Click and go to Thom’s website. Famous watercolorist Thom Glace’s “Study of a Brown Trout” (Salmo trutta). Part of the artwork for the 2014 Virginia Fly Fishing Festival. Prints Available.
Are your trout through partying, sexting and packing it in for the season? Head South, the party is just getting underway in Dixie.
The rivers, streams, and creeks are heavy with trout pescadoes. The South boasts big browns and rainbows – both wild and stocked (Delayed Harvest), and brookies are all over the map. And other offerings will most likely visit your hooks, bass (several species), and carp… don’t turn your nose up. A 20-pounder will test every skill you own on a 5X.
Trout live in nice places
Click and go to Thom’s website. Famous watercolorist Thom Glace’s “Study of a Rainbow Trout II” (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Original donated to the Virgina Fly Fishing Festival Auction. Prints Available.
The scenery in the Appalachian’s is spectacular, uncommonly thick-forested with deep valleys, drop off gorges and the rounded mountains have carved out, switch-back roads with beautiful stop and gawk vistas. Game and birds of prey keeping an eye on you all the way.
The Appalachian waters are swift to slow, deep to shallow, wide to narrow, wadable to skiff warranted, and there are tailwaters and waterfalls, and lakes and ponds.
The trout here in the South are gracious about being caught; it’s expected it is said. Of course, they expect to be politely treated as well – released unharmed.
The best of it
The guides in the Appalachians are extremely competent and almost always booked via a fly shop. Some have national reputations like Chuck Kraft and Beau Beasley – both Virginians, Chad Bryson (Alaska and Georgia), and Wanda Taylor from Georgia, to name just a few.
In the summer and fall seasons, the Appalachians are extremely popular with nearby southerners, U. S. vacationers and travelers from around the world. That popularity is reflected in accommodation pricing, and the number river canoeists, kayakers, and tubers on the bigger Corps of Engineers flow managed (dams) rivers.
By late fall, the vendors that rent canoes, kayaks and tubes are gone and so are their customers. Decreased tourist traffic shutters some seasonal gift shops which lower the traffic clog. Accommodations get reasonable and frayed nerve hoteliers are happy to see childless anglers. The best eateries are without lines, and the wait staff is the old guard, and unrushed – food is served both hot and timely.
Chattahoochee Media. Although Steve’s book concentrates on Georgia, a smart angler would opt for this $10 book. The fly pattern tips and tactics to employ fly fishing any of the South’s Appalachians states are in Steve’s book. The information travels well.
Of the 4,000 miles of trout streams in Georgia, for example, you’d be more likely to see Sasquatch playing the piano than any tubers floating by on the best trout waters
The following links have all the information you will need to fly fish each state: license requirements, catch limits, hardware allowed, maps and directions, phone numbers, delayed harvest, release dates, species, dozens of links and much more.
Georgia I North Carolina I South Carolina I Tennessee I Virginia I West Virginia
NOTE: Featured Image a happy fly fisher with a nice Delayed Harvest Chestatee River, Georgia trout. Photo credit chestateeflyfishing.com/blog.
