Pond Mountain Wilderness

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.