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Over the weekend I traveled down to Lake James State Park in Nebo, NC to float the Catawba river with my father, uncle, and some friends. It was a long drive but well worth it! I paddled my Trident 13 for the weekend, first time I've taken it on the river/whitewater and it handled it great. We fished Friday and Saturday all day and floated the 8 miles from the dam down to the second bridge. Due to the hard work of Trout Unlimited the river now has improved/regulated flow and the river is now safe to float. I will say this, check the schedule because a few gates can make a big difference!
Friday was our best day numbers wise with everyone (but one person...) in the group catching rainbow, brook, and brown trout (brown being the most prevalent). The water upstream was fast and difficult to fish from my kayak, but the guys in the pontoon boats were able to put their feet down and pull a few from several holes that I flew right past. It was alright though because I was definitely the hot hand of the day. One of the guys in the group got a really fat stocked rainbow and we decided to start a dinner stringer of only stocked trout. I added another decent rainbow and a large yellow perch (it was a surprise catch!). Friday's dinner was wild sockeye salmon from Alaska that my uncle had caught so the trout were for Saturday night. It ended up being a good idea to keep them on Friday.
Here's some Friday Dinner shots:
Saturday the schedule was calling for a larger release... it was right on. We took our time on Friday but already within an hour we were well beyond where we were on Friday after 2 or 3 hours. Fishing was SLOW. We started to put together a pattern, fish were deep and we were jigging them here and there. I had the hot hand again and my secret both days was hot-rodded tiny bass assassins. No joke, LTJ-ing works on trout too! I caught numerous fish on the fly on Friday, but it was a lot of work on the kayak so I did more LTJ. Anyway, Saturday was tough, probably only caught 9 or 10 in the whole 8 miles and all wild browns. Remember how I said all but one caught trout on Friday... well he had exactly one trout on the line on Saturday, just so happened to be a nice 17.5" wild brown trout! Beautiful fish and it added some credibility to the stories we had heard about 30"+ brown trout being in the river system. It ended up being a fun day, everyone caught fish, we ran some fun rapids, and we had some laughs. I'm looking forward to going back next year.
Saturday's Dinner & Other shots:
I have some more pictures on my other camera I need to load on my computer of the trout. Do they count for Kayak Wars?
Friday was our best day numbers wise with everyone (but one person...) in the group catching rainbow, brook, and brown trout (brown being the most prevalent). The water upstream was fast and difficult to fish from my kayak, but the guys in the pontoon boats were able to put their feet down and pull a few from several holes that I flew right past. It was alright though because I was definitely the hot hand of the day. One of the guys in the group got a really fat stocked rainbow and we decided to start a dinner stringer of only stocked trout. I added another decent rainbow and a large yellow perch (it was a surprise catch!). Friday's dinner was wild sockeye salmon from Alaska that my uncle had caught so the trout were for Saturday night. It ended up being a good idea to keep them on Friday.
Here's some Friday Dinner shots:
Saturday the schedule was calling for a larger release... it was right on. We took our time on Friday but already within an hour we were well beyond where we were on Friday after 2 or 3 hours. Fishing was SLOW. We started to put together a pattern, fish were deep and we were jigging them here and there. I had the hot hand again and my secret both days was hot-rodded tiny bass assassins. No joke, LTJ-ing works on trout too! I caught numerous fish on the fly on Friday, but it was a lot of work on the kayak so I did more LTJ. Anyway, Saturday was tough, probably only caught 9 or 10 in the whole 8 miles and all wild browns. Remember how I said all but one caught trout on Friday... well he had exactly one trout on the line on Saturday, just so happened to be a nice 17.5" wild brown trout! Beautiful fish and it added some credibility to the stories we had heard about 30"+ brown trout being in the river system. It ended up being a fun day, everyone caught fish, we ran some fun rapids, and we had some laughs. I'm looking forward to going back next year.
Saturday's Dinner & Other shots:
I have some more pictures on my other camera I need to load on my computer of the trout. Do they count for Kayak Wars?
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