I am convinced that if you crave adventure, enjoy nature and like beautiful things… that falling in love with fly fishing is a very easy thing to do. In fact, my favorite type of fishing always involves some combination of adventure and wild beautiful places. So, I asked my friend Damon last week if he wanted to go to SNP and fish one of the trail-less streams for Brook trout. I told him we would be bush whacking down the mountain over rugged terrain with no trails, fishing, and then humping it back up the mountain to the car. He simply asked what time he should be at my place Sunday morning.
We arrived at the overlook parking area around 10AM. The Blue Ridge Parkway was gorgeous, with bright blue skies and white clouds evaporating below us. We immediately set out to getting down to the stream. The terrain was rocky and choked with leaves, downed trees and bushes, all wet from the rain the night before. The going was slow as we tried not to blow out ankles and knees on the slippery route to the river. Small feeder streams that were a trickle at skyline drive began to hold more and more water and eventually converged to create what looked like good Brook Trout water. After about an hour and a half bushwhack we wadered up, strung up our rods and began fishing.
A good amount of the prime water was rendered unfishable by large downed trees that would not allow even the best caster access to a descent drift. But we did well. We brought more than a couple of fish to hand that measured over 9" on the measuring tape. The stream was gorgeous and given the access to the stream we obviously didn't see another soul all day.
The hike out was a brute…again…the hike out was a brute...BRUTE. Damon proved to be the stronger hiker this go round and a great navigator. He steered us straight to the car up the steep rocky terrain. I made it to the trail post about 3 minutes after Damon and when I arrived he smiled and jokingly said…"ok, let's never do that again"… we cracked up.
I went on a very similar trip to this one with Dalton Terrell a few weeks ago. As we drove home, I realized why Damon and Dalton and a couple of other guys are usually the same people that are on most of the "fishing trips" I ask people to come on. They love adventure, wild places, and beautiful things. It just seems like a fly fishing trip is a good excuse to go on a good adventure sometimes.
-Trent Jones
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