Southern Appalachian Brook Trout Trip - April 2007
This trip was taken nearly 3 years ago so I'm trying to remember many of the details. Forgive if I seem a little short for words.
A friend and I made a trip to one of the last great places in the Southeast to fish for some native brook trout, Big Snowbird Creek in North Carolina. The great thing about Snowbird is the size compared to other brookie streams in the Southeast. Most are extremely tight and packed with rhododendrons, making casting very difficult to downright impossible. With Snowbird, that's not the case.
We met in Robbinsville on Friday afternoon at a local burger joint and headed to the creek from there. Snowbird lies within the Nantahala National Forest, the lower half is home to rainbow and brown trout while the upper portion is brook trout only. There are 3 waterfalls on the creek with the middle falls being the barrier falls providing the brook trout protection from other invasive trout. We parked at the lower parking area and decided to hike the 5.5 miles from there and camp at a suitable night at some point above the middle falls. The hike is not bad at all, our starting elevation was around 2400-2600 feet and we camped and fished around 3400-3800 feet.
Dry fly fishing is usually pretty consistent on small streams in the Southeast throughout summer, being late April we were hoping to catch the beginning of that action. With the temps being cold enough to warrant wearing waders (water temps in the low 50's) we were a little skeptical before the trip. I don't remember exactly what the air temps were, but I'm guessing highs were in the 60's, lows in the 40's. All those fears were pushed aside when the first brookie was landed on an EHC. EHC and stimulators were the ticket for me, as they usually are on small streams in Georgia. Matching the hatch is generally never an issue as the trout are more than eager to take any attractor pattern. Size more important than pattern, but sometimes even size doesn't matter. As long as you have dries in sizes #14-18 and you can cover a whole lot of water in the Southeast in the summer.
We hiked out Sunday morning, Bryan headed home and I stuck around and fished in the section below the 1st waterfall upstream of the parking area. I landed 2 small browns and missed a couple of fish of size. I didn't fish for very long, just a few hours, since I had to make the drive back home.
Our numbers on the weekend weren't outstanding, but we were catching brook trout on a pretty consistent basis throughout the weekend. It was a lot of fun and some place I'd like to head back to in the future. The scenery is outstanding, very similar to GSMNP, which is not very far away. I remember seeing very few people on the trails as far away from the parking areas as we were and no one else on the water. I'd imagine in the summer it is a little more crowded, however we found it perfect in Spring.
