams. I promised my wife I would not do this to her. Instead, I got up at 5:30am every day on my vacation, fished any one of the multitudes of small streams that are within a 10 minute drive of my cabin, and was back in time to eat breakfast with my wife and kids. A few days I snuck out for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

I've been fishing this area of the state as long as I can remember, and I've been fly fishing it since I was 16 years old. In all of my years of fishing, I have never seen the fishing so good.  Every single stream had great flows. The temps were perfect. Most of the days, the skies were overcast, if not a little drizzly. Every pool held fish. Every run produced strikes. When I think about fly fishing in Potter County, I dream of weeks like this.

This summer is a rare event in the life of a North Eastern fly fisherman. The solid amount of rain, the relatively cooler temps ("relative" is the key word...we just had a full week of solid heat indexes of 100 degrees), it has produced a fishing experience that I've not seen in quite some time. You'll forgive the lack of posts from me...I've been busy fishin.