My backpacking compadre, Don, and I headed to the Smokies, Deep Creek area, for Memorial Day weekend. It was also my first attempt at tenkara fishing - I've fished most of my life, but very little trout or fly fishing, so I'm pretty much somewhere south of a novice. With Alberto brewing in the Gulf, we had a lot of weather-related anxiety but decided to shove off, anyway, surmising that laying in our hammocks in the rain would be better than laying in the house in the rain.
Bryson City, NC is the jumping off point for Deep Creek, where we arrived a little before noon on Saturday. It was rainy in the morning, but beautiful when we reached BC, so we had a pre-hike burger and beer and popped in to Tuckasegee Fly Shop for some recommendations on flies.
The trailhead is just minutes from downtown BC and a super popular spot for tubing. Tubers are allowed to go ~0.1 mile up the Deep Creek Trail to the confluence w/Indian Creek and can potentially tube down almost to BC.
Late spring plus abundant rainfall made for a lush and verdant hike up the Deep Creek Trail, quickly leaving the tubers behind and encountering the odd trout fisherman. The Deep Creek Trail is graded pretty well in this stretch with the only significant climbs being between backcountry campsites as bluffs rise around the creek.
We stopped for a short break at Site #60 which is maybe 3 miles in and would be perfect for taking kids or first-timers for an overnighter. It is a large site right next to the creek with ample opportunities for fishing or general creek recreation. We continued another 3 miles or so to Site #59 where we setup for the night, still enjoying nice weather.
Having established camp, as well as a cup of wine, I decided to make my first tenkara cast ever. In fact, it was the first time I had tied a fly on the rod since I bought it months ago. The creek access for Site #59 is superb, and I found a few nice eddies right across from our campsite.
Within about 5 minutes of casting, I had hooked and landed my first trout, a small native brown trout. I then proceeded to lose 3 more from the same eddy. Working upstream through the creek, as there is no bank trail, I managed to lose another trout. Not bad for ~1hr of fishing, I felt.
That evening we were visited by a deer in camp, totally unafraid of humans, and then came rains of biblical proportions. We managed to stay dry and were happy to be off the ground. It made for superb sleeping conditions, and I got almost 11 hours as opposed to my normal 6. By morning, the sun was back and we were looking at another beautiful day on the creek. I managed to land one more small brown in about 30 minutes of fishing.
The order of the day was hiking up to Sites #58 and then #57, and taking the Martins Gap Trail through the gap and over to the Indian Creek watershed. It was a pretty good climb of ~1,000', but I drafted Don and the downhill side was welcome. This was a great hike to admire the biodiversity of the Smokies and the various micro-climates induced by changed in elevation.
Reaching Site #46 on Indian Creek we found swarming yellowjackets who, fortunately, weren't interested in biting us, but were supremely annoying. At one point I had ~20 in my tarp, but they did not seem interested in my hammock or bug net. They might have been immune to permethrin, as well. Indian Creek was a little small to fish at these headwaters, so we had a margarita happy hour and turned in early for another long night of slumber.
We rose early in the morning to try to avoid the yellowjackets and meandered back down to the trailhead which was a very short 4.5 miles of easy downhill grade with limited fishing opportunities (for me, anyway). Reaching the trailhead we took a dip in the creek, wiped off with athletic wipes, and headed back to BC to share our luck with Tuckasegee Fly Shop. We got a recommendation for Innovation Brewing and their food truck in Sylva to hit on our way home, which turned out to be another great recommendation for burgers and beer and allowed us to end the trip the way we started it:
The tenkara fishing really got me hooked, so I'm already plotting my next combo trip.
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Originally Posted by TrailSlug
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