Typical Summer Fishing TR

[Yallerhammer]

I was off work yesterday, so I headed across the ridge into the Smokies park. Started the day off by about smacking an elk with my truck just around the road from my house before daylight. Fishing was typical summertime: low warm water, same ol' same ol'. Many punes were captured, but nothing with any shoulders. Much enjoyment was had. Much better than work. Not much of a day for size, but good for numbers. I lost count early on.

Fished the main creek in the morning. The trout gods were issuing your choice of these every two or three casts for awhile:







Soup de jour of the day was a unholy rubber-legged hopper looking thingy. Had a green inchworm thingy under it for awhile, but finally cut it off as most of the fish were hitting the dry. The pre-leroys were bombing it like bass, this one came completely out of the water in a somersault when he hit:



I was surprised to catch this lil guy out of the lower main creek, but I'll take a pune slam:



This was the pune-est pre-leroy in the history of pune pre-leroys. Not much bigger than the fly:



Not much streamside herbage blooming for Doug, just some bee balm and green-headed coneflower:





The fish are slowing down on the main creek, so it's lunch time. If there is a god, and if he/she/it eats hamburgers, it eats them cooked on the bank of a trout stream with some thick bacon, Vidalia onions, sharp cheddar-jack cheese, and a cold Ying-a-ling.





After lunch was tributary time. Hiked back up a little creek, and the fish acted like they hadn't eaten in weeks. Every hole was one or two of these:



Or these:



With a few of these:



Fished until I was tired of it, and headed home tired and sassyfied.

Why do butterflies love otter shit?

[driver]

+1 for Clutch. I gave up on SMNP punes a long time ago..

[Yallerhammer]

This creek has some really good fish in it. I can catch them in the spring, but in over thirty years trying, I haven't figured out how to catch them in the summer unless it comes a storm and gets the water dingy. Then the good fish will hit. I've caught two browns over 20" out of there over the years, including a 21" fish on a dry fly-biggest wild trout I've ever caught on top. Caught scads of teener browns and rainbows, and a few really good-sized specks. I can't do it in the summer, though.

[Dougfish]

Well, that did not suck. 
+1 for the burger.

[Onslow]

GSMNP just isn't represented in these parts oft.  Tis good to have some new blood in this cesspool of inbred losers.

[peter p]

If you are fishing where I am pretty certain you are,  the brookies have been showing up in the main stream for a few years now.   Not sure why, but they are there.   

[Yallerhammer]

Yeah, I've caught them way down the creek even thirty years ago, but they seem to be getting more common in the big water now, good to see. This one was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay downstream, the lowest I've ever caught one. Maybe if they can hang on in the big water, there will be some teener specks back in there eventually. Some of my family lived in there back in the pre-park days, and they said before all the logging and before the stocking of rainbows and the specks getting chased back up into the little feeder branches, it wasn't unusual at all to catch 14"-15" native specks or bigger from that creek.

[peter p]

Y it wasn't unusual at all to catch 14"-15" native specks or bigger from that creek.

We can only hope