I made my 1st solo fly fishing trip for trout. This was only my 4th trip, I have always had Jack with me in the past and Warren and Jack the last time, so I was a little nervous, but excited too.
I got to go fishing below the dam at Unicoi state park, in Ga on Sunday and again on Tuesday. I wanted to go Monday but it rained all day
Sunday: I talked to a game warden who pointed me toward a beaver dam about a 1/2 mile below the dam on Smith Creek. When I got there, there was already a guy fly fishing and the pool wasn't big enough for the 2 of us so I just stayed up stream until he finished. He was standing on a big rock toward the end of the pool, he told me he could see plenty of trout but couldn't get any bites. I got to the lower end of the pool and decided that standing on top of the rock might give you a good view, but if you could see the trout, they can probably see you too. So, I stood behind the rock and went to work. I tried a number of different flies. I had talked to the guys at Unicoi Outfitters in Helen, GA that said that they were hitting small soft hackle flies and small stonefly nymphs.
I tried a little of everything with 3 trout to show for it. One was only the size of a minnow, but it had a pink stripe down it. Surely they stock them larger than that, so I assume it was bred there in the creek by stocked trout. Which makes it my first "wild" trout, if that counts for a "wild" trout. I took pictures, but trying to hold my rod, camera and fish was a bigger challenge than I thought, so I am sorry for the poor camera angles.
I caught another fish, but couldn't really ID it. It sort of favored a bluegill, but it didn't have the blue on the gill. The pic of it is terrible, but I'd like to know what it was, I caught it on a wooly bugger that I tied. It is the first fish I caught on a flie that I tied.
Tuesday: Success!! I went back to the same hole above the beaver dam. Again I had to wait while 2 guys finished fishing the hole. They were fisghing with conventional poles from the bank. They had trout spooked everywhere. I went back to the same spot and stood on the other side of the big rock and waited a few minutes to let the trout settle down. I could see them moving around in the water, but after a few minutes the stacked up in the stream and seemed to be ok. I went to work with a small stonefly nymph, I'm not sure of the size. I caught one almost immediately, then nothing. I could see them moving, but I couldn't catch anything. I even tried a strike indicator but it made casting harder and it seemed to spook the trout. I took it off and went to really concentrating on the end of my fly line. At the smallest of twitches I'd set the hook. Mostly I got nothing, but then sometimes I got a nize sized rainbow. Soon, I had caught 5 bows with that little nymph. One even jumped 15ft into the air while I had him on the line. Well, maybe more like a foot and a half.
Long story short I had a wonderful time. Sorry for such a long post, but we got back home last night and I couldn't wait to tell you guys.
thanks for reading such a long post,
hNt
PS None of this would have been possible without this site and the members that make up FAOL. I would have given up along time ago on fly fishing, instead I am now hooked. (pun intended)
"If we lie to the government, it's called a felony, when they lie to us, it's called politics." Bill Murray