There is nothing more beautiful than fly fishing in the Smoky Mountains. The scenery is great and the fish are all wild - no stocked fish. At left is my fly fishing buddy Ray on the Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Little River is listed in "Trout Unlimited's Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams".We went for a 2-day trip for two purposes: 1) do some fly fishing, and 2) pre-screen some trails for an upcoming Fairfield Glade Hiking Club trip. We never got around to item number 2 - we will have to go back.
The fly shop web site had been saying that the fishing has been excellent lately. But that is not what we found the two days that we were there. Oh yeah, we caught some fish, but we really had to work hard to get them. I think that we caught about 14 between us. We tried 4 different streams and numerous flys, both drys and nymphs. I read the fly shop fishing report when I got home and it said that fishing was very very slow while we were there. Other fishermen were reporting few or no fish caught. So, it wasn't just us.
As you can see from the pictures the Park was beautiful. The mornings were cool and the daytime temperatures perfect. The leaves haven't started to change color yet, so the number of visitors in the Park was manageable. I understand that once the leaves start to change that a fair portion of the 9 million annual visitors shows up. The GSMNP is the most visited National Park in the country.We talked to two people who ran into 2 bears on one of the trails and backed off the trail to give the bears room. The bears moved on when they saw the people. That is the way is usually works. Another place there was a sign at a trailhead that warned of an aggressive bear on that trail. A ranger told me that probably someone fed the bear and it lost its fear of humans. That always spells more problems for the bear than it does for people. The rule is: If a bear ever becomes aggressive towards humans and it continues, the bear is darted and moved. If a bear ever makes contact with a human the bear is killed. Signs in the Park say "A fed bear is a dead bear" So don't feed the bears.
