Wormy Chestnut Trail - Hidden Treasure in SC Upcountry State Park

No mountaintop nor stunning waterfall awaits at trail’s end, and the short loop would be characterized by most folks as a stroll through the woods, more so than a significant hike. The treasure is recognizable by the trail’s name.

The Wormy Chestnut Trail in South Carolina’s Oconee State Park cuts through a substantial remnant grove of American chestnut trees, revealing a tragic chapter of natural and human history but also a glimmer of hope in how the story continues to be written.

Chestnut Blight

The trees in the grove aren’t magnificent at a glance, but that’s a vital part of the sad story. The same species that once dominated Appalachian forests and grew to 100 feet tall and 13 feet in diameter only reach sapling size now. The biggest ones you’ll see along the trail — which are probably around 20 feet tall — are not in good condition, and you can see signs of the fungal disease that prohibits them from even approaching maturity.

The chestnut blight infested trees and spread through Appalachia during the early to mid-20th century, eventually killing an estimated 3 to 4 billion trees and decimating the trees from their native range. The American chestnut was vital to Appalachian people in many ways, so the loss of the trees was devastating to the region’s economy and culture and to countless families and individuals. The forest and the people were forever changed.

The young chestnuts that are all along this trail come out of the stumps of trees that died several decades ago (some likely around century back), and often you’ll see multiple chestnut saplings springing from the same stump.

The smaller ones look healthy and vibrant. Once you begin identifying them, look at the trunks of the larger specimens. The rusty color, often seen near the base, is the blight. Look up those trees, and you’ll see that they are visibly less healthy, and some are dead.

The hope comes in the fact that these stumps still produce saplings, here and in an other places within the American chestnut’s native range. Research toward a cure for the blight continues, and if saplings in stands like this can ever be treated for the blight, they could grow, eventually growing mature enough to produce nuts, which could then lead to reintroduction in other places where habitat remains suitable within their native range.

Hidden Treasure 

I say the trail is a hidden treasure because it lacks striking features, is one of several hiking trails that begin in Oconee State Park, and is in a mountain region that is rich with stunning and well known features and trails. 

Quite a few people walk and enjoy the trail because it’s a nice and easy walk through a beautiful and diverse forest and connects with the Lake Trail in the middle of the park. I wonder, though, what percentage of the trail’s users know what they are walking through or can confidently identify the American chestnuts.

I’ll admit I would have missed an enormous amount had I not walked the trail with my daughters, one of whom did a major 4H project about the American chestnut’s story. The trail name reveals what’s there, and a short description in the park’s trail guide tells more, but there are no interpretive signs. 

I hope that changes someday, although I understand budget challenges that parks always face. In the meantime, if you can visit this trail, do so, but do a bit of extra research first, and save some ID photos for reference on your phone. 

The more you look and start to recognize the chestnut trees, the more you will see — not just the trees themselves, but pieces of their story.

1 Million Blog Views

I tried to catch a screenshot right at 1 million, but I missed it by five views. Despite not quite catching that one exactly, I was excited to see my blog eclipse 1 million views.

Any given day, at least a few hundred people visit jeffsamsel.blogspot.com. Some days it’s several thousand. With more than 1,300 posts on this blog, the visits can be pretty widespread, and any given day there might be an unpredictable little run on something I posted 10 years ago.

I began this blog in January 2009. I had just resumed full-time free-lance writing, and figured the blog would serve as a sort of a running business card and provide a space to share about favorite places, gear, fish species and much more. It has never been officially designated as a fishing blog, but that’s mostly what I write about and therefore has always been primary. Occasional posts are about hiking, rafting, travel or none of the above.

I kept the blog very fresh for the first several years, while I was free-lancing full-time, although some posts were extremely short. When I traveled to gather fishing photos and story material, I’d post something almost every day.

Around 10 years ago, I switched to full time content creation for a fishing lure company, PRADCO-Fishing. Lacking a free-lance business to support and using a lot of my creative energy at work, I slowed the pace of posts substantially over time and eventually largely abandoned the blog. I would go through little spells of refreshed effort but always failed to keep momentum.

A little less than a year ago, more than a year removed from having posted anything fresh, I decided to renew the effort again, and this time, I have stuck with it. Something seems to have clicked with Google because I get far more daily views than I did a when I started back, and that growth seems to be continuing. Beyond blogging more frequently, I’ve sought to add more length and value to posts. I’m eager to see how this blog continues to grow.

