Delayed Harvest Troutfest

Nathaniel, Asher and I had a big time catching trout in the North Carolina mountains last week. With photos being our main objective, we went for easy pickings, hitting Delayed Harvest waters on the Nantahala and Tuckasegee rivers and Big Snowbird Creek. All had gotten an initial spring stocking, so the trout were plenty plentiful, with a few large fish in the mix.

We experienced weather ranging from ice in line guides and snow falling to sunshine and high 50s, and generally enjoyed just exploring the areas. Adding intrigue, the three stream stretches we fished are all quite different from one another in character.

North Carolina's DH waters are open only to catch-and-release fishing with single-hook artificial lures from Oct. 1 until the first Saturday in June. For folks who enjoy fishing with artificial lures and don't mind putting them back, waters managed this way in several Southern states offer great trout-catching opportunities. Fly-fishermen make the most use of these waters, but spin-fishing is completely fine, as long as each lure in your possession is equipped with only a single hook, and no soft plastics have any scent or flavor.

My boys and I do our trout fishing mostly with hard baits, especially Rebel Crawfish and Tracdown Minnows, sometimes mixing in some small jigs or spoons when the fish want something different. Rebel Crawfish were easily our top producers last week. The most productive specific Rebel Craw model was a Deep Teeny Wee Craw, although Asher got on the big fish really well with a Middle Wee Crawfish one day.

One thing worth noting about DH waters. Because they are so productive, they are also extremely popular. If you decide to visit, do so on a weekday, if possible, and arrive early. By midday during the spring, accessible spots tend to fill up and the fish get much more wary.

Smokies Trout Run

Asher and I made a run for the higher hills a couple of days ago to see if the trout wanted to play. To our delight, the wild fish in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park seem to be digging this winter's high water, and they were pretty active. We didn't catch oodles of fish, but be we had a nice amount of activity and caught some really pretty wild brown trout.

Naturally, the big one got away. I hooked a surprisingly big rainbow in park waters and had it on the surface and within a few inches of hand's reach when the hook came free. It was a rouge-banded, 15- or 16-inch, thick bodied male that even had somewhat of a hook jaw.

Because of a mix of photos I wanted to get, it was somewhat of a sampler day. We briefly hit a couple of sections of the Tuckasegee River, including a new delayed harvest stretch I hadn't looked at yet, and two different streams in the national park. That kept us from fishing anywhere as long as would have been ideal, but at least we were fishing.

I say "we" caught fish, but in truth Asher did most of the catching. I caught one fish, which took a Rebel Hellgrammite. Asher caught all his fish on a Rebel Tracdown Ghost Minnow. All our lures were rigged with single barbless hooks.

Red Trout Streams

Today's trout outing with Asher began well, with a cool sidetrip to Upper Whitewater Falls and a few hours of catching trout and exploring the East Fork of the French Broad River. We knew we might be battling weather, though, and on the way from the East Fork to the North Mills River, we hit a massive thunderstorm, complete with heavy hail, and even had to pull over at one point because the rain was blinding.

Not long after arriving at the North Mills, we ran into seriously muddy water, and the bite disappeared complexly when the muddy water come. We still hit several spots along the creek, both for the sake of learning more about it and with hope of finding better-colored water. I think it would have settled out fairly quickly, and maybe we should have hung around, but it seemed like we needed to move on while we had the time, so we drove more than an hour to the delayed harvest section of the Tuckasegee River, only to find even muddier water and no one else even trying to catch trout.

Knowing Great Smoky Mountains National Park streams wouldn't be muddy and figuring that Deep Creek's brown trout might be a little more aggressive with the higher flows and very dark skies, we decided to fish the final few hours of daylight at Deep Creek. When we arrived, the stream indeed looked good; however, another big thunderstorm arrived with us. We tried to wait it out, but the sky kept flashing and rumbling as the evening progressed, so we decided to call it quits for today.

We'll begin again tomorrow and see what we find!

Teriffic Trout Time on the Tuckasegee

Guide Alex Bell hooked up with a Tuckasegee River trout.

The Tuckasegee River just got a seasonal kick-start -- a kick-start to the tune of 9,800 rainbow, brown and brook trout stocked into roughly four miles of river, and early next month, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission will add 9,800 more trout to the same section. Making a good thing even better, most of those fish will remain there for the catching throughout the winter, because this section of river is open only to catch-and-release fishing right now.

