North Georgia trip recap – Day 2

Friday

On Friday we found ourselves on new water, well, new water to us. I had gotten a recommendation from a friend a few years ago on a creek that I have been meaning to try, but never got around to it. It was a bit further from the cabin than some of our favorites so it has always been put on the back burner. Wild rainbows and browns were what we were after, with hopefully a few above average fish. It took a bit of navigating to find and then a bit more navigating to find the trail. The plan was to hike downstream, then fish back to the car. Here is what we were greeted with upon entering the water:

The rainbows were certainly there:

Then Blake caught a surprise brookie! I didn’t think we would see one in the main stem of the stream we were fishing, I had heard of some TU stream improvement work on a trib though, so it wasn’t out of the question. It was a welcome surprise.

We fished on up, hoping to get into some browns to get Blake a slam. As we fished up the rainbows were getting bigger.

We ended the day without catching a brown, but Blake got an unexpected brookie which was pretty cool, Georgia’s native trout. We enjoyed the new creek and left another section to fish for us to fish some other time. Two fish stood out on this day, besides the brookie, one really colored up bow that I caught and Blake’s “brokeback” bow” that looked like an eel. The fly of the day for me was an Adams trude, which carried over into Saturday until I broke it off on a tree (which happens often if you’re not careful, or frustrated).

We stopped at Ingles on the way home and stocked up on some local beer while we’re in town. Upon arriving back at the cabin and cracking open a fresh brew we hear Dad holler from down at the creek, it looked like he had a nice trout on. When we got down there we found out it was a big rainbow that Dad watched rise to a few flies. The only floating fly he had in his vest was a small white popper, better suited for bream. He tied it on anyway and put a drift in front of the fish, and he ate it. Trout on a popper, who knew?