dylar
Well-known member
- Messages
- 215
- Reaction score
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It's not a secret that the mountains of North Carolina have been hammered with rain over the last week, pushing many of the major rivers and quite a few of the lower valley main river tributaries into flood stage. Now, that little thing we call "life" has really been riding my *** lately, and it's kept me off the water for nearly two weeks (or, as I like to call it, "eternity"). By Thursday, I just couldn't take it anymore, packed the Subaru up and made a run to drainage that the gauges suggested had been less severely impacted than most others, with an eye towards streamer fishing it for big browns.
Alas, "less severely impacted," is not the same thing as "not impacted" or even, "not severely impacted," and when I arrived, I found the water pure Ovaltine, even though the river was still well within its banks. Fortunately, the tributaries were all running full but clear, and I managed to squeeze out two solid days of fishing on a series of bluelines in the upper reaches of the river valley, today, I even got in my entire sesh without getting any rain dumped on me.
High water is a pain to fish, and it's even more of a pain on a high gradient small stream. On the other hand, high water brings out the big boys and girls, and any stream with brown trout in it can kick out a ringer every now and then. Plus, high water hatches can be off the chain. I was kinda, sorta hoping to run into the tail end of the green drakes, but my hope was in vain.
In fact, the dry fly fishing just wasn't on, generally. There were tons of bugs coming off, and I saw quite a few terrestrials floating along, but the heavy water kept them further down in the water column. Worms and big stones tightlined under heavy lead, on the other hand, absolutely wrecked them. Not many real dinks came out to play, run of the crick fish for both days were in the 9-10" range. Even pulled out the 7 wt to huck a little meat around, with some success. `
PORN!
Walking upstream Friday, I spotted a neat looking rock. Pegmatitic granite with kyanite crystals. I'll have to make another visit to this creek with some of my rockhounding gear. Somewhere, the creek must cut through some geologically interesting strata.
Late in the afternoon Friday, I pushed way up the hill looking to find a speck or two on a trib of a trib. It was not a fruitful endeavor on the whole, although it did yield my only dry fly eat.
Normally, I don't like to fish bluelines down low near where they meet the big water. It's usually flat boring **** like this, and takes way too long to fish with way too little reward. When the big water is BTFO, though, I occasionally like to prospect down low, hoping to strike it rich with a main river fish posted up looking for cleaner water. Usually, it turns out to be a total waste of time, but this time around, I found my pot of gold both mornings.
Cheers y'all!
Dylar
Alas, "less severely impacted," is not the same thing as "not impacted" or even, "not severely impacted," and when I arrived, I found the water pure Ovaltine, even though the river was still well within its banks. Fortunately, the tributaries were all running full but clear, and I managed to squeeze out two solid days of fishing on a series of bluelines in the upper reaches of the river valley, today, I even got in my entire sesh without getting any rain dumped on me.
High water is a pain to fish, and it's even more of a pain on a high gradient small stream. On the other hand, high water brings out the big boys and girls, and any stream with brown trout in it can kick out a ringer every now and then. Plus, high water hatches can be off the chain. I was kinda, sorta hoping to run into the tail end of the green drakes, but my hope was in vain.
In fact, the dry fly fishing just wasn't on, generally. There were tons of bugs coming off, and I saw quite a few terrestrials floating along, but the heavy water kept them further down in the water column. Worms and big stones tightlined under heavy lead, on the other hand, absolutely wrecked them. Not many real dinks came out to play, run of the crick fish for both days were in the 9-10" range. Even pulled out the 7 wt to huck a little meat around, with some success. `
PORN!
Walking upstream Friday, I spotted a neat looking rock. Pegmatitic granite with kyanite crystals. I'll have to make another visit to this creek with some of my rockhounding gear. Somewhere, the creek must cut through some geologically interesting strata.
Late in the afternoon Friday, I pushed way up the hill looking to find a speck or two on a trib of a trib. It was not a fruitful endeavor on the whole, although it did yield my only dry fly eat.
Normally, I don't like to fish bluelines down low near where they meet the big water. It's usually flat boring **** like this, and takes way too long to fish with way too little reward. When the big water is BTFO, though, I occasionally like to prospect down low, hoping to strike it rich with a main river fish posted up looking for cleaner water. Usually, it turns out to be a total waste of time, but this time around, I found my pot of gold both mornings.
Cheers y'all!
Dylar
ound: Nice fish though. 