Jeffsamsel.blogspot.com will never be a household name as an internet site, and very few people in the general public could tell you what sort of content you’d find at this address. That’s said, it has grown enormously since I wrote my first posts about my then-10-year-old son Nathaniel’s perception of the Nantahala River and fishing in the delayed-harvest section.

I’ve also created a second blog, fishingonfoot.com, and developed a Fishing on Foot YouTube channel, so those efforts divide my after-work time. Those have a specific focus, though, as suggested by the name. This blog provides a place for me to write about anything I want to share — even if it’s just the landmark of tallying 1 million blog views!

 

Bonus Kayaks at Oconee State Park

Exploring our cabin, which would be home for the next couple of days, my daughters and I roamed onto the screened-in back porch, which overlooked the lake in Oconee State Parks in South Carolina’s Upcountry region. 

Hanging on the porch wall were two kayak paddles and a few life jackets of different sizes. Looking down the hill, we saw two kayaks on the lake’s bank, straight down from the cabin. Were those ours to use, we wondered, or did that just make things handy if we wanted to rent them? I knew the park rented a couple kinds of boats for use on the lake, and the website hadn’t mentioned kayaks coming with cabins when I’d made our reservations.

A bit later one of my daughters found the answer in a note on our cabin’s refrigerator, affirming that the kayaks were complementary with cabin rentals and revealing lock combination. Turns out the kayaks are leashed to a post with a cable and a lock. 

Eventually we noticed that every cabin had a pair of kayaks on the bank. Apparently, it is a program that was instituted fairly recently, so it isn’t even highlighted on the park’s website yet. For us, it was a delightful surprise and I think it’s a really cool thing for the park to offer.

We didn’t spend tons of time in our kayaks simply because of hiking trails we wanted to take on and other places in the area we wanted to explore. However, we did take them out for a while one afternoon, and it turned out the be one of our favorite activities. We also saw other cabin guests enjoying their boats at times.

The kayaks are stable two-person boats that are very user friendly, and the lake is fairly small but highly scenic, is totally within the park and is only open to non-motorized craft. Therefore, the kayaks are well suited for most users to slide them in the water, hop in and go — whether to cruise the lake for an hour in the evening or to fish all day.

The CCC-era cabins are wonderful on their own, and there’s more cool stuff about the park and area I’ll likely share in another post. The kayaks were such a fun bonus, though, that I wanted to brag on Oconee State Park just a bit!

Largemouth Irony Extended

My most recent post noted that I was Arkansas bound to some fishing and photography on Lake Ouachita and nearby. I’ve returned, and the trip indeed provided some good fishing opportunities.

While on that trip I added largemouth bass catches from two more states — Mississippi and Arkansas — for 2026. That’s ironic because while I have caught five different black bass species in Georgia this year, enough to qualify me for the Georgia Bass Slam, the very common largemouth bass is not one of those. However, I have now largemouth bass that would have qualified in five other states in 2026.

What makes that extra odd is that my fishing time in the other states has been quite limited. Only in Alabama did I legitimately spend a day fishing for bass. That was in Lake Guntersville, which is an excellent bass lake.

The Florida fishing came from brackish water on a day when we mostly caught redfish, speckled trout and other saltwater species. The others came from quick efforts during travel.

This trip and the bass I caught continued that pattern. The Mississippi largemouth came on a crappie jig. I broke up my drive with two-hour stop to check out a fishing pier that extends into the Tenn-Tom Waterway, carrying just a light spinning combo and crappie jigs. I caught two fish: a bluegill and a largemouth.

The Arkansas largemouth was out on Lake Ouachita. That’s a legitimate largemouth destination, and I spent a day out in a bass boat. However, I was out with bass pro Stetson Blaylock to get photos and blog content for work and mostly had a camera in my hand. I’d guess that I fished for less than 45 minutes total that day. I cast a Super Spook Boyo among some schoolers at one point and caught a 4-pound largemouth.

I also did a little creek and river fishing on the trip, and something from those days might end up being part of another blog. To check out the creek day, visit “Fishing on Foot” on YouTube and look for “This Little Arkansas Creek was LOADED with Fish.”

 

Arkansas Traveler

Next fishing stops for me will be in Arkansas in the Ouachita Mountains. 

