Steep trails and peace of mind

This past weekend I had a severe need to get on the water. The work week had been filled with change and future promises of hard decisions to be made. When Paisley emailed me saying that he could visit an area delayed harvest stream for a few hours the next day, I got my "kitchen pass" from the wife and jumped at the chance.

The weather was supposed to be rainy and reports indicated that the river we would be fishing had been heavily poached, so the chance of it holding fish was slim. The rain was a plus and the poached out status of the water was not nearly enough to dissuade me. I needed the focus that fly fishing requires. I was also in no state of mind to wield a camera, so even though we brought one, I decided to leave it back in the car.

Paisley and I met before daylight and after we consolidated our gear into his Suzuki fish wagon, made our way to the river. A first glance into some likely holes revealed no easy to spot fish. Fishing our way up the river proved our theory that the water had indeed been heavily poached. After failing to even see a single fish, much less catch one, we decided that delayed harvest fishing was useless and made a turn up a tiny feeder stream marked with a sign denoting it as wild trout waters. Jeff made the statement that since NC regulations allow anglers to keep four fish per day in the wild waters and since the delayed harvest water was empty, the poachers had probably cleaned out the wild stream as well. We could only hope that the tiny water with tough access had been enough to keep people away and the trout fishing intact.

The tiny stream was strewn with large boulders and worked its way as stair steps up the side of a steep mountain. Recent warm conditions had us watching our step as we both knew that the area is well reported to have a large population of Timber Rattlers and Copperheads. I remarked to Jeff that it was just cold enough for the rattlers not to be able to warn us if we got too close. He said that there way more Copperheads than Rattlers in the area anyway.

The river turned out to be beautiful. We worked our way over house sized boulders and around dead fall timber, fishing tiny pockets of water all the way. Many casts were made while peering out from behind rocks while casting at eye level with the pool above you. Jeff managed to pick up a six inch brookie out of one of the pools but most of the tiny pockets seemed not to hold fish.

The next step up the mountainside revealed an unusually large pool flanked by giant rocks on either side and with a fallen tree in its dead center. I waited below as Jeff crept into position to make what amounted to a blind cast around the boulder. Jeff made several casts with no reaction so I crept up the side of the rock to the right of the pocket and eased my head up over the rim so as to allow a sight line in the pool. Immediately I spied two 14-15 inch brook trout cruising the pool shoulder to shoulder. Keep in mind that a 15 inch brookie in a NC wild trout stream is about the same as a thirty inch Alaskan rainbow only much more rare. I flipped my nymph into the pool only to have the trout rise and eat my indicator (yes, I was fishing a strike indicator - this was supposed to be an easy stock trout trip). On my second cast the other trout in the pair did the same thing this time coming out of the water to try to swallow the tiny rubber indicator whole. I looked at Jeff just in time to see him get a strike and break his tippet on the set. You normally only get one or two shots at the same native trout so, having missed ours, we moved on up the river. We paused at the head of the pool and Jeff managed to pick up another trout from the whitewater. We climbed higher with some resolve to come back and visit the dead tree pool on our way back to the vehicle.

The tiny gorge was spectacular and both Jeff and I regretted the decision to leave the cameras behind. It seemed that every time we climbed up to another level, the river became more clear and the boulders more massive. However, we both agreed that even guys with fishing websites deserve some time "off the grid". We managed to fish our way up as high as we dared without the aid of ropes. On our way back down to the car I switched to a small dry fly and after getting the rust off of my hook set, managed to catch one of those gem like brook trout. Jeff was able to pick up another fish or two as well.

We left the stream and stopped off for lunch before heading our separate ways. As I drove the hour and a half back home, the thoughts of work and work issues slowly crept back into my head as if only to remind me of why fly fishing is such good therapy.

First casts

This little icy creek is located across the street from my Grandparents home in Spruce Pine, NC. My Grandfather passed away this week after a long illness. He was a great man and many of my memories of him include fishing, including the time he took us to the pay per pound trout pond and me and my cousin cost him at least a c-note in about an hour of fishing. I am sure he winced with every splashing fish, but to his credit we only saw him smiling from ear to ear.

The little creek is the first place I ever wielded a fly rod when I was a kid. My Great Grandfather handed me a fly rod with a stonefly nymph on the end of it and told me to get out of the house and go fish. I promptly lost the fly to the trees and, because I didn't want to tell him about losing it, pretended to fish the rest of the afternoon.

I couldn't help taking a peek at it while waiting on some family to arrive and noted a couple of troutlike shadows lurking in a promising hole. No doubt I will be back.

