PeteCz
09-23-2007, 10:06 PM
Sdetoro59 and I decided to try a little hiking/fishing this weekend on the NC side of the park. We had planned to hike about 2.5-3 miles down into Deep Creek from Newfound Gap Rd, but ended up making really good time and wound up all the way down at campsite #53. It took us about 90 minutes with light packs and was a fairly easy hike.
CS#53 has seen a fair amount of abuse over the years and its looking pretty run down. A little less than 2 miles from the TH at Newfound Gap there is a single site close to the river. Does anyone know if this in an old "unmaintained" site or if it is an illegal site? It seemed pretty nice from the trail, but I had never seen it on a map.
We fished above the campsite for about 4 hours in pretty tight conditions. The water level was good and the water temp was a nice 61 degrees at 3pm. There were some nice fish. Much nicer than I would have expected for the size of the stream. Steve caught a nice brown that was pushing 12" in an area not much bigger than a half of a bathtub. We caught over 30 fish between us (he caught more and also caught most of the bigger fish). We spooked at least double that. One pool I counted 8 fish fleeing from me under rocks as I was climbing into position to cast. But both of us caught a Slam (our firsts in the Park), so we were generally happy with the effort. In the half mile above the campsite we caught 4 browns, about 8 brookies, and twenty-some rainbows. Most fish were caught on #16 EHC (yellows and olives).
I was surprised that we were catching browns at over 3000'. I have not seen any on the WPLP in the gorge or above, so I guess I assumed that they preferred to stay lower on slower, larger sections. Do browns usually run that far up into the streams of the park?
The fishing was quite hard and it was rare if we casted more than a dozen times without ending up in a tree, bush or stump. Unbelievably we didn't lose any flies. Several times on a first cast into a new pool we would end up in a bush/tree, but rather than disturb the fish, we broke off our flies and tied on a new one. Once we had fished out the run, we would go over and pluck the first fly out of the bush/tree we had it caught in and moved on. The stream was that small.
We stopped fishing at 3:30pm when we neared a spot that would allow easy passage back to the trail (about 3.5 miles from the TH). It took us about 90 minutes to hike back up to Newfound Gap Rd. The first 2.5 miles took about 45 minutes and the last mile took about 45 minutes. The last mile is a real doozy, even with light packs. Even though the fishing was good, I'm not sure I would hike in from that direction. Its brutal.
All-in-all a great, but exhausting day
CS#53 has seen a fair amount of abuse over the years and its looking pretty run down. A little less than 2 miles from the TH at Newfound Gap there is a single site close to the river. Does anyone know if this in an old "unmaintained" site or if it is an illegal site? It seemed pretty nice from the trail, but I had never seen it on a map.
We fished above the campsite for about 4 hours in pretty tight conditions. The water level was good and the water temp was a nice 61 degrees at 3pm. There were some nice fish. Much nicer than I would have expected for the size of the stream. Steve caught a nice brown that was pushing 12" in an area not much bigger than a half of a bathtub. We caught over 30 fish between us (he caught more and also caught most of the bigger fish). We spooked at least double that. One pool I counted 8 fish fleeing from me under rocks as I was climbing into position to cast. But both of us caught a Slam (our firsts in the Park), so we were generally happy with the effort. In the half mile above the campsite we caught 4 browns, about 8 brookies, and twenty-some rainbows. Most fish were caught on #16 EHC (yellows and olives).
I was surprised that we were catching browns at over 3000'. I have not seen any on the WPLP in the gorge or above, so I guess I assumed that they preferred to stay lower on slower, larger sections. Do browns usually run that far up into the streams of the park?
The fishing was quite hard and it was rare if we casted more than a dozen times without ending up in a tree, bush or stump. Unbelievably we didn't lose any flies. Several times on a first cast into a new pool we would end up in a bush/tree, but rather than disturb the fish, we broke off our flies and tied on a new one. Once we had fished out the run, we would go over and pluck the first fly out of the bush/tree we had it caught in and moved on. The stream was that small.
We stopped fishing at 3:30pm when we neared a spot that would allow easy passage back to the trail (about 3.5 miles from the TH). It took us about 90 minutes to hike back up to Newfound Gap Rd. The first 2.5 miles took about 45 minutes and the last mile took about 45 minutes. The last mile is a real doozy, even with light packs. Even though the fishing was good, I'm not sure I would hike in from that direction. Its brutal.
All-in-all a great, but exhausting day