Weekend Trout Fishing With A Buddy

 
    This past weekend a buddy and I took to the river and hooked up with a whole lot of trout.  Okay, to be honest - My buddy hooked into a bunch, I was more of an observer barely holding my own.

    We had planned to head up into the North Carolina mountains and hit some of those storied waters that are loaded with fish but looking at the regs we realized that a whole lot of the accessible water was closed for the month of march.   So with North Carolina out of the running I began looking for plan B.
    My buddy is a spin fisherman more accustom to bass than trout.  Even with the constant encouragement to give the fly a try he remains a die-hard spin man.  Unfortunately that limits some of the water he is able to fish so I went flipping through at a few books I had on the fly tying desk on SC waters looking for a good stream to fish.  Eventually I came across a section of river I had never fished.

    Truth is I never even knew that there was trout in it but after researching it I soon found that the section is heavily stocked in the winter months and during the HOT summer months a few even hold over in the very deep pools.  Occasionally anglers have even found natural trout in the more isolated sections tucked far away from the corn chuckers that never venture far from the road.  In short this was perfect for my non-trout fishing buddy.  We didn't want to stay near the road but I wanted to make sure he was going to catch fish.  I also wanted to have the opportunity to catch native fish.

Throughout the day my buddy was hooking into a whole lot of stocked fish while I watched with slight envy but still happy we were catching fish.  I eventually found a hole and hooked into a handful of very clean brooktrout on deep midges, SanJauns, and Killer Bugs.

    After hiking up the stream and working the water along the way, we finally came to a deep hole that had been funneled between two cliff faces.  Scaling the rocks and clinging to the side of moss covered granite we mad our way into a section of the river I am sure few anglers have ever gone.

We stood on top of a rock that looked into the depths of the deep pool below and the monsters we saw down there were enough to get your hear pumping.  Dropping enough weight on the line to sink the Titanic I began to sink flies as deep as they would go.  My buddy did the same and in the next hour we caught a bunch of fish.  Of course the spin rod and salmon eggs won over the stockies but occasionally we would hook into a native or hold over trout.  My buddy was amazed at the noticeable  power that native fish had.  After pulling in a nice 13-14 inch stock trout he then hooked into a native rainbow and thought he had a whale.  It turned out to be only 9-10 inches but the power it had and its aggressive nature had both of us fooled.  Lesson for the day - nothing beats a stream raised trout!
    In the end we left the stream happy and dehydrated.  On the way back to the jeep we even managed to grab a few beat-up stocked trout for supper.  At home, over beers and broiled trout, we reminisced with our family and friends over a great day on the water.
   Good by winter blues and hello Spring Fishing!