Brookies not fond of asphalt

A study of Maryland brook trout indicates that the disappearance of the native fish might be due to urbanization.
Researchers led by Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologist Scott A. Stranko found that brook trout have disappeared from some Baltimore County watersheds where impervious surfaces such as pavement and rooftops cover less than 4 percent of the ground.
That's much lower than the 10 percent figure generally accepted as environmentally sound for nearly 30 years.

The short answer? Don't pave the brook trout streams. Link to the article via the Charlotte Examiner

Coffee Addicted Mayflies?

A recent study reported in the Chattanooga Times Free Press indicates that water in the Tennessee River contains enough caffeine for mayflies to ingest the equivalent of 26.6 cups of coffee each day.

Meanwhile, Dr. Richards said, that mayfly also is ingesting a cocktail of at least 12 other common drugs, including several antibiotics, antidepressants and substances designed to lower human cholesterol levels. While the amount of drugs in the water is tiny by human standards, they one day may have a serious impact on the environment — and on humans, as well, he said.

“Everyone’s worried about pesticides in the water, but the amount of pharmaceuticals that get dumped in the water via just taking them is going to equal or exceed that of pesticides,” Dr. Richards said. “You have to wonder what it’s doing to the ecosystem. If we’re upsetting the balance in any way, it can’t be perceived as a good thing.”

In addition to the obvious environmental concerns this report raises, it also gets me to thinking about the effects this might be having on on Tennessee trout. Initially trout might suffer due to the juiced up mayflies being faster and more difficult to catch. I can picture nymphs zooming to the surface, splitting their shucks and then flying space ward with hungry trout in hot pursuit.

Sooner or later the trout would catch on and figure out how to eat the leaping Leptohyphidae. The accompanying caffeine addiction would bring the trout stream its own set of problems. If the morning hatch was somehow delayed anglers might well take care wading a river full of grumpy trout who have not yet had their "morning cup of Metretopodidae."

During abundant hatches, these same jittery trout might be easy prey for anglers who camp out on the river's fabled "Starbuck's hole." Fish would be mindlessly stacked up at the river's equivalent of the barista counter, snapping at anything that comes between them and their next fix.

No doubt some trout would become "mayfly snobs" and would only consume mocha colored bugs with half the caffeine and topped off by a generous helping of skimmed cream midges. They would travel across the river to get their favorite flavors at the Starbucks hole when everyone really knows that the Service Station pool had mayflies that were just as good for a third the energy cost.

The fly tiers bench would also be impacted. Skilled tiers would develop patterns to "match the hatch. Flies with names like "the caffeinated caddis" and "Juan Valdez's deceiver" would be top sellers. Debates would erupt over weather a coffee bean glued to a hook constituted bait or a viable fly tied with "natural" materials. Unscrupulous anglers "spilling" their coffee into rivers in order to evoke a feeding frenzy could spawn an entirely new set of regulations which may even go so far as to include drug testing for hyped up anglers caught attempting to relieve themselves on area creek banks.

White River Monsters?

FlyFishMagazine.com's Leftentant of Tail Water Fisheries, Jeff Paisley found an interesting note in yesterday's Baxter Bulletin about a side effect of the recent flooding on the White River's North fork. It seems all manner of large warm water predators have found their way into the trout fishery. Officials are taking steps to put them back where they belong.

A sample of fish taken from the North Fork of the White River below Norfork Dam last week confirmed river biologists' concerns that many warm-water predator fish and at least three "monsters" spilled into the North Fork tailwaters during April floods.

White bass were the most numerous at about 70. Some 30 walleye also were taken in the sample gathered between 8:30 p.m. and midnight last Tuesday, Schroeder said. One striped bass weighing more than 20 pounds was the biggest of that predator species, he said. A total of six striped bass were taken from the river. Six blue channel catfish, including three that weighed in excess of 30 pounds each, also were captured and relocated, Schroeder said.

Break out the eight weights boys and girls.

photo: Jay Moore

Brookies on the Caney

FlyFishMagazine.com's Tennessee troutmeister, Jay Moore will have a few thousand new opportunities on his favorite tailwater, the Caney Fork. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission recently stocked Brook trout in Jay's home waters. From an article in the Tennessean.com

An estimated 4,800 brook trout were released Thursday with 25,000 more expected in the weeks to come, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

The stocking of the third trout species isn't an effort to restore an ecosystem, but rather a recreational and economic plum for the angling world that's taking advantage of a situation unlikely to change any time soon.

"We'll actually have bigger brook trout here than you can catch anywhere in the mountain streams," he said, adding food is limited in the high reaches of East Tennessee where some are found.