Appalachian Adventure

May 24-31

With the coronavirus looming, my summer study abroad in Spain cancelled, and Josh's internship all online, we decided we needed to get out and have an adventure.  We settled on camping around and hiking in the Blue Ridge Parkway area in western North Carolina.  It's a fantastic area I've spent time in before and wouldn't hesitate to go redo this trip all over again.

Essentially, every day I woke up at 6:30, ran 4-6 miles to keep up with my training, and then we would make breakfast and pack up camp.  We drove to trailheads and parks to hike most of the day, then would drive to a different campsite and spend the night.  We repeated this for a full week.  We meticulously planned out this trip beforehand, prepping food and gear weeks in advance.  Thankfully, most of the area had opened up from the initial lockdown, and we were able to stay away from society and other people.

I'll only share a few pictures from the camping and hiking on this trip, but rest assured I could write a post with highlights for each day of the week we were gone.

The best campsite I've ever seen, bar none.  Linville Gorge Wilderness area

View from the top of Table Rock Mountain overlooking Linville Gorge.  Really cloudy most of the trip but we got to enjoy cool views like these.

Dupont State Forest waterfalls.  A hidden gem.  The most spectacular falls I've ever seen with a short but rugged hike to hit 5 different waterfalls.

One last view of Linville Gorge.  I loved this day of the trip

We did get one day of fishing wild trout streams in, and that was supposed to be the topic of this post.

On day one, we camped and drove to a spot I'd been before, called graveyard fields.  This area has a small rocky creek flowing through it full of pocket water with rushing water, boulders, and wild brook trout.  Josh and I spent one day fishing in this area.  I, like a fool, brought my uncle's borrowed 4 weight and my 6 weight for us to fish with.  Really wished I had a short 3 or 2 weight for this creek.  It's tight quarters and small fish.

I threw on guard socks and wading boots and Josh fished in beat up old sneakers.  The water was pretty chilly but no deeper than knee depth.

I stupidly tied on nymphing rigs to start with and then realized that brook trout don't care.  I threw a larger royal Wulff and got an angry, splashy hit that didn't quite take the fly.  I quickly switched to a patriot dry fly in size 18 and the bite opened up.  I quickly stuck two small brookies in the 5-7 inch range.  Not big but fun fish to watch smack dry flies.  

I switched my fly to a purple Adams and gave josh the patriot.  We both started hooking fish in the largest, flattest run by casting tight to the bank and mending well.  Josh picked up the biggest fish of the day and his first trout.  I was pretty proud of how well he casted and fished having only fly fished bedding bluegills once before.

Near the end of the day, I was able to find rock seams in any pool where fish were located.  I saw a seam, set down a dry fly, and got hit.  I wasn't able to hook a lot of fish, so I'll need to work on my sets on dry fly eats.  Otherwise it was a fantastic day and unrealistically good fishing for how little preparation we'd made to fish.  We ended up fishing longer than expected and only taking one short hike to finish off the
day.  

A Long-Needed Update

It's been quite awhile.  In the time since my last post, I've been at school.  I just recently finished my freshman year at the University of Notre Dame.  So far, it has been a fantastic whirlwind of emotions and catastrophes.  We are planning on returning to campus in the fall, but actual plans seem to hinge on the school administration's decisions. 


Over the winter, I went steelhead fishing numerous times with the fishing club.  We have a used Clackacraft drift boat we bought secondhand off a fishing guide a number of years back.  We fished the Dowagiac twice in December and January with little luck besides one of the guys nailing this cool brown on a spinner.

The Dowagiac is a pretty sketchy river to row a drift boat on and we've gotten into a number of hairy situations.  I've had to hop out and pull the boat upstream out of laydowns more than once.  It's been quite the experience.

Hopefully steelhead fishing on this river will be better in the spring and Fall this year, assuming we're allowed to make the short drive to go fish it.





I've been fishing steelhead with a new set-up.  A retired lawyer brought a 9'6" 7 weight Sage SLT into the  fly shop I work at and told Mike to find someone who'd use it.  It's a fantastic rod for swinging larger steelhead flies and drifting nymphs.

I've done quite a bit of fishing this year, so expect more updates.  Hopefully I'll have some free time to write them right now and then post daily after today.