Four miles of the Tuckasegee, near Dillsboro, N.C., are part of North Carolina's extremely popular Delayed Harvest trout program. DH waters get heavy stocking every fall and spring, and only catch-and-release fishing with single-hook artificial lures is permitted from Oct. 1 through the first Saturday in June. For anglers who don't mind using single-hook artificials and putting back the fish they catch, the cool-weather fishing tends to be good on all of these streams.

The Tuck is one of my personal favorites of the DH streams because it is a large trout stream that offers quite bit of room to fish for casting and allows for a variety of approaches. It's also at my end of the mountains, so to speak, and is much more practical to visit than several other DH streams. Of course, in November, Georgia's DH waters will be freshly stocked and under similar regulations, creating other opportunities closer to home. That's a different story, though.

Fly-fishing is by far the most popular way to fish most DH waters -- including the Tuckasegee --  and can be fun and very effective. In fact, this river has good shoal habitat and is fairly fertile and supports more hatches than most Appalachian trout rivers. I tend to spend more of my trout time with a spinning rod in hand, fishing a marabou Road Runner, soft-plastic offering (scentless) or a crankbait or jerkbait rigged with a single hook.

The Tuckasegee River also is an important part of the Western North Carolina Fly-Fishing Trail, which highlights 15 fine trout destinations through a cool website the offers great information and opportunities to interact. If you've not yet checked out the trail website, it's warrants a look and will likely give you ideas about some new streams to try.

A final cool thing aspect of the Tuckasegee, which I only recently learned about, is that much of the DH section falls under the special designation of Mountain Heritage Trout Waters.  This cooperative effort between the NCWRC and local governments promotes trout fishing as a tourism activity in and around cooperating cities that provide public access by allowing residents or non resident to fish with only a $5 3-day Mountain Heritage Trout Waters License. (A regular NC fishing license and trout permit also work.) These waters have distinctive boundaries that are not the same as the DH boundaries and licenses are not available through regular license outlets, so visit the NCWRC's Mountain Heritage Trout Waters page to learn details.

To learn about guided trips on the Tuckasegee, visit www.abfish.org.

Harvest Critical Part of Delayed Harvest

This morning brought an end to my favorite part of North Carolina's delayed harvest trout fishing season, and I probably won't return to favored destinations such as the DH sections of the Nantahala or Tuckasegee River until after October 1, when they revert to release regulations. Likewise, I probably won't return to to Georgia's DH waters until November.

From fall through early summer, select waters in both states are open only to catch-and-release fishing with single-hook artificial lures. On May 15 in Georgia and the first Saturday in June (today) in North Carolina, the same streams revert to general regulations, with a harvest of trout and the use of natural bait both permitted.

I prefer the "delay" period because I'm not a big fan of trout as food fish, I like fishing with artificial lures, and I enjoy the high densities of fish found in these waters during the time when only catch-and-release fishing is permitted. I'm also a fairly mobile angler. Given the choice, therefore, I'd rather not fish waters where anglers are camped out on every big hole, which happens much more frequently in heavy bait-fishing areas.

All that said, I appreciate the "harvest" season on these waters. I've heard many fellow catch-and-release anglers grumble about it, believing these waters would be even better if all the trout had to be released all the time. Beyond the fact that this would take away fine opportunities for a totally different group of fishermen, the idea that fishing would be better simply isn't true. In fact, the opposite is true.

Most waters chosen for delayed harvest designation offer good to outstanding cool-season habitat and can hold high numbers of trout from fall through spring. However, most also run low and get too warm to hold many trout during the summer. Prior to the development of the delayed harvest management concept, most were marginal put-and-take waters that got stocked with low numbers of trout early in the season and maybe a few more in the fall. If these waters were managed with a year-round catch-and-release requirement, they couldn't be stocked with nearly as many fish or most (and in some cases, all) of the trout would die of natural causes during the summer.

Fisheries divisions understandably wouldn't stock high numbers of trout that they knew would not survive through the year, so instead, these would be catch-and-release trout streams with very few trout in them, even during the winter, when they were running cool and full of water, which really wouldn't be very fun!

I'm thankful for those fishermen who are fishing all 26 of North Carlina's delayed harvest streams and lakes this morning and who are excited about the beginning of the "harvest" season. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't get to catch nearly as many fish in the fall.