Had the pleasure of spending a week of vacation with the wife in Georgia, splitting time between the suburbs and the mountains. Caught the LSU/UNC game at the Georgia Dome Labor Day weekend and then the LSU/Vandy game in Nashville the following weekend. It was a great way to kick off football season! While I was in town I managed to get some hiking/fishing in as well. Thursday morning I had plans to fish some small water I've fished before, but I wanted to try a different route to get there. I was greeted with this when I tried that route:
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So I hit the back up plan instead, new water not too far away. Low water conditions persisted, so fishing was tougher than when I was in town in May, but wild trout are aggressive fish in the summer and will hit dry flies no matter the conditions:
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As you can see, this section of stream was fairly flat. On the topo it looks like it gets steeper upstream, but it got very tight on me before I reached that point. The bigger ones were tough to land on this day, I hooked a few in bigger trout, but failed to land them. I did spot a couple salamanders, just another neat aspect of small stream fishing:
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Friday afternoon I was driving up to Nashville and really doubted how much time I'd have on the water, so my dad and I hit some water that would be on the way. This was a steam I'd fished before and had good luck on so I was optimistic. Again, water levels were low, but the fish Thursday were hungry, no reason these shouldn't be as well. The first section we fished was a little tight, making things pretty tough, but it opened up and things picked up. The highlight of the day was catching a really nice trout in a pool that didn't look like it could fit a fish of it's size. Dad is fairly new to small streams, so there was an adjustment early on, but by the end of the day he had caught a few and asked about getting a 2wt! I was addicted after 1 trip too:
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I had a lot of fun on my vacation, the LSU victories were ugly, but at least we didn't lose to Jax St, LOL. I'll be back to Georgia around Thanksgiving and hopefully more fishing will be involved.
