Down in a Holler

deep, dark hills of Western NC

Fished a new stream near the NC/TN border with some friends yesterday.  It was down in a holler with some interesting characters and full of southern appalachian culture, including a little patch of marijuana  by the stream.  I walked under a number of personal drive way bridges, some rather dodgey, creepy,  and old.  Being a native of the WNC mountains, i felt like a "feriner*" in the area on this day.


*foreigner -pronounced fer-i-ner by my grandparents. Meaning, he ain't from around here.


The stream is a hatchery supported stream in its lower stretches, but was full of little wild fish and the occasional migrated stocker.

lingering rhodo blooms stream side

The water was off color, and I fished a double nymph rig all day.  I caught most fish on a red fox squirrel nymph (sz #12) with a hot spot, and the others on a red copper john or a cdc fb pheasant tail.  I hooked two fish over 14" but was unable to land either. I played one for a couple of minutes before it had me all turned around under a low hanging tree and came unbuttoned in the rapid below. All and all, landed about 30 fish in four hours with the fish below being slightly above average size for the stream.

Here are a few of the rouge stockers i found.

A stream worth making the 2 hour drive to another day. And I am slowly learning to look outside of the  national forrest and park boundaries to find quality wild fish. There are THOUSANDS of streams in the NC mountains, most of which hold fish.