Forney Creek???

[mtnman2888]

Hello, was wondering if anyone here has had any experience with forney creek? As backpacking season gears up (first trips is in about a month to deep creek!), i am looking forward to a may trip to forney at campsite 70. Unfortunately, i have never been there and don't really know what to expect other than what i have read out of books. Information on this creek is hard to come by, especially the part of the river we are staying at, due to the long hike required. Also, i remember reading somewhere that the upper part of this wathershed was one of the few in the park that was spared from the logging, has anyone been up there? This makes me believe that it would make for a prime brook trout trip in the summer and one that my camping partner and i have talked about going on. Thanks for the help and hopefully someone has been up there. I will definitely post a report on this trip and all others when i return.

Craig

[PeteCz]

Craig, according to Don Kirk's Book, Forney and Hazel creeks were the most heavily devastated by logging operations on the Fontana side of the park, with Forney being the worst. Noland, Eagle and Deep Creek were mostly spared with only selective cutting. He also said that most of Noland's headwaters were virgin stands of timber. Deep creek may have had the least amount of logging activity of the 5 streams over there.

Of course, Hazel and Forney have rebounded quite well, so I wouldn't use logging in the early 1900's as a deterrent...just don't expect to see 400 year old trees...

I would like to know what others with experience on Forney have to say, it is an intriguing stream...

[mtnman2888]

I thought that i read somewhere that the upper reaches weren't cut, but of course i could be wrong as i tend to be alot of the time (just ask my gf!). I would definitely not use it as a deterrent as i'm pretty sure that we are going to make a trip down from the dome for the upper parts, but just curious. I guess i could have been thinking about noland, oh well.

Yeah it seems to be hard to run across people that have much experience fishing forney, especially in the mid to upper stretches of river. It doesn't have a great reputation compared to other streams in that area so i guess that spares it alot of pressure.

Craig

[gmreeves]

I fished the upper parts of Forney creek maybe 10 years ago. We hiked down from the dome to I beleive camp site #69 and then down to #70 and back out. Around #69 was beautiful and we caught a ton of brookies. This was actually my first fishing trip in the park and first time for wild fish having only caught some stockers in a local creek in Alabama. It was quite a trip. Further down at #70, I think we caught rainbows and a couple brookies. Later, about three years, I went back to the same spots and caught 0 brook trout and rainbows. I was very upset to see that the brookies were gone and the rainbows had moved up. I'm not sure what it is like now but the scenerey was great and the fishing still good, just no brook trout.

[PeteCz]

Craig, are you really coming down to CS#70 from CD? Why?

Its 8.5 miles down (and then up), when you can come in from the bottom with much less elevation and its only 6.2 miles...

Now if you were fishing at #68 or even #69, then I could see it, but geeeeesh that seems like more work, to just go to #70...

Also, I updated the fish camps file with a few extra alternate routes, base on your tendency to hike things the hard way....
http://webpages.charter.net/petecz/Fishing.html

gmreeves, If you came in from above, I hope you meant #68 and #69 (see my note above to Craig). The lower of those two (#69) is at 2800' elevation so it wouldn't be a pure brookie stretch, but #68 is at 3960' and should be full of brookies. Hopefully it was at #69 that you didn't find as many brookies...thanks for the info, very few folks ever seem to comment about Forney...especially the upper parts...

[mtnman2888]

Sorry i guess i misstated what i was doing. During our first trip in may, we are coming in from the road to nowhere to campsite 70. Later on, when we presumably do our brookie trip to campsite 68, we are coming down from the dome and i believe it is a considerably shorter hike.

I hope that there is not much fishing pressure and i am quite surprised that you ran into that many people up there, gmreeves. It is also weird that you didn't catch any brook trout your second time through. I am still looking forward to this trip as well as the one to campsite 70.

Craig