Saturday before Christmas in NC, 65 degrees and skies clearing after a good soaking. My fishing buddy and I headed to Delayed Harvest waters on the Green River. We had never been there before, and turbines were running at 200 percent, so there was no way we were going to wade out in the waters coming off the Narrows. (We are both new to the sport, and so far have been targeting wild fish in the higher elevations where nothing more than boot or hip waders are necessary.) Gnarly water! We decided to go somewhere else, but while I waited for him to make a pit stop, I couldn't resist wetting a line, so I grabbed my light action spinning rod from the back of the truck and walked down to the water's edge. I was chuckling to myself on the path because in my haste I hadn't changed my lure, and I was rigged with a 4/0 bass worm hook and a 7 inch purple rubber worm. I had often wondered if it would catch our smallish NC trout, yet I had serious doubts.
Well, on the first cast, I'm bumping it on the bottom, and I get a strike, set the hook, and soon I have a 12 inch brown in hand! Holy smokes, it must be Christmas! I cast a couple more times, and I hook another brown, about 10 inches! I make a few more casts, and I can feel little strikes, like a bream tugging on the tail in a bass pond. I run up to the truck and tell my buddy to grab his flyrod and rig her up, they're biting!
He hastily rigs up (I said that we were new to the sport, and we have often been skunked.), with a San Juan worm and a soft hackle pheasant tail nymph, and he pulls in a nice 12 inch rainbow within five minutes. Alas, we couldn't wade, and casting angles on the bank were limited, so we decided to head to Upper Creek above Morganton, where the water is much smaller. We vowed to return sometime when the turbines weren't generating.
On Upper Creek, he was skunked, but I pulled a 7 inch Rainbow out early on a red Copper John #18 (my first trout nymphing, and no strike indicator! Catching fifteen feet away, where I can see the leader, doesn't hurt! The old eyes ain't what they used to be!) A little later, an 11 inch rainbow came to hand on an olive Matuke #8. (A good fly for streamer fishing NC waters. Have caught quite a few on them lately!)
We have really been blessed so far this winter in NC with unseasonably warm temps! The trout are loving it!
Two firsts- My first trout on a nymph, and my first trout on a bass worm! I'll never forget the day!