[ColdOnTheShoulder]

Thursday I took a day for mental sanity and did some fishing. Spent a couple hours on a local smallie crick and then decided I should head for the hills. Drove up to the east slope to conduct my own studies on the God-awful invasive species.

Water is low up there







Got into some little optimistic browns pretty quickly







Saw a big brown feeding out in the open. I placed an ant about two feet in front of him and this guy shot of out of the plunge ant nailed it, spooking the bigger fish. Still my best of the day from there.



Finished up pulling this little guy



from the tree on the right



With six or so browns and a couple brookies under my belt, I decided to head up to Skyline to check out the water up there.



Hiking down I stopped at the first crossing and found a couple. The water was holding better in the headwaters.





Sorry for the blurry pic, that's where my camera dies. I ended up hiking about 2 miles down and catching tons of rising brookies, including my personal best brookie for that stream.

I hiked out as daylight faded from the hollow and headed south along Skyline. At the first unoccupied overlook, I pulled over and watched the sun set over Appalachia from my favorite place in the world.

[FlyTiger]

Looks like a great day on the water, you can't beat a day of catching browns and brookies.

[MrFishingToughGuy]

christ do we need rain.

[NCCY]

Good lookin' browns.

[rockroller]

Great report.

I haven't been in the Park since ... well, I can't even remember.

That water looks scary low.

[pelcrk]

was up there Friday with two others and fished a stream in the southern section and one in the middle section . the water was low,especially on the southern creek. Caught a half dozen or so,all on ants. still, a great place to be on a summer day.Sorry, no pics,my new waterproof is being shipped as I type. I'll have to go next week to break in the camera.
Best,
Steve

[Spinycrawler]

I hope you whacked those krouts, brought them home, and consumed them! A little ethnic cleansing in the SNP is a good thing. Regards, Stephen

[ColdOnTheShoulder]

I hiked my favorite west slope crick today and it was a depressing site. A lot of the stream was underground and the few pools still there had the fish stacked up. It's amazing fish can still survive in some of those streams.

I don't eat wild trout. The NPS does enough in eradicating wild trout. There is one stream in the SNP (partially) with a significant population of non-native trout left after this past year's big shocking effort and I like it the way it is.

[22midge]

and some people get paid to teach others.................

[OldDominionAngler]

I hope you ate all those damn brookies too! Reintroduced SOBs...