Читать книгу The Ultimate Fly-Fishing Guide to the Smoky Mountains - Greg Ward - Страница 7

THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL Park offers one of the last wild trout habitats in the eastern United States. Annually, millions of Americans visit this natural wonderland seeking recreation and a chance to enjoy the outdoors. Among these visitors are thousands of anglers eager to test their luck against the stream-bred trout of the park’s famed waters. Most of these anglers lack the needed information and are confused by the seemingly endless number of streams available.

Some time in the early 1970s when my children where young (as was I), the idea of writing a trout fishing guide to the streams of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park first crossed my mind. It took a few more years of fishing, then several years of work before that book was published in 1981. Since that time, Trout Fishing Guide To The Smokies has been a raving success that has been revised and reprinted many times. Few endeavors have netted me so many compliments as that little guidebook.

Many things have changed over the last three decades in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Regulations have changed radically, and fishing pressure on many streams has increased dramatically. Guide services available to anglers wishing to sample park waters were virtually nonexistent when my book was first written, as were fly-fishing shops within 50 miles of the park. That also has changed. Both the shops and guide services are now very common around the Smokies. The city of Gatlinburg even promotes fishing for trout, something that was unheard of only a few decades ago.

This book is designed to help both experienced and novice anglers select waters that suit their tastes and abilities. You will find a chapter on each of the major streams in the park. Listed with each stream are such valuable data as its location, fishing pressure, species of trout found in that particular watershed, both auto and trail access routes, campsite accommodations, and other information. Also included are chapters covering the early history of fly-fishing for trout in and near the park, information on the aquatic insects most abundant in the streams, proven dry and wet nymph patterns, tips on gear, and other aspects of fly-fishing.

In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we have some of the finest trout fishing anywhere. And although the trout are wary, even a beginner can expect to catch a few. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has long been one of the country’s most popular fly-fishing destinations. This book represents at least the sixth attempt by an ardent angler to provide fellow fishermen with information on how and where to catch trout from these streams. The first book written exclusively on fishing in the Smokies was penned in 1937 by then park ranger, Joe F. Manley. Manley, who was employed by the National Park Service for only two years before accepting employment in Gatlinburg as chief of their water works department, was an avid fisherman. His 80-page, hardbound book was vanity published once—3,000 copies, according to Manley, whom I spoke to last in 1990 at his home in Gatlinburg. This rare and little-known book is unknown to most anglers, but was brought to my attention in 1987 by noted Smoky Mountain angler Eddie George of Louisville, Tennessee, who could rightly be termed the best fly-fisherman to ever cast these streams. In fact, the copy of Manley’s book I have was given to me by George. According to Manley, shortly after his book, Fishing Guide to the Smokies, was printed, he agreed to guide an editor from either Field and Stream or Outdoor Life magazine (he could not recall precisely which). During the course of their fishing trips, Manley shared information on his book with the Northerner, who bought and took home his entire printing. Only a few dozen of these books were ever sold locally. Over two decades after talking with Manley, I discovered that the purchaser of his inventory of books was Ben East, legendary editor at Outdoor Life.

Manley’s book contains interesting information on the streams of the Smokies and is about equally split between trout and bass fishing. One of the most interesting photographs in the book depicts Manley at the Sinks on Little River holding up a stringer of smallmouth bass weighing between 3 and 5 pounds. His favorite fly rod “lure,” a Heddon-made Flaptail, can still be found at antique tackle shows at a cost of $40 to $80. Can you imagine how quickly most of us would climb a tree to retrieve one of these costly little jewels? If you can find a copy of Manley’s book for less than $200, do not hesitate to part with the cash. It is harder to find than eyebrows on a brook trout. Also worth noting is that Manley remained a well-known fisherman in the park as well as its adjacent waters. He was quite fond of catching big muskie in the then free-floating portions of the Little Tennessee River located to the south of the park.

The second book written on this subject was the effort of Jim Gasque, a somewhat prolific writer from western North Carolina. This title, Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies, was published by Alfred A. Knopf of New York, who at the same time published other well-known sporting titles such as Trout by Ray Bergman, Ruffed Grouse by John Alden Knight, and A Book of Duck Shooting by Van Campen Heilner. Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies and Jim Gasque’s other, better-known title, Bass Fishing, can still be found on book lists circulated among collectors of vintage fishing tackle and associated paraphernalia. Published in 1948, Gasque’s book was the first nationally distributed book on fishing in (and around) the Smokies, although Horace Kephart, who also was a great fan of angling these waters, often wrote about it as well as did Robert S. Mason. Gasque’s book immortalized the great western North Carolina angler, Mark Cathey. Unfortunately, I was born too late to ever meet Cathey. Written in the folksy, “me ’n’ Joe” style of outdoor writing common to the era, it provides more in the way entertainment than information, although the techniques and few flies noted in the book are as deadly on trout today as when the information was penned half a century ago. Gasque’s chapters on Cataloochee and Deep Creeks are extremely insightful. Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies is a gem worth the current asking price of $50 to $100.

