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Tyler Legg
Charlotte, NC, United States
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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.
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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Today is the last day of winter, tomorrow, at 7:21 PM, the first day of spring.  To celebrate, I packed the gear into the truck and high tailed it to the mountains. Initially, brookies were the planned target. One of my favorite WNC bluelines, which sits at about 4,500-5,000 ft, is slowly returning to spring. I decided to stay in the lower elevations and give the higher elevation wild streams time to rejuvenate. The brookies have had a long and harsh winter, but most of the time they're masters at surviving them.

Stone Mountain was the destination. I was greeted to a deserted parking area on the East Prong, which told me the pressure has likely been somewhat minimal. Maybe everyone's at home watching the Madness (Go UNC!). The water was slightly higher than normal, but nothing substantial at all. You have to be familiar with the river to conclude that it's slightly above normal flows. It was clear as well. Fish were refusing flies on 5x, but took the same fly when I switched to 6x. Those fish being several browns. No rainbows, no brookies. The state has stocked much higher numbers of browns. They've also stocked much larger fish in some waters. Some of the trout that were stocked in Wilson Creek are in the upper 20's and even 30" range according to some credible reports. That is substantial. Even on the behemoth laden Davidson. I didn't see any fish that pushed 12" today though. The fish are spread out big time as a result of the heavy rain. Some pools contain a decent amount of fish, some don't. Fish that haven't spread out, will soon learn that they're no longer contained in concrete raceways.

In addition to some decent fishing, the hatches were in full force today. Especially the Little Black Stones, which I'll probably find in my hair, in my shirt, and in the fly pack. They were relentless. The Blue Quills were hatching by late morning and then the Quill Gordons hatched after noon. Right now, the QG's are the big dogs. You can't miss them. They're like B-52 Bombers. #12 mayflies fluttering around like drunken bats. Funny to watch!

Without further ado, here's some pictures of the trip:

Finally had the opportunity to test the new 2wt out.



Widow's Creek Falls



Who else took advantage of this picture perfect Saturday?

4 comments:

Mark said...

I just tried out the same 2 wt today myself. I ended up trying the high elevation brookies and the fishing was pretty good. You're right about the stones. They were on my shirt, pants, in my hair, etc...

Tyler Legg said...

It's a good one eh? No sense in buying a $600 2wt! Not planning on doing much casting with it.

Mark said...

I enjoyed mine. I actually haven't put my 2 wt line on a reel yet, so I was using it with 0 wt line but it cast really well.

Tyler Legg said...

Yeah, the TQR casts relatively well for a 2wt. Perfect for dries and 7" brookies!

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