Blue Lining the Smokies
Best Times To Go
The Smokies’ biggest problem is crowds of tourists clogging the roads and trails during summer. Avoid peak times at all costs. The park is open to fishing year-round. For the best shot at big browns, book a guide out of Townsend on a weekday in late October, (the leaf watchers choke the highways on weekends). Townsend and Gatlinburg both offer accommodations. Brook trout fishing is fantastic from April through June, but shuts down all winter.
Brookie fishing doesn’t require a guide, just a 2- or 3-weight rod and some time. For the most complete experience, through-hike the AT, sleeping in the camp shelters along the trail (be sure to book in advance through the Backcountry Reservation Office). Although you can bag brookies and big browns on the same vacation, cold fall weather tends to make brookies sluggish, and they feed actively only on the warmest days.
Blue-Lining Basics
Blue-lining involves a lot of hiking, some of which requires an overnight stay or two. Begin your trip by leaving behind anything you do not absolutely need. The first thing to go should be waders; they are irrelevant in the mountains and are suffocating in all but the coldest months. You can also make do with a backpack instead of a vest, especially a new fishing-oriented pack.
The heaviest thing you have to carry is water, but for a small investment you can buy a filtration pump and cut your load. After that, it’s the bare essentials: a 2- or 3-weight rod no more than 8 feet long, a reel (double-taper lines are nice in case one end gets chewed up), some tippet down to 6X in case the fish are jittery, a box of bushy flies, a snack, a map, and a light rain jacket. The rain jacket is not optional—in the Smokies it rains more than it doesn’t—and neither is the map. People die in the Smokies, and usually they are found without a map.
For overnight trips, bring a warm sleeping bag, a tent, and a partner. Camping alone in the mountains can be dangerous and, let’s face it, a bit lonely.
My personal experience provides the unstartling conclusion that the most important pieces of gear are your boots. To prevent blisters, select a pair of waterproof hiking boots or wading shoes that fit snugly. Wading shoes have the advantage of felt, but hiking boots support you better on the trail. I use perforated neoprene socks, which squish, to avoid a lot of blistering.
Before you go, buy a National Geographic/Trails Illustrated map of the Smokies and look at the area you plan to fish (nationalgeographic.com/maps). The closer together the topographic lines are, the steeper the climb. Climbing is a part of Smokies fishing, but try to start out where the lines don’t bleed together.
The Smokies are one of the last uninterrupted green spaces left in the East. The best way to experience their grandeur is on foot, high in the mountains, where unexpected bends or steep falls create surprising—and sometimes breathtaking—portals out of the forest.
While blue-lining will never supplant other types of fishing for most anglers, it is an undertaking that repays you for your efforts. It’s about more than the fishing, but the fishing is pretty darn good too. Whether you’re salivating over the idea of monster browns lurking unobserved next to millions of marching feet a year, or you just want to experience the thrill of holding a brook trout in its own millennia-old home water, your best bet is to strap on a pack, grab a map, and start walking.
Zach Matthews is a freelance writer and the editor of itinerantangler.com. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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