Real Web Research

Having noticed that I'd let a broad-shouldered trout get the best of me and break off my dropper fly, Chetola Lodge guide Dustin Coffey started walking downstream to where he had me positioned in the stream. Halfway to me he stopped and knelt for a couple of minutes, peering through brush along the steep creek bank as if he'd dropped something.

He smiled when he stood back up, sporting the look of a man who had found what he'd been looking for, but I hadn't seen him grab anything. Able to read the question on my face, he answered without me having to ask. "Spider web. I was looking to see what's on today's menu." 

When Coffey pulled out his fly box, he didn't do that typical pondering gaze across his flies. He was after something specific, based on what he'd seen in the spider web, and he found it quickly. I won't tell you what fly he grabbed. (He said it was a secret!) And in truth, what fly he tied on my dropper that day isn't nearly as important as the fly best matches the bugs you find in any webs beside a stream you are fishing.

I can tell you the fly he grabbed with such confidence worked really well!

-More about fishing in the North Carolina High Country

Golden Opportunity

Despite MANY big trout in the Boone Fork run where I enjoyed the opportunity to fish yesterday, including a few browns and rainbows that I'm sure were more then 30 inches long and with double-digit weights, the golden trout grabbed my focus. Not that the other trout weren't intriguing or seriously fun to catch. They were. I'd just never caught a golden trout before, and with those golden backs, they stood out in the runs and made it painfully obvious that I was drifting flies over or through several of them. I'd also heard that they were the toughest customers of the four trout species that swim in the Refuge, and that only fueled my desire to catch one.

Don't get me wrong. If no golden trout had cooperated, I'd have still had a blast catching big trout on a fly rod, especially considering the fact that quite a few fish blasted 'hoppers or beetles on the surface. Still, they are so visible that every time one charged a fly and did not commit, that built the desire to catch one even more. I also had a few that actually hit and that I failed to hook.

When I finally set the hook and saw a big mustard colored flash beneath the surface I was delighted and hopeful to successfully land the fish, and when Chetola Resort guide Dustin Coffey slid the net under my first golden trout I was delighted. That first of two golden trout I ended up catching was far from my biggest fish that day. In fact, a rainbow I caught a little later was the biggest stream trout of any kind that I've ever caught.

Still, the golden was my favorite, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to catch couple of them and to add No. 21 to this year's fish species list.