NATURE Fishing in North Carolina

EYE-CATCHING CATCH The brook trout boasts green flanks, crimson spots, beautifully coloured fins.

Land of the free


John Shelley visits Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee

John Shelley

One thing can be said of the journey from New York to North Carolina: It’s far. The less said about the Big Apple the better, although friends made the place more agreeable. Towering buildings, a tumult of traffic and streets teeming with people combined with an almost total lack of bird and animal life (we did see house sparrows and pigeons squabbling for scraps, an occasional gull aloft about the Brooklyn Bridge and a solitary rat scampering home along subway tracks) rendered the city so artificial that we were more than happy to leave it behind.
So, we took that long road, leaving early and arriving late to an orchestral welcome from an army of crickets and tree frogs.
In the morning, we woke to find ourselves in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and spent our day exploring our immediate surroundings. The diminutive Plott Creek tumbles past the home of our hosts, bouncing from pot to pot along its eager course. Dry weather has left it low and clear, narrow enough to stride across and, in parts, shallow enough to cross dry shod.
Today we enquired about our altitude and were surprised to learn that we were somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 feet above sea level. Plott Creek is born a good bit higher still. We traced it first on the map and then on Google Earth; on both occasions it was lost in the forest that surrounds us.
There was only one thing for it. We would follow the course of the stream to discover it properly. We set off, walking against the flow, armed with a fly rod and a small packet of preserved waxworms – the local trout are gourmet creatures, or so we were told. No humble earthworm or artificial fly for them! I thought there wold be no fish, or fingerlings at best, for it was hard to see how anything else could live in those tiny pots of water that bubble at the foot of each miniature cascade.
There was no room for casting; a half swing of the rod sent the tiny bait eight or ten feet, mostly into overhanging shrubbery but occasionally into those tiny flats and glides where our mountain trout lay in wait.
The first fish was a revelation, an astonishing creature with green flanks and crimson spots, and the most beautifully coloured fins bearing longitudinal stripes of red, black and white, crisp and neat as a new flag. It sparkled and glistened in my hand as a new-discovered living jewel, startling and slender. I took it to eat; brook trout, I had been told, are the best table fish of all.
We concentrated on catching a second, losing ourselves under towering birch and oak, real forest trees with tall, straight boles that bore few branches below forty feet or so. A crayfish took the bait and went into the bag. Our own freshwater cray are endangered and protected under Irish and European law. These, apparently, are abundant even in areas where they are regularly harvested.
A second, identical crayfish came to hand, waving its powerful claws in a most affronted manner. It went to join the first. When I wanted to show them off I found they had effected their escape. It was hard to understand how they did it. Now we must catch enough for dinner, to prove our reputation as Hunters and Gatherers.
They have proved elusive, although we have had more success with the trout. We have found no more brook trout. It is wild rainbow trout that have been taking the bait. These fish are so dissimilar to the hatchery bred rainbow trout that end up in our fish stalls it is hard to believe they are the same species. Yes, they have the same silver flank, the same black-spotted back and pink-striped sides, but there any imagined likeness ends. These wild fish are so exquisitely formed and vividly coloured that I felt true regret at adding each one to the creel and was glad at those small enough to slip back into the stream.
We ate our catch last night; never was a finer trout found. Now I sit in the early morning sunshine, on a swing-seat some ten feet above the creek, where fresh raccoon prints adorn a sandy backwater. A giant swallowtail butterfly flickers gold and green through sun and shade. Another, black with orange-spotted wings, feeds at the flowers of wild lilies. A large bee comes to join it. No! Not a bee at all, but a Ruby-throated hummingbird, darting from bloom to bloom, hovering at each to sip at nectar.
We went for an early walk, and found a hornet’s nest the size of a football, swinging free at the end of a vine. Over the coming days we have snakes to find, white tailed deer and elk, groundhog, chipmunk and ’coon to see.
I have a bite on my leg that itches like no bite at home ever did, a letter to write, and a near paradise to be explored. Next week we are to look for Black bears.