That afternoon, we trudged back to the truck through a July thunderstorm, the steam in our waders doing nothing to lessen the elation we felt at such a successful trip. The sun was back out by the time we made it to camp and the air took on a sweaty humidity that made it feel like we needed a set of gills as we finned our way to and from the cooler. The plan that night was a pot of gumbo fleshed out with a couple trout I’d pulled from the river that morning. We steamed them in citrus, seasoned heavily with salt and pepper, and threw them in the gumbo as we dove into the coolers. A couple dozen beers later and the three of us spent 45 minutes trying to tie a single hopper/dropper rig for the next day. The closest we got was dropping the hopper as the three of us cinched the nymph onto Brett’s finger.
This is the type of river where the trip is as important as the fishing. Small water breeds memorable trips if for no other reason than there’s less fuss and competition when there’s only a couple eight-inch rainbows at stake. You can actual slow down and enjoy the adventure.
We ran into a couple guys dressed like an Orvis catalog as we hiked into Sycamore Creek. The sun was still out and we crossed paths about half a mile into our trek. They were friendly and liberal with advice. Without them, we would never have hiked far enough for a realistic chance at brook trout. They were generous, but held the creek in a certain contempt because the rainbows stained its genetic purity.
This elitist attitude stood in stark contrast to the beers we hid behind our backs as they heaped derision on the resident population of rainbows that make this creek home. We stood there, aching to move on, for twenty minutes as they proselytized the evils of the rainbow trout, bellyaching that only three of their thirty-something fish were brook trout. These SOB’s were actually complaining about spending a day on an Appalachian creek because they hadn’t caught the right kind of fish. The memories of Brett’s last trip in East Tennessee have nothing to do with something as simple as a fish.