Photo by Kurt Finlayson

By Dan Kibler

I parked in the turnout by the old wooden building, crossed the dirt road, found the trail next to the creek and headed up the mountain, bouncing a whitetail doe about 10 minutes into the walk. Thirty minutes and a half-mile of stream later, I was breathing heavily when I strung my little 5-weight fly rod, tied on a tiny dry fly and stepped into the stream, the water barely covering the tops of my waders' shoe tops.

I caught a 12-inch brown trout in first pool, an elbow of water where the stream made a 90-degree turn around a huge boulder and headed south, down the mountain. From there up, there was a tiny wild brook trout in just about every pool, all of them willing to dart out from behind a rock and make a snack of whatever I could put in front of them with a good drift.

All of the fish went back where they were caught for the next guy who would know enough to recognize that there is good trout water in areas besides the extreme western mountains.

When I made the first cast, I was a little over a 90-minute drive from Charlotte. An hour from Winston-Salem. Ninety minutes from Greensboro and High Point. About 2 1/2 hours from Durham and three hours from Raleigh.

That's how close the trout streams of northwest North Carolina are from the state's largest metropolitan areas. There are dozens of streams included in the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission's trout program in District 7, which covers 11 counties in the northwestern corner of the state. There is fishable trout water in about half of them, with most of the streams stocked with hatchery-raised fish, some of them holding fishable populations of wild trout, some a mixture of both.

"I've been guiding here for 18 years, and in the last seven or eight years, the fishing has been better than I've ever seen," said Theo Copeland, who books about 2,000 trout-fishing trips for the 14 guides associated with his Appalachian Angler shop in Boone. "We've got a lot of good streams up here."

The great majority of streams in a six-county area are hatchery supported and during the season open to any fisherman who can dig up a can or worms or open a can of corn. The region has a handful of the popular delayed-harvest streams that are heavily stocked but fish as catch-and-release only four months out of the year, and some fine wild-trout waters.

"The main issue between hatchery supported and wild-trout streams is nothing more than access," said biologist Kin Hodges from Dobson, who works the northwestern corner of the state for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. "A lot of the streams in this area are hatchery supported because so many wild-trout streams are on private land and posted. If we've got a good trout stream and there's good public access to it, it will primarily be a hatchery-supported stream, even if it holds some wild trout. A lot of it has to do with the history of the area and what the landowners want. If we were to take a lot of those streams out of the hatchery-supported program, we'd lose some of them."

Kevin Hining, an ardent trout fisherman who happens to be a biologist - and Hodges' assistant - said that the area is a mixture of streams where you might spend several hours working a half-mile stretch with a fly rod, plus smaller streams where you might hop from spot to spot in your vehicle, giving each little pool a dozen or so casts with an ultralight spinning rod.

"Several of our hatchery-supported streams contain really good populations of wild trout, and a lot of flyfishermen don't bother fishing them, because they don't know that they'll hold fish year 'round," Hining said.

Copeland said that trout fishermen who prefer fly-fishing should stick with March Brown or Hendrickson patterns if they're adamant about fishing dry flies in the spring. Nymphing is far and away the better way to get action in most northwestern trout streams, though.

"The most prevalent fly in most of the streams in North Carolina is a yellow stonefly, so you're talking about stuff that will match that - yellow and tan stonefly nymphs in sizes 12 to 14, Hare's Ear nymphs in 12 to 16, and Tellico nymphs in 12 to 16," said Copeland. "I fish underneath a lot more than on top, but you can take advantage of fishing on top."

Hining keeps it simple.

"I think you can catch fish on a caddis fly year 'round," he said, "but a Hare's Ear nymph is probably your best bet. I don't think you'll see many trout turning down a good meal, either an Elk Hair Caddis, a Stimulator pattern or a nymph. I think they're just hungry, and if you get a good float, you have a good opportunity. I probably fish a nymph with (a strike) indicator about 80 percent of the time."

