About Me

My Photo
Tyler Legg
Charlotte, NC, United States
View my complete profile
Welcome to THFF.com! Kick your wading boots off and stick around for a while. You'll find content ranging from NC fishing reports, videos, pictures, fly fishing news from around the state/country/world, humor, and even some irrelevant, yet interesting posts.
Have a question, comment, fishing report, or a few suggestions regarding THFF or fly fishing in NC? Feel free to e-mail me at wncflyfishing@gmail.com
Powered by Blogger.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
1.)t has been a fairly busy day for me. I got up at 6 AM, packed all of the gear in the car and headed to the Hiwassee. I got there at about 6:30 AM and fished at Reliance. The smallies obviously aren't up at the crack of dawn. At approximately 8:45, I left Reliance behind and took Powerhouse Road to Appalachia Dam to experiment with some of my latest fly creations. The trout were definitely spread out, as I couldn't locate their particular lies. I worked over a deep run about 200 ft downstream from the powerhouse, where the REAL cold water keep the trout very happy. No #26 midge dries here; more dredging large #6 Black Stones on the bottom. As for hatches, I noticed a few small BWO's and I caught a brief glimpse of a large brown mayfly. If you're a fly fisherman, you know the only large (#8-10), brown mayflies that hatch in late June and last through the Summer is the famed Isonychias. This is, in a way, equivalent to the western Salmonflies, which should be hatching (or hatched) on most MT rivers right now. Salmonflies are big, sought after, and on the trout's mind when they are abundant. Same goes for the "eastern equivalent"... I eventually left once the sun was well over the tree tops, and the temps start getting hot. Also, TVA started to generate at 11AM. The sirens went off and I quickly stumbled out of the soon-to-be raging river. I had somewhere to be at 1:00 (read #2 below... Believe me, it's worth it.) All and all, a good trip for exploring and testing some flies. There's an old saying A.K. Best invented..."The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad"... I stand as an example today for this famed saying...

This was not a dream!... just keep that in mind!!..
2.) On with the craziest part of the day. I'm volunteering throughout the Summer (on the days I'm able to) with the Hiwassee Scenic Rail Adventure, which is well worth the trip due to the scenery, people, and the time spent in Copperhill, TN, Ducktown, TN and McCaysville, GA. The HSRA offers several packages, but the two I'm volunteering on include the 6 1/2 hour roundtrip ride from Etowah, TN to Copperhill, TN. Today we helped out on the shortest of the available packages: A roundtrip time of about 4 hours. This includes riding down to "The Loop", where the train passes under a large trestle, or wooden railroad bridge and eventually traveling on the large trestle. The spiraling trestle and tracks were constructed to create an easy route around Bald Mountain. Once we came to a stop a few miles past the trestle, the L&N diesel locomotive uncoupled and switched to the back of the 1947 passenger cars. Then the trip back to Etowah began at about 2:45. This is when the choas (under control though) happened. About 45 minutes to an hour into the trip back, the engineer suddenly slowed the train to a stop. We all thought they were just replacing an antiquated filter that is required to be fixed in order for the train to continue on. I jumped off the train to see what happened. I had the growing feeling that it was a tree that had fallen on the tracks. It was a tree alright....A 4-5 ton Red Oak Tree to be exact. Apparently, the recent rain had loosened up the soil that surrounded the century old tree enough to the point that the tree could not support the weight. The Engineer called the L&N Depot (Louisville & Nashville Railroad) and requested for some help. After we hooked a heavy duty chain between the tree and the locomotive, the engineer slowly backed the train back and forth a few times, while attempting to push the large tree off of the tracks. I watched as the tree didn't move enough to actually clear the railway. After 2 hours of cutting the tree into sections with battery powered chainsaws, the stubborn tree finally cleared the tracks and we continued on. A 5 ton tree rendering HSRA or any other train from passing is pretty rare. Usually a small branch or limb on the tracks is fairly common. No delay here, as somebody jumps off of the train and tosses the limb out into the woods. It was a little different today...

0 comments:

THFF Readers

Stocking Schedule Changes!

Make sure you check out the new stocking schedule provided by the NCWRC!

Notifications via email

Get the low down via email!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Fishing Blogs - Blog Catalog Blog Directory
Sports blogs & blog posts
Add to Technorati Favorites