Help please. *Will be there Friday.

[zoot]

Yikes! *Another Floridian about to invade the Volunteer State. *Nice game against Cal by the way. *I will arrive in Townsend on Friday the 8th to backpack / fish for 7 or 8 days. *I’ve been keeping up with all posts (primarily the one started by emp912) the last 2 weeks and that has given me good ideas for where to go. *What I thought I would do is hike to back country campsite and fish that area for a couple days. *Then back to the car and drive to next hike / camp area and do the same. After looking at maps I was surprised how few backcountry campsites there are where the trails actually follow the streams to be fished. I was going to hike to and camp at Elkmont and fish the Little River a couple of days or more. *Then hike up to campsite #24 and fish that area a couple of days. *Then back to car and drive over to the West Prong and camp at #18 and *fish there a couple of days. *I’ve never been to the Park and fished there before. I have fly fished before, mostly out west with all the room in the world to cast.

Does this sound like a viable plan? *

Any better suggestions on how and where to drive / hike / camp / *fish?

Should I spread my horizons and try to fish much more areas of the Park?

If I’m not having much luck with the fish in an area after throwing all I got at em all day should I stick it out the next day or drive or hike to a different area?

Most important question. *Can I leave my tent with backpack in it all zipped up and take off all day to fish with a good probability it will be there when I get back?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.


Go Gators! *(Just joking guys)

Michael

[slickrock]

Hey zoot !

The only way to recieve info. from this web. site is to be a die-hard Vol fan!



just kidding!

Sounds like a pretty good trip. Hope you're in better shape than I am in. Seems like you are going to cover a lot ofground. Seriously I would check about the camps being closed , afterall this is peak bear activity in the park.
The bears are stocking up for their long winter's nap

A day spent in ole Smokey is never wasted !

slickrock

[RFowler]

Zoot,
Two other streams you should look into are Deep Creek and Hazel. They're on the NC side. If I were you I would try to cover more water instead of sticking to one particular area for a few days. Unless the fishing is good and you're really enjoying it, of course.

[loomiscane]

If you are used to bigger western waters you may be in for a lil suprise in the park. For the most part forget about propper overhead flycasting,lol. Think lots of roll casting and side arm. Its easy if you are new here to get attractedto the the bigger water, many of witch look to be great trout water, but this time of year you will likely do better up higher where the creeks look tiny. Just looking at some of the small cricks you may at first think , no way anything worth catchin will be in there, but they is!
Look out for the yella jackets that live in the ground here, they are bad this year.I spent most of last week in bed after trying to rescue my 8 year old from them in the mountains while fishing. I was stung close to 100 times, gets kinda rough on the ol heart. If my boy ,also stung a good many times, hadnt been able to walk back the 2 1/2 miles to get my wife and a bottle of nitro for me, im not real sure i would have lived.If you are alergic to insect stings, it could be much worse. Just one more lil thing to keep in mind that some never think about. It sounds like you like hikeing, you may enjoy fishing the loop at Abram's. Stop in the fly shop and talk to the guys n gals, they are great and lots of help. LRO, is also one of the best stocked flyshops i have been into anywhere.