The Georgia Slam - June 2007

In Georgia there are 3 wild trout/char species. The rainbow, the brown, and the brook. The brook is the only native species. There are very few streams in Georgia where you can find all three of them. I fished one of them with a friend back in June of 2007 and managed to get the Georgia slam.

I met Chris at the trailhead parking lot at 8am and we didn't part ways until about 7pm. It was a full days worth of fishing and it didn't disappoint. We decided to bypass a lot of good looking rainbow trout water in favor of brookie water, so we made the ~2 mile trek above the barrier falls, at an elevation between 2400-2800 feet. If we had time at the end of the day we would fish for some rainbows.

I remember the day starting off slow for me, missing strikes left and right, while Chris was steadily hauling in the brookies. It was on though once I landed the first brookie. Then the browns showed up. I'm not sure what it was, but I was bringing in browns while Chris was bringing in the brookies and we were fishing the same water. It is pretty rare in Georgia to have both species above the barrier and doing well, so we weren't complaining. Attractor patterns, like the stimulator and the elk hair caddis were all that were needed on the day as the fish were very aggressive. We fished all the way up to where two forks converge to make the main stem of the stream we were fishing on before we decided to head back. We stopped and fished for rainbows on the lower end to pick up each of our slams.

The water was lower than normal, but it wasn't as low as other streams I had recently seen. Rain the previous Friday may have helped. I don't own a stream thermometer, but the water was pretty cold when wading thigh-high or above, colder than a normal Georgia stream in June. Water was pretty clear, there may have been a slight tint to it, and clouds were in and out, pretty good fishing conditions in my opinion.

We didn't see another soul fishing all day which was real nice, but we did run into a bear on the way out. He was probably about 20 ft ahead of us crossing the trail, close to the parking lot and campground. We froze, checked for cubs, and let him/her continue into the woods. All in all it was a fantastic day, a Georgia slam and a bear sighting! I am thankful to Chris for introducing me to this wonderful stream.