Last Weekend

[craiglowe]

My two sons and I drove down from the Cincinnati area on Thursday morning timining our arrival at LRO just as they opened. Our original plans were to backpack and fish for the 4 days. With the weather in the area and a bonehead move by me (I had everything in my backpack except the important part of my tent) we modified those plans. We fished about a mile and a half above campsite 24 on Thursday. We landed quite a few fish - including a few brook trout. The boys wanted to try to get some pictures of the elk so on Friday we went for a little car ride. The GPS in my car took us on quite the adventure but eventually one of the boys spotted a small creek and said "let's fish there". We didn't know the name of the creek so we decide to call it Friday Creek. I have never posted photos before so if this works you will see the best fish of the trip - a nice brown that my youngest son landed right beside the road. That little creek turned out to be absolutely full of Brookies.
http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae102/cralowe/SmokyMountBrookies068.jpg
We now know the name of this little creek but out of respect for the resource we will still call it Friday Creek. If the photo posts work I will post more photos later. We were trying out our waterproof camera on this one.
http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae102/cralowe/SmokyMountBrookies111.jpg

On Saturday we hiked into upper deep creek and started fishing at campsite 53. We fished upstream for about 3 hours and caught 1 rainbow, 1 small brown and I lost count of the brookies.

After the easy fishing on Friday Creek the day before, the hike out of Deep Creek had me questioning my sanity a few times....but I survived. The brown trout in the photo was caught on a BHPT. Most of the rest of our fish were caught on Neversink Caddis. Before we left on this trip we decided that we wanted to catch some brook trout but never imagined that the overwhelming majority of our catch would end up being brookies. Thank again to the folks at LRO for loading us up with the right gear and knowledge to have a great trip.

[Mac]

Sounds like you had a great trip and I really like your underwater picture. Excellent.

[PeteCz]

the hike out of Deep Creek had me questioning my sanity a few times....but I survived. Craig, I'm not sure if you saw my post from 5-31-09, but if you did...I told you so...:biggrin:

Glad you had a great trip and that you recognize the difference between spots that need to keep their anonymity and those that can be named because they are a pain in the a$$ to get to...or in this case, get back out of...

Thanks for sharing. I really like that underwater shot as well. Did you count that one as an LDR?

[craiglowe]

PeteCz I did read your post. Thanks to you and the many other folks who post on this site, three rookie fly fishermen had a blast on our 2nd fly fishing trip ever. We use to be bass fishermen but these wild trout have us hooked. I think the underwater photo was after a release. Here are a couple more photos:
http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae102/cralowe/SmokyMountBrookies054.jpg
http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae102/cralowe/SmokyMountBrookies050.jpg



http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae102/cralowe/SmokyMountBrookies052.jpg

http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae102/cralowe/SmokyMountBrookies081.jpg

[flyguys]

I know what you mean! My son and I bass fish and love it, but after a few trout fishing trips into the mountain streams the bass just might get pushed to the back burner!:rolleyes:

[Grannyknot]

What time did you and your boys get out there Craig? Myself and another forum member were around 53 on saturday also...suprised we didn't see you.

[craiglowe]

We made it to 53 about noon Saturday and started the walk out around 4. We saw two trail runners go by and that's it.

[Grannyknot]

We saw those same trail runners, but we got on the stream around 9am and left around 3:00.

We actually ended up hiking further down towards 54 before getting in the water.

[PeteCz]

We saw those same trail runners, but we got on the stream around 9am and left around 3:00.

We actually ended up hiking further down towards 54 before getting in the water.

How long was the hike down to 54 and was the fishing better between 54 and 53 or above 53? In other words, was it worth the extra hike?

[Grannyknot]

How long was the hike down to 54 and was the fishing better between 54 and 53 or above 53? In other words, was it worth the extra hike?

We didn't go all the way to 54, but we made it about half way between 53 and 54 in an hour and a half. We caught lots of fish before noon, but they were mostly rainbows. We didn't get into the brook trout until we got closer to 53. I had no previous experience up there, but Grouseman seemed to think we didn't do as well as we should have.