Fly Fishing North Carolina and Virginia for Brook Trout, Brown Trout, and Rainbow Trout!
The southern range of the Appalachians has been one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited. It’s just a slightly more extreme version of the mountains I call home, with peaks towering well over 6000 feet in elevation. The water flowing through these deep hollows and ravines is cold, incredibly clear, and holds an abundance of wild trout. It’s been over a year since I last fished North Carolina, or anywhere in the southeast for that matter. So when I saw a 3 day weekend on the horizon I messaged my buddy Micah and asked if he’d be interested in doing a little back country camping trip… and before I knew it we were pulling into the parking lot, packing our backpacks, and hiking into the mountains.
Southern Appalachia has some of the most impressive waterfalls I’ve seen on the east coast. So one of our goals for the day was to make it up to a set of falls that I had marked on my map. We ended up making it to several sets of waterfalls, all of them impressive in their own right.
One of the best parts of camping is the serenity of waking up hearing the wind whistling through the trees, and creek flowing over the rocks. Having no cell service is always a blessing and enables you to get away from the fast pace of the world we live in today. Spending this long weekend in the mountains is good for the soul.
We ended up catching 3 species of wild trout. We caught a native brook trout, a wild rainbow trout, and a wild brown trout. All on the fly and all caught in the Appalachian mountains of the southeaster United States. Fly Fishing in the Southeastern United States is always a treat.
I think after watching this video you’d probably come to a similar opinion as I did after finishing this trip. And that was that the fishing wasn’t the greatest… but getting away for a weekend and spending it in the mountains of southern Appalachia is good for the soul. Of course we didn’t catch anything large, and I could use a dozen different excuses like low water, spawn, or the fact that we were fishing during the first major cold front of the year. But even in perfect conditions the fish don’t always cooperate. So I think it’s important to be able to have fun regardless of how the fishing goes and to enjoy your time in the mountains. I truly hope you enjoyed this video, and if you’d like to see more like it let me know down in the comments. And as always, thanks for watching.