Stop one will be “Fishing on Foot,” wading the upper Ouachita River for smallmouth bass and whatever else chooses to bite.

Stop two, Lake Ouachita, out on boats with pro bass anglers. Photos and blog content for my work are primary objectives. Ouachita is a beautiful lake with mostly undeveloped, mountainous banks, and the fall fishing should be good.

The lake should also be beginning to look like fall, although from what the forecast says, it won’t feel very autumn-like. Highs in the 90s!

I did the same basic trip last year, albeit slightly earlier, and it was very productive. I caught fish from the river and the lake, and the lake portion even included some topwater bass action!

I’ll enjoy all the fishing, and both trip elements lend themselves to productive photo work, but I can’t deny I’m the most excited about the river wading part. That’s simply the fishing that I enjoy the most. and this year’s opportunities for wet wading in mountain rivers won’t last much longer.

Hopefully my next post will include a good fishing report.

Stolen Rod & Reel

Confusion came first. My other rod wasn’t where I thought I’d left it. Had I been settled in a little different spot than I’d remembered? I looked up and down the pier and still didn’t see it and then look back to where I had just been fishing to see if I had toted it with me. Still nothing.

Then I noticed my grungy tackle box, right where I’d left it and right where my rod and reel should have been. Then it started to sink in. My new rod and reel — a nice Penn saltwater spinning outfit that I had saved for and bought only weeks before that night — had been stolen.

It was the first thing of value ever stolen from me, and it hit hard. The pier crowd was my community, so I hadn’t even considered that leaving quality gear unattended while I hopped from spot to spot with my other rod was a bad idea. At 17 or 18, I suppose I just trusted everyone on the pier (and everywhere.)

Of course, I’ll never know if it was a fellow angler who saw me roam out of watching range and decided it was time to go home with an new rod and reel or whether it was a non-fisherman who simply saw something that could be turned into cash at a pawn shop. Either way, I felt betrayed, and I suppose to a degree I still do. 

I’ve had various other things stolen in my life — even a car when I was in college and a wallet. However, nothing dug as deep as having my new rod and reel stolen from the pier where I so much liked spending time.

I don’t recall whether I fished any more that night, but my guess is that I just picked up my old tackle box and went home. 

I’m glad to say it didn’t ruin pier fishing or even Big Pier 60 for me. And I suppose it did make me a little bit wiser. Not a lot. More than 40 years later, I still sometimes leave stuff laying around where I probably shouldn’t. I’m more aware now, though, and at least I do so knowing it’s a bit of a risk!

First Baitcasting Combo

“The Structure Cafe” Facebook page shared this 1980 fishing magazine ad, and it caught my attention. The reel pictured, a Daiwa Procaster SM2A and matching rod was the first baitcasting combo I ever owned.

And the reason I wanted that specific rod and reel? Well, that shows in the ad as well. That’s what Bill Dance used when I watched him catch so many fish on tv every weekend, so I figured I needed one so I could catch fish like he did. That was 46 years ago, and I still seldom catch as many quality bass as Bill did every weekend, but I’m glad his influence got me to broaden my game and teach myself to use a baitcaster when I was 15 years old.

My first rod and reel was a Zebco 404, and it suited me fine for my earliest learning, but my grandpa, the only other angler in our family, eventually convinced my parents that I needed a spinning rod and reel. I wish I remember what kind it was, because that was all I fished with for a few years. 

When I got my heart set on the Procaster, it was a big enough jump, cost-wise, for fishing gear, that I had to ask for the reel for my and the rod for Christmas, which for me are a couple of months apart.

My grandpa had passed away by that time, so it was just me, my new rod and reel and a rubber casting weight for learning. I stood in the front yard for hours making practice cast after practice cast and picking out backlashes until I finally figured out the timing, the brake settings and the thumb pressure well enough to begin taking my new gear to local ponds and creeks and to the bridges and piers where I would target saltwater fish.

A couple of years later, I also got a Daiwa Magforce reel, which I think was on a Shakespeare Ugly Stik with a pistol grip. I also bought (or got as a gift; I don’t remember.) a Daiwa Minicast system at some point for shiners and bream and other little stuff.

I also saved up for and bought a Penn saltwater spinning outfit. It got stolen from a pier while still pretty new, but that sad story might be best reserved for another blog.

I sure wish I still owned those first rods and reels, but it was sure fun seeing the Procaster ad!