The third book written on trout fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is perhaps the rarest of all of the four titles known to me. Discovered when going through the National Park Service archives in 1979, Sport Fishing The Smokies by Joe Manley is an extremely short, but very accurate book on the ins and outs of catching trout in the Smokies. Only 16 pages long, this informative book was published in 1969 and apparently had a very short shelf life. My favorite notation in the book was when the author advised anglers looking for bigger trout to use techniques that took their flies deep along the bottom. How right Manley was.

The fourth book written on fishing for trout in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was an effort I began in the mid-1970s as a young man with an unquenchable thirst for catching fish from these pristine waters. The first printing of 1,000 books was published by McGuire/Denton Publishers of Dayton, Ohio. It was the first comprehensive, stream-by-stream guide to the 13 major watersheds in the park. This white, blue, and black paperback has become something of a collectible in its own right. I own only three copies and can only guess what the publishers did with the remaining inventory or what became of that pair of Yankees, may God bless them.

In 1984 with my assistance, Menasha Ridge Press of Birmingham, Alabama, acquired rights to that book, Trout Fishing Guide to the Smokies. It was revised, with chapters added to include the waters in the Cherokee reservation located east of the national park, as well as the five lakes that border the southern portion of the Smokies. Now known as Smoky Mountains Trout Fishing Guide, this book has been extremely well received. It went through a dozen printings before my fly-fishing-only book took its place on bookstore shelves.

Naturally, other books have been written that include considerable information on fly-fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains. My close friend and mentor, Charley “Chum” Dickey (who is from my hometown), wrote a book with Freddie Moses (a noted fly-fishing attorney from Knoxville, Tennessee) titled Trout Fishing. Published by Oxmoor House, this tough-to-find title from the 1960s is one of my most cherished possessions. Now deceased, Chum was my mentor for many years and is sorely missed by all. He told me to go places besides the Smokies so I would not look like a total hillbilly. I did what he suggested. I’ve fished and hunted around the world a couple of times (enough that I don’t care to any more), although I still do not like wearing shoes.

Chum has been gone a while, but like Cathey and Manley, Charley Dickey was an icon to fly-fishing in the Smokies. Along with his fishing pal, Fred Moses of Knoxville, they not only fished the streams of the park like possessed fiends, but also traveled widely, fly-fishing and hunting. Moses, a star running back on General Neyland’s Tennessee Vols football teams in 1933–1934, was rated by his long-time partner, Chum, as the best caster to ever ply the waters of the Smokies. Moses might also be the boldest too, as the following excerpt from Trout Fishing: Basic Guide to Dry Fly Fishing reveals. Charlie later told me that this incident occurred at Big Creek.

Not long ago, Fred and Charley were fishing a small river in the Smokies, poking along with Charley fishing the forehand side and Fred the backhand. They alternated honeyholes and ambled along side by side, fishing the few flat stretches. As they rounded the turn, there on a huge boulder lay two young ladies without clothes, basking in the sun. They did not hear the approaching anglers above the roaring water and may have been sleeping.

Charley was deeply worried that they might get sunburned, but Fred was concerned with ethical behavior on a trout stream; should the anglers fish past the sunbathers without saying anything, or should they ask permission to move ahead?

After a lengthy debate, the anglers decided to wade quietly past the sunning lasses lest a sudden awakening frighten them. The trout fishermen pulled in their lines and pushed slowly up the difficult current, passing the boulder where the sleeping beauties languished. The fishermen would be around the next turn in a few seconds and could go back to their routine casting.

At the last moment Fred could stand it no longer. He removed the Cahill on the end of his leader and replaced it with a hookless spinner. Then he stripped out line and began to false cast until he had just the right amount of line out.

Then he stripped line on one of the girls and dropped the spoon, cold out of the water, right on the most logical part of her anatomy. The target turned over, took one look, and let out a scream which drowned out all of the cascades and waterfalls in the Smokies. There was a scurry of sunburned flesh scampering through the laurels as the two anglers turned and continued upstream.

