Friday morning was the start of Memorial day weekend. I got a motel for the 3 days & planed to fish some wild trout streams while having a good adventure for the family too. So with no plans in place of where to stay yet I decided to find a place before I headed out. I searched the Internet for a cheap indoor place to lay our head due to the threat of possible rain for the weekend. Searching around I found a good place that was cheap and looked like it had a good review. I located a cheap place in Pineola, NC called Huskins Court and Cottages.
After coming up with a plan to fish Saturday and Sunday, we hit the bed for some sleep. We woke up Saturday looking for a breakfast place and found a good restaurant called Famous Louise's Rockhouse Restaurant. This restaurant sits on the Avery, McDowell, Burke County lines and you can be in all 3 counties while eating there. We headed down the road to a nice stream I had fished recently and wanted to fish again. The rain forecast didn't deter the campers there and there were plenty of them. I fished a few holes before going above the first set of water falls. I caught 2 rainbow trout out of the first 3 holes. The fishing was going to be good this day I said to my wife. I was fishing a nymph rig with a 14# bead head caddis pupa and a 14# latex caddis pupa off of that. They were loving any green nymph I had to throw at them.
I hiked up a good ways till I heard the thunder start to roll in and decided this might be a good time to head out. It was about supper time anyway and that breakfast was wearing off. We hiked back out and headed towards the truck to put up all the gear. Once packed up we took off towards the cottage to clean up and go hit some Mexican food at a near by restaurant. The day turned out to be a great fishing day with around 20+ fish brought to hand.
After waking up the Sunday morning and getting some breakfast we headed off towards a new stream. It was raining off and on, but mostly sprinkling. So I decided to go ahead and try to fish. We hiked down to a big place with water falls. I checked the water and it was running good but not chocolate as of yet. So I decided to rig up and fish. I started off near the first set of falls and then headed up stream. As we hiked further up it started to rain more but not at a down pour rain yet. I hooked up with a few good sized fish out of the deep holes and finally got to a long stretch of creek that was impassable for the family....even for me at that point unless I wanted to swim. I fished that long stretch for a few minutes and was making one of my final casts when I looked up and saw the biggest wild trout I have ever seen. It leaped straight up out of the water and about a foot into the air. Dreaming of catching this trout was all I thought about from that point forward. The rain became irrelevant now for me, and the fish was all I could focus on. The trout had positioned it's self perfectly in the pool so I could not cast far enough to where it was and I could not reach it with out taking a swim. So the illusion of catching this fish will have to sleep till summer rolls around and the weather warms up.
We finally had to give into the rain at this point and head back to the cottage to dry off and regroup. We got back to the cottage and decided to go to some dry places and visit. We headed off to Linville to visit the Old Hampton Store & Gristmill. We got there and found out they were having a live band inside. This sounded good to me, it was dry had good food and live music. We strolled around the store and finally sat down to get a bite to eat of some good BBQ. The band started to play as we ate. I was shocked at how good these guys sounded live. They had great vocals and nothing but 3 guys playing acoustic guitars and singing. They played some cover songs and then I got to hear some of their own songs. These fellas had some great songs of their own that they wrote. Very talented group. They call themselves "The Major Sevens". I talked to Brooks Forsyth about using one of his songs in a video and he was kind enough to give me a CD for free to use it in the video I made for this trip. Some of the best music I have ever heard.
We left out the cottage Monday around 9AM and just rode around exploring new streams and other destinations. Over all it was quite a good weekend of adventure and good times. I will be back soon, I just have to wait till I get another free weekend and a bit warmer weather. About all I can do is Dream of Appalachia right now........
