Ken Fortenberry wrote:

It's supposed to thunderstorm here tonight and tomorrow
so I thought if I'm gonna fish Snowbird I better get 'er
done before the rains come and blow the stream out.

There were folks camped at the Junction so I rigged up
before saying hello. Turns out these guys were the world's
foremost experts on Snowbird. They were from Florida and
from the signage on their trucks they install garage doors,
(when they're not catching 36 inch brown trout out of
Snowbird every year ;-). They weren't going to fish upstream
of the Junction which I knew just by looking at their campsite,
but it's polite to touch base anyway.

It takes me and Kipper an hour and a half to hike up from
the Junction to above Big Falls, an hour to Sassafras Creek
and then another half hour to get above Big Falls. Getting
above Big Falls is important because above Big Falls there
are no stocked fish, only God's own brookies.

To my mind there is no fish on the planet as beautiful as a
wild Appalachian brook trout. And when I have one on the
end of my fly line throbbing and wiggling and pulling for
all its worth against its own fragile mortality I feel like
maybe we haven't ****ed things up beyond all repair after all.

Anyway, five miles up, boulder hopping for awhile and then
five miles back, me and the pooch are both pooped.

But that's just about the best tired there is, no? When I got back
to the car after my hike to the falls last year, I just sat back, popped
a cold one and mentally reviewed all the beauty that I had seen in that
week in NC.

Thanks for the TR, ya bastid. ;-) It just makes me want to get
back there more than ever.


Chuck Vance