Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Chandler to visit GSMNP: Calamity Ensues


Famed blogging angler Tom Chandler of the Trout Underground is planning to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the next couple of weeks. Around the time he announced his plans to visit the park on his excellent blog, several area roads were closed due to high wind and downed trees. Now, as the time for his visit approaches, we learn of a forest fire in the park that has closed a campground and trails.

"A visitor reported the fire to the park around 2:30 p.m. on Monday. The fire is about 1.5 miles inside the park boundary and is located about 0.3 mile from the Big Creek Trailhead between Big Creek Trail and Chestnut Branch Trail. Aerial reconnaissance of the fire yesterday afternoon estimated the fire to be about 40 acres north of Big Creek Trail."

Coincidence?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You ask if it's coincidence. I say it's intentional. The more dangerous the park appears, the fewer people in my backcast.

Last year, Ian Rutter took to calling me "The Cooler" for my ability to squelch a caddis hatch that was going big guns the week prior and the week after I left.

If you Southeastern bastards had any brains, you'd be taking up a collection and paying me to fish anywhere else...

Murdock said...

Tom, We are always happy to have you fishing our local waters. It makes for good reading. You will always be welcome unless for some reason we have a rash of pestilence afterwards or some sort of slaw dog recall. If that happens we will have to rethink things.