Some bigger water

The transmission in my truck gave up on me last week. This really sucks, I had it rebuilt two years ago with a 6 month/6000 mile warranty that I have far exceeded. I'm too broke to have it fixed right now so its been walking and luckily finding a ride for me lately. Friday, Stu texted me and wanted to know where we were fishing at tomorrow. I told him I had no plans to fish, but instead to walk to the grocery store with my backpack so I could eat this week. Not what I had in mind when I bought my Kelty internal frame... He insisted on picking me up and going to the mountains. I informed him this meant taking me to the store on the way home and he agreed.

Originally I picked a tributary on the north side of the smokies we have yet to set eyes on. We ended up not going there due to lack of time and instead fished a section that is easily accessed.

It was drizzling very lightly when we arrived. We parked near a bridge above the confluence of two major feeders to one of the larger watersheds on this side of the park. Neither of us had fished this stretch of stream before though I had studied maps and was aware of the layout. After rigging up with my favorite dry fly for this time of year, the foam beetle, and a pheasant tail dropper we each started out on a different section of stream. I went below the bridge and Stu above.

It didn't take long before I had  a few very enthusiastic strikes on my beetle. And, I missed them all. I caught up with Stu fairly quick and then crossed the stream so we each had untouched water in front of us and didn't have to leapfrog. Nothing seemed interested in my dropper so I changed out to a green weenie and  soon had a tiny 2" rainbow to hand. A few casts later I landed another small rainbow. The trout seemed small for the size of the stream we were on.

I got my green weenie stuck in a tree while casting to a deep run beneath an overhanging tree. I decided to try a pink weenie instead and cast it into the same run. The fish laying in that run had ignored my green weenie but it liked my pink weenie. This turned out to be the average size I caught for the day

Everything was wet. Rock hopping was required and was more treacherous than usual.

You can see Stu fishing in the above picture. He got ahead of me because I took a little detour to check out the rock wall following the river bank. It is among the longest rock walls I have laid eyes on so far in the smokies.

The road for the most part follows the stream but not too closely in some places. I knew we would have to bushwhack our way back to the road, but how far depended on where we quit. We decided to call it a day when a family of otters came frolicking their way down from upstream, spooking every fish possible along the way. I had to figure out how to cross the stream without getting too soaked. I solved this problem by stepping on a slick rock in the middle of a hole and falling in the water. It no longer mattered how wet I was since now my pack of Pall Mall lights were soaked. To my surprise the bushwhack was really short, only a couple hundred feet. So lucky and unlucky at the same time. I managed to dry out a couple cigarettes for the ride home but the rest were, shall we say, a wash...