Wilson Creek NC
Fished Wilson Creek Monday morning and early afternoon. My thought was that I could head up that way to beat the heat and get some outdoors time. Only beat the heat for a little while though. When I made it up to the creek around quarter to nine and it was a perfect 65 degrees! By the time I left around three pm it was in the upper 80's. I think everybody and their brother, sister, aunt, uncle and cousin hand the same idea about beating the heat. The lower section of the river was packed with people and I now understand why the road is called Brown Mountain Beach.... I felt like was back home at the shores of Lake Michigan.
The water was crystal clear and a little bit on the low side compared to my winter outings up there. Sighted plenty of fish which means they probably sighted me too. This would probably explain to some extent my lack of catching too many of them. Fly fished all day with mostly streamers. Fished a foam hopper and a spun deer hair popper for a bit with no lookers. Caught three fish, two red breasted sunfish and one brook trout. The trout was taken on a orange bucktail streamer being dead drifted and the sunfish on a black wooly bugger. After catching one of the sunfish I had a torpedo of a brown come cruising in to see what was going on. The fish had to be well over 20 inches. Lots of baby smallmouth bass were spotted but I couldn't get them to take anything I was throwing at them.
Brook Trout
Red Breasted Sunfish
The tiger swallowtail butterflies were really thick. By the stream were mostly the yellow color forms which can be male or female. Away from the road were more of the black color form which are always female. At one point I found a group of 20+ yellows feeding or puddling on something on the other side of the stream. I crossed the river to check it out and maybe make a video only to find out they were puddling on a diaper. I couldn't bring myself to take a picture or a video at that point. Here is a picture of one feeding on a busted up watermelon near the creek.
Lastly, there were quite a few different wildflowers. I think these were some type of phlox.
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