Thursday was a glorious day. So glorious in fact, that I slept in to 9 am. HOLY COW!
I’ll spare you the details – some days I just can’t get going. I finally made it to the base camp – Smokemont Campground inside the GSMNP around 4pm. My smallmouth trip was off to a dubious start. Since it was so late in the day, I decided to just stick close to camp and fish Bradley Fork for trout. I was itchin’ to throw some poppers at smallies, but the trout stream was right there and I heard in the fly shop in town that it was “on.”
Home sweet Home
Well, it might have been “on” but for me – in the campground proper – it was full of kids who were “on” throwing rocks into the creek, splashing around and generally scaring the trout out of their minds. Of course, the trout get used to this during the summer I’m sure, but since we’re really just getting into the busy tourist season, I doubt they were really accustomed to the racket just yet.
Still, I fished upstream from my campsite and caught a couple of very small rainbows – but I was really hoping for a nice brown trout. Soon, I came to a nice heavy run of whitewater with a basketball sized “hole” in the middle of it. Calm water, in a sea of rolling foam. Just the place for a nice brown trout to make it’s way to very protected buffet line.
I dried my Stimulator in my shirt, re-applied floatant, which I noticed I was almost out of …again…and got into position just downstream and to one side of the calm spot. I high sticked the fly through the run, careful not to let it drag. I thought about the tenkara rod I used to own and how I was doing the same thing with this rod with a reel as I could with a fancy cane pole. ( The tenkara people love it when you say “tenkara” and “cane pole” together. 🙂 )
The fly drifted through the spot. Nothing –
I flipped it upstream again, into the hole, and high-sticked it through – the line never touching the water……nothing.
” There’s one in there. I know there is….”
I rested the little hole for a minute and dried off the fly again, although it really didn’t need it. Another cast. Surely this perfect spot hold a fish.
Spurt! A small explosion of water. He was on and it felt like a decent fish! He went downstream and bulldogged his way around a boulder, but I was able to hold the rod high because the stream was rather open there. Around the rock, over to the calm water and back up past me. This brown trout was feisty! A few more seconds, a flop or two and a long headshake and I had him under control.
The Kodak Playsport camera = Crappy low-light photographs
So why the trout story on ZazzyPop ?
Because it was the only decent fish I got all weekend! LOL
The smallie rivers were high and my go-to river was muddy. Almost no fishing, much less catching on Friday – and that was enough to make me pack it in and head for home. So the only thing I can show you is a brown trout, caught on a #12 parachute Adams dry fly. It’s no smallie, but it’ll just have to do I guess! 🙂
ZaZZyPoP 