He adds that if he is going to try to cover a lot of different areas, he'll take a spinning rod and an in-line spinner, and jump from hole to hole. The reason why most of the streams up here can be fly-fished, he says, is because some of them are too small to spin-fish easily.

In the northwestern corner of the state, with very few exceptions, streams are managed under one of three sets of regulations: hatchery supported, wild trout and delayed harvest.

In hatchery-supported streams, the daily creel limit is seven fish, and there is no size minimum. In wild-trout waters, the daily creel limit is four fish, with a 7-inch minimum size limit, and only single-hook, artificial lures are permitted. Some wild-trout waters are more restricted, including catch-and-release-only areas and fly-only areas. Delayed-harvest waters are managed under special regulations from each Oct. 1 until the first Saturday of June: single-hook, artificial-only fishing, no bait, and no harvesting or possession of trout. From the first Saturday of June through Sept. 30, they are managed under hatchery-supported regulations. Streams within Blue Ridge Parkway boundaries are managed as wild-trout waters, even if they're stocked outside those boundaries.

Obviously, anglers will want to make sure they know the regulations for both the stream and the time of year they are fishing.

County by county, here is a smorgasbord of trout waters that are worth the drive up I-77 or west on I-40 and Route 421, then north on routes 16, 18 and 21.

Hodges' favorite is Meadow Fork Creek, which runs adjacent to the Parkway for several miles west of Doughton Park.

"There is good access to some of the longer sections," Hodges said. "There are some areas where it runs across pastures; there's one site where there was a stream restoration project done several years ago."

Prathers Creek has some promise along its lower end, Hodges says, where it runs along Route 221 and Route 113. He likes Big Glade Creek on either side of Route 21; Little Glade, which is managed under wild-trout regulations on the parkway property; and Big Pine, which winds along the parkway several miles north and east of Route 21.

Hodges likes the Little River from Route 18 downstream toward Sparta. "Basically, we stock it at the bridges, and there's an awful lot of water between them, but there are some horseshoe bends away from the road where our crews can stock several stretches of stream in a small area," he said.

Hining said that the Little River offers some excellent fishing for nice brown trout in the fall and winter; most of those are wild trout that are left after the fishing public strips the stream of its hatchery-reared trout.

The North Fork of the New River is one of the largest streams in the county, and Hodges said that it is stocked in a lot of places, in addition to carrying some big, wild browns. It is hatchery-supported trout water for much of its length upstream from Route 194, along Route 88 and beyond. The South Fork, while not classified as trout water, holds a lot of big, wild browns in the Todd area.

Big Laurel Creek is a good hatchery-supported fishery from where it joins the North Fork near Route 88 upstream to the state line. Hining said that it supports a fairly good population of wild trout in addition to the hatchery fish.

Three Top Creek, which is hatchery supported, pours into the North Fork upstream from Big Laurel. Hodges said that it has a good number of wild trout along its length, especially downstream from the border.

"There are a lot of hatchery-supported streams that hold wild trout, but maybe not enough to fish them outside the stocking season," Hining said. "At Three Top Creek, there are some 25-inch brown trout in that stream, but there may only be one for every half-mile."

Cranberry Creek is a very popular hatchery-supported stream in the southeastern corner of the county, running from the parkway along the Alleghany County boundary, across Route 88 and all the way to the South Fork at the Route 221 bridge.

"It's the most popular trout stream in this district," Hodges said. "You talk to people, and everybody goes to Cranberry Creek. Some people who go to that stream really like to fish open water because it's a bigger creek."

The "most popular" stream may actually be Helton Creek, which is managed under delayed-harvest regulations for most of its length from the mouth of the creek at the North Fork to the Virginia line. There is a long section that runs alongside Route 194 a few miles south of the state line that Hining said "holds a lot of wild fish."

Copeland said that Helton is a stream that offers "opportunities for beginning fly-anglers to have a decent day of fishing."