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This is a Black Bear that we saw along a gravel road after doing some fly fishing in the GSMNP. He was poking his out between some trees while he was foraging for acorns. I think he kept standing because he was hearing some folks that had pulled over just up the road and and around the corner.
Interesting bear facts from the GSMNP Management Folio #1 Black Bears:
I got the opportunity to fish the Doe River the other day. It was cool, sort of rainy, the clouds were low, the river was flowing good, and it had some color in it. Perfect fishing weather for me. I stopped at a pull-off just inside the Roan Mountain State Park and just below the visitors center. I walked down the road for a few hundred feet and started fishing upstream toward the visitor's center. I started off fishing with a yellow stimulator with a small dropper fly (hare's ear nymph) about 16 inches below. I pick up a couple of small Rainbows on the nymph, but the minnows were hitting it over and over and dragging the stimulator under so I got rid of the nymph. That was a good choice. After that I pulled several nice Rainbows and then two nice Browns. I picked up both Browns in classic Brown trout habitat. One was hiding near an undercut bank with a deep channel just out from it and the other was hiding under a bush that was hanging out over a nice deep channel. I also managed to pick up two Rainbows on successive casts right after I caught the second Brown. I bet I hadn't made more than 2 - 3 casts after catching that Brown and then strike, land, release, fix/adjust, cast, strike, land, release. I will say that there is nothing like a nice fish smashing a fly and fighting it on a fly rod. That is some great fun.
Fishing can be dangerous!!! I was fishing the North River and slipped while I was trying to land a nice Brown. It doesn't look that bad, but I had to close that thing up with some super glue.
According to Wikipedia a Blueway is "a water path or trail that is developed with launch points, camping
locations and points of interest for canoeists, paddle boarders and
kayakers. Blueways are typically developed by state, county or local
municipalities to encourage recreation, ecological education and
preservation of wildlife resources. Blueways are usually developed in quiet still water linear bodies of water that are absent of motor powered boats."
We have a lot of Blueways in the Upper East TN area. I am going to be hitting some of these this summer for some kayaking, fishing, and camping adventures. Look for my reports on each one as I get to them.
While not a Blueway, the Holston River is a great river to float and offers several access point between Cherokee Dam and Downtown Knoxville. See (http://www.tn.gov/twra/gis/HolstonRiver.html) for access points. I usually access the Holston just below Cherokee Dam. Below are a couple of videos from one of the times we floated the Holston.
Fished up in the Pond Mountain Wilderness the other day. I hiked in in mid-morning on a Sunday and I was the only person up there fishing that I saw. There were a lot of hikers in the area heading up one trail or the other, but I guess it's too far up for most fly fishermen. I have noticed that if you get more than 1/4 mile away from the road the number of fly fisherman seen falls off drastically, and generally the fishing improves. The conditions were perfect. It had rained a little the night before and the water had some color it, but it hadn't rained so much that the streams were hard to wade. It was warm, but not hot.
I was using my 7' 6" Redington fly rod, about an 8ft leader, and I fished with a larger Yellow Stimulator (#10) and a Tellico Nymph (#14) as a dropper fly about a foot and a half below.
The fishing started off slow but ended up being really good. I caught around 20 fish. Ten were nice sized and brightly colored browns and the others were "horny heads" and a few other warmer water fish. The browns were smashing both flys. I caught a few on each one. I also actually had a first and hooked fish on both the dry fly and the dropper at one time. One managed to get off the hook though and I only landed one of them. That was pretty cool!
This is a typical Brown Trout that I was catching. He hit the Yellow Stimulator.
This weekend I got the opportunity to fish in the GSMNP and actually didn't run into any other fishermen. I didn't even see anyone fishing on my drive along the lower parts of the river (West Prong). It could have been the weather. It was cloudy and cold with a mix of rain and snow, mostly rain, turning to all snow as it got later in the day. Accumulations were supposed to range from a dusting to 4-6 inches above 2500 feet. I didn't see any snow stick while I was out there.
The creek looked good. There was just a bit of color and it was a little high, but the banks showed where it at been much higher recently. I took a little time to sit along the bank, drink some coffee from my green thermos, and look at the scenery.
I saw some vibrant greens and reds in the moss and berries.
I thought this tree was very interesting looking with all the fungus on it.
Folks might not have been out there due to the time that I went. I headed up there late on Sunday and fished until about dark.
I only caught a couple of trout, but the solitude was priceless. I appreciate all the folks that stayed at home today!
We drove up to the Cataloochee area to see some elk and scout the area for future fishing and hiking trips. We came from I-40 via the Waterville exit and took a left at the entrance to the Big Creek area toward Mount Stirling. The road narrowed and turned into a single lane gravel road that went up and over the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain, about 14 miles later, we stopped for a while near one of the trestle bridges and checked out the creek to see if it would be worth a visit with a fly rod in hand. It looked good. It had been raining off and on and there was some color in the water, but it looked like a good creek to fish. I hope to give it a try here soon, but that wasn' the only reason we wanted to visit Cataloochee. We wanted to see some Elk.
Once we got down the mountain we dove into the valley. It was beautiful.
As we neared the Cataloochee campground we saw two Elk. We saw one huge Elk eating next to the road and he was soon joined by what looked like a smaller female. His antlers were huge!
We sat and watched these two Elk for 15 or 20 minutes. They didn't seem to mind us sitting in the car on the side of the road watching them, but they got agitated when 2 folks came walking up the road. You could tell they were watching them pretty closely. When those folks got about 25 yards from the Elk the Elk started to move into the treeline. They didn't move totally out of our view, but they made it harder for us to watch them. We decided that we had enough pictures of those 2 Elk so we left them and drove on down the road where we saw three more Elk in a clearing.
We then drove on down into the valley past some of the old home places that still exist and parked at the trail head for Rough Fork trail where we saw 3 wild turkeys about 100 yard out in the surrounding field. Rough Fork creek runs parallel to the trail and I wanted to see if it was fishable also. We hiked about 1/4 mile up the trail and saw a young Elk about 75 yards off the trail that appeared to be alone. We observed her for 10 or 15 minutes and never noted another Elk in the area. We didn't want to disturb her or make her momma mad so we moved back on to the trail and hiked up to the old home place 3/4 of a mile up the trail to check it out.
Along the way I observed that Rough Fork creek looked like it was large enough to hold some trout although it did look a little tight in places.
We also noted that the black berries were not quite ripe, but they should be good to go next week or the following week.
We made our way back down the trail and checked back in on the small Elk that we saw and she was still there, just off the trail. We still didn't see any other Elk in that area.
We drove out via Cove Creek. It was a little bit shorter route, but much of the road was still gravel and there was a lot of two way traffic on what was pretty much a steep and twisty single lane road. See the maps below for directions on how to get into and out of the Cataloochee area. The first map is from the Watertown exit over the mountains and down into the valley. The second map is of the Cataloochee area, campground, and hiking trails and how to get to the Cove Creek exit back to I-40. The maps are from the Great Smoky Mtns. Nation Park map from National Geographic Maps/Trails Illustrated. I would suggest that visitors pick one up from one of the visitor centers, hiking store, or order one online.
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