Fishing in or near Bryson, City NC

[FLYFSN]

I will be spending a couple of days this summer in Bryson City. I would like to fish while I am there. What streams would you recommend? Any information concerning fishing in this area will be appreciated.

[Hugh Hartsell]

FLYFSN,
You are going to be right beside Deep Creek and it is a good one. Try it, and possibly Noland Creek. If you want to venture out some and do some hiking or back country trips they will be on all sides of you. Good luck.
Hugh

[Art Vandalay]

In Bryson City you can hit Deep, Noland and Forney creek. If you drive a bit you've got Bradley and Straight fork in Cherokee. There's the new trophy section of Raven in Cherokee as well.

There's opinions both ways, but I have hooked nice fish just above the Deep creek campground with tubers everywhere. Not so quiet, but worth a few hours.

[old tom]

FLYFSN - Give me little more information. Are you going to be able to fish all day? Or just a few hours a day. Do you mind a 30 to 45 minute drive from town? You looking to jump out of the truck and fish? Or do you want to hike a ways first. Small stream or medium size stream? If you want to harass some of our brookies, I'll need an email address.

[FLYFSN]

Thanks guys for the information. After doing some search on this board, I think I have decided to fish Deep Creek the first day and maybe the next day try to catch a few brook trout.

Old Tom, my e-mail address is cuttandrun@hotmail.com. Any information on where to fish for brookies would be helpful.

FLYFSN

[old tom]

In the summer Deep Creek has a big tuber hatch for the first 7/10 of a mile upstream from the trailhead. It's hard to beat the crowd, especially on weekends. I've been out at 7am and they are out already. Same goes for late in the day too. As Art said, fish are catchable around the tubers, but it's not a pleasant experience. Due to the low water the last couple of years, they have moved rocks around in the creek to create runs for the tubes. This has disturbed a lot of the creek bottom and eliminated many nice holding spots for trout.

Take an easy stroll up past the confluence with Indian Creek (the tuber put-in) before you get into the water. The creek stays right by the trail.

It's continues to be an easy hike up to what's known as the turnaround, about 2 miles upstream, if you want even more privacy. It's a very obvious spot where the main trail takes off to the right up and over a finger ridge. You can get in the water there and fish around that ridge with nice exit spots before and at the first campsite. Depending on how fast you fish, 2 to 4 hours of solitude.

[ZachMatthews]

If you're going for brook trout on the second day, do not make the mistake of trying to hike up Deep Creek Trail to find them. It's a long way to brookies. Better to go around to the top and drop off the crest of the ridge just before the Clingman's Dome turnoff and pick up Deep Creek Trail from the top. We hiked that last October when we had a group in that area. It's around a mile and half downhill to the first substantial wet spot. If you hike on down another quarter mile and then fish back to the spot where the creek gets too skinny, you'll catch nothing but brookies. The only downside is that the hike back out is all uphill. However, this area is rarely fished, as opposed to say Road Prong, which has easier access but lots of traffic.

Do watch out for bears. We found a shredded *rolling duffel* bag stashed way back up under a rhododendron bush in some very thick cover.

Zach