When Fred and Charley returned to their vehicle after dark, weary and sore, the air in all four tires had been let out!

OTHER PRE-1996 PUBLISHED BOOKS YOU MIGHT WISH TO LOCATE ON this subject include Papa Was A Fisherman: Memories of the Great Smokies by Joe B. Long (1969), Twenty Years Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies by Sam Hunnicutt, and On The Spine of Time: An Angler’s Love of the Smokies (1991) by another personal friend and neighbor in Homewood, Alabama, Harry Middleton When I left Tennessee for Alabama to start magazines, I lived only a block away from Middleton for over a year before running into him at the Piggly Wiggly. I am not sure which of us was the most surprised. I wish I had met him sooner.

Since my GSMNP fly-fishing book appeared in 1998, a bevy of latecomers have appeared. Longtime fishing pal and fellow Morristownian (as was Davy Crockett), H. Lea Lawrence wrote The Fly Fisherman’s Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Cumberland House, 1998). Lea was another valuable friend and mentor, and without question the most talented conversationalist ever to make a living in the outdoors business. Ian Rutter was the next to publish a guidebook, and this young fellow did a splendid job. I predict Smoky Mountains fly-fishermen will read Rutter’s prose for many years to come.

The most recent book on fly-fishing in the Smokies was penned by North Carolinian Jim Casada, whom I have known for many years. When I launched Southern Sporting Journal, its fly-fishing column was written by my close friend, Jim Bashline, former editor at Field & Stream. After only a couple of issues, Jim passed away unexpectedly. In a pinch, I decided to give the upshot Casada the publication’s fly-fishing column. In retrospect, I am quite pleased to have given him such a prestigious break early in his career. However, while I agree with others that his prose is largely characterized as convoluted ramblings, clearly Casada is knowledgeable of park waters in North Carolina. His book also does an excellent job of supporting the information presented in my first fly-fishing guide to the Smokies.

The only complaint I have received about my previous books is that they revealed too many formerly secret fishing spots to interloping Yankees. In that respect I believe I also have misgivings, but from the many letters I have received over the years, I think I did more good than bad with my efforts. My first book on fishing in the Smokies was the beginning of an outdoor writing career that has spanned five decades. In the late 1980s when I was still keeping track of such things, I had sold over 10,000 articles and columns.

Becoming an editor in the 1990s, I started more than two dozen sporting titles (plus one on NASCAR racing and polo). Some of them, such as Whitetail Journal, remain in publication.

During the last 20 years I have dedicated well over half of my effort to ghost writing for so-called celebrity hunters and fishermen. It’s a quick buck, no hassles with young editors, and I don’t have to kill or catch every damned critter that I write about under the names of others. Additionally, I have hosted a number of television shows, my favorite being Bassin’ Mexico, which we did for four years. It took about six weeks of fishing in Mexico per season of television. On one morning trip there between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m., Wild Bill Skinner and I caught and released over 40 bass that topped ten pounds. The largest exceeded 16 pounds. There is a clip on YouTube of Wild Bill wrestling what was surely a new-world-record largemouth bass. I can be seen behind him. The guide knocked the fish off the bait at the side of the boat. The last time I looked, that clip had over 200,000 views.

Over the years I have hunted and fished everywhere from Alaska and Africa, to Chile and Scotland. I have fly-fished for Atlantic salmon with Ted Williams on the Miramchi River, bowhunted with Fred Bear at Grouse Haven, hunted caribou and mountain lion with Bob Foulkrod, and drank whiskey around campfires since I was 12. For a while I was not as ever-present in the Smokies as I was in the old days. However, everywhere I went, I measured it against these mountains. My epitaph will read, He went there, did that, and sold the T-shirt on Ebay.

When it came to being a topnotch fly-fisherman or archer, I even disappointed myself most of the time. I have grown as accustomed to being told, “I thought you could fish or shoot better than that.” When it comes to fly-fishing in the Smokies, I apply the same reasoning that I have long used for sex. It is less consequential to be the best angler, so long as I get to go as often as I am physically able to do so. Fishing is fun. Writing this book is fun. Neither requires the brilliance of a rocket scientist, or for that matter, even the ability to rebuild a carburetor.

One last word. Insofar as I have outlived most of the people I acknowledged in my past fishing books on the Smokies, I have decided not to list any this time. Greg Ward can repay his debts via that bit of print.

Tight lines,

Don Kirk

Montevallo, Alabama

(it’s a damned state …)

2010