We spent the weekend in Bryson city/Cherokee starting out Fri evening fishing above the trophy section. It started raining but the water was clear and not very high. 3 hours later it got dark and we still hadn't seen anything or had any luck after working a few very promising looking stretches of water.
Sat morning we didn't get to the water until almost 11. Went further upriver past the campgrounds up big cove road to try to get away from other fishermen/tubers. Apparently we didn't go far enough. Tubers floating through every 5 minutes, sometimes 20 at a time.
During a big wave of them we both got out of the water, set our rods down and took a break....one of the tubers got out of the water and walked right through us nearly stepping on our rods and my slingpack until I yelled to watch where he was walking. We moved 3 more miles upriver.
Thinking we had finally made it away from the tubers and into some fish, we found a pulloff with difficult access to the water and finally found a nice bend with some deep holes above a small waterfall. FINALLY got into some small browns but into fish nonetheless....for about 30 min...MORE TUBERS!
We packed up, headed back to our cabin in Bryson city and changed up our gameplan. GSMNP was about 3 miles from our cabin so we had dinner and headed that way about an hour before dark. Managed to get a few small ones on caddis dries and a nice brown on a stonefly that made a beautiful jump and promptly spit out my barbless hook and made an awesome splash.
Overall it was an awesome trip and it was nice to be able to spend some quality time on new water with my better half. Not sure if the fishing pressure, warm water, unfamiliar waters or the tubers were to blame but the fish weren't cooperating in Cherokee.
Although disappointed, getting on the water late may have had something to do with it but I feel like we would have done much better just staying in GSMNP instead of fighting for a spot the whole day.
I'll add some pictures once I get them off my camera, it really is beautiful country up there. Time to start planning a trip to some tailwaters!
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
Sat morning we didn't get to the water until almost 11. Went further upriver past the campgrounds up big cove road to try to get away from other fishermen/tubers. Apparently we didn't go far enough. Tubers floating through every 5 minutes, sometimes 20 at a time.
During a big wave of them we both got out of the water, set our rods down and took a break....one of the tubers got out of the water and walked right through us nearly stepping on our rods and my slingpack until I yelled to watch where he was walking. We moved 3 more miles upriver.
Thinking we had finally made it away from the tubers and into some fish, we found a pulloff with difficult access to the water and finally found a nice bend with some deep holes above a small waterfall. FINALLY got into some small browns but into fish nonetheless....for about 30 min...MORE TUBERS!
We packed up, headed back to our cabin in Bryson city and changed up our gameplan. GSMNP was about 3 miles from our cabin so we had dinner and headed that way about an hour before dark. Managed to get a few small ones on caddis dries and a nice brown on a stonefly that made a beautiful jump and promptly spit out my barbless hook and made an awesome splash.
Overall it was an awesome trip and it was nice to be able to spend some quality time on new water with my better half. Not sure if the fishing pressure, warm water, unfamiliar waters or the tubers were to blame but the fish weren't cooperating in Cherokee.
Although disappointed, getting on the water late may have had something to do with it but I feel like we would have done much better just staying in GSMNP instead of fighting for a spot the whole day.
I'll add some pictures once I get them off my camera, it really is beautiful country up there. Time to start planning a trip to some tailwaters!
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk