r/bluelining

Visiting a previous restoration project

First time fishing inside the park, hiked several miles to a stream and had a great time catching plenty of Brooks.

I caught one rainbow unfortunately but wasn’t sure it would’ve met the 7” minimum, what’s everyone’s stance on removing non natives in this situation? Should I have kept it? Beautiful fish but I’d always prefer to protect our native species first.

This is one of the most genetically pure populations of southern brook trout, unfortunately found rainbows there too. Hopefully they're not going to take over.

Some highlights from today’s adventure. Killed it on a hand tied olive color soft hackle fly.

Went on a trip with my wife yesterday that turned into a slam for both of us. Of course we caught rainbows, and then when she caught a brown, our focus switched to getting her a slam. We fished some terrible to navigate water before finding a good hole for her to find the brookie. I snatched one real quick and We made our way back down to the main stem finishing the day. We were catching more bows and I lucked up and found a brown making it a single day wild slam for the both of us. Great birthday trip! If you’re wondering which ones are hers, the big ones. Bonus round: I caught the exact same brown trout about a month ago, in the same exact hole.

Hey folks. I've been messing around in ArcGIS, and found some really interesting databases including topographical maps, hydrology maps, and public access maps. After combining those and fooling around with some blue lines formatting (color for slope and size for flow) and some basic pop-ups for stream information like average CFS, stream order, and drainage area, I'm pretty happy with the result. Here's the link: https://arcg.is/1ab9811

Some observations (from someone in Southern Appalachia):

• Some of my favorite blue lines are only between 3 and 15 CFS, on average. I've not found many streams < 1 CFS that hold trout, but I'm sure there are exceptions. In our area, there's not many brook trout to be found in any body of water more than 15 CFS (about the threshold over which rainbows and browns dominate).
• Some of the best mountain streams have an average slope of 2%-8%, with > 10-15% sometimes being too difficult to traverse.
• Sections of stream with average velocity less than 1 ft/s aren't great trout habitat.
• Most of our trout are found above 1600', and most of our brook trout over 2100'.

What are the "specs" on your favorite blue line? Here's mine:

Annual Mean Flow: 8 cfs 

Velocity: 1.1 f/s 

Slope: 4.4% 

Order: 4 

Drainage Area: 3 sq. mi.  

Lower Elevation: 3,000 ft 

Cool weather and a little dry fly action between mostly small streamer eats these last couple days. Got the grand slam in one of my favorite streams.

Knowing how to bow and arrow cast a nymph goes a long way!

Such a special, fleeting time to be out on our small streams. Despite this terrible drought, the mountains have absolutely exploded in lush green, wild blackberries, and wildflowers. Sized down to a size 18 dry so I could pick up a few of the other stream residents - those little minnows were crushing but missing my bigger flies all evening long.

My first fish this season out the river on my doorstep and also my first salmon.

Mixing my pleasures. Pretty cold but doable. We need rain please.

Pretty interesting noticing the difference in strain between the two spots we fished.

I was in the stream for almost three hours and while hiking back on the trail, it only took 5 minutes to get to where I got in at.