Tennswede: Hazel Creek Adventure May 23-25, 2009

So, after about three years of thinking about it and ten years or more reading about it, I finally made it to Hazel Creek. I went with my buddy Pete from Maryville, Tn. We took the boat shuttle at about 9 AM on Saturday morning. After about an hour and a half of hiking we settled in at camp site #85 also called "Sawdust Pile". We cooked some lunch and decided afterwards to hike up to Bone Valley to do some fishing and sightseeing. We stopped at the "Hall Cabin" and rested for a while. I was almost falling asleep at the cabin due to being tired. Pete thought his stories about Colorado put me to sleep. We spoke with a nice gentleman from Powell, TN who was hiking down from the "big hill". I only caught one small bow on Bone Valley Creek. We hiked down to camp to fix some supper and headed out for the "evening hatch". At about 8 PM a fairly heavy Yellow Sally egg laying flight began. I took one 10" Brown and a 9" Bow on a Yellow Stimulator size 14. Both fish were actively feeding on top. The darkness came fast and the evenings total came to 3 bows and one brown. I had a hard time sleeping on my thermarest pad. I definitely need to upgrade ot an inflatable. We had to listen to some party folks who shared the campsite. I got in a couple of hours of sleep. Decided to get up early to walk up to a spring about a mile and a half above our camp. It was tasting wonderful. After lunch we kind of relaxed and waited on the Sunday evening emergence of flies. I had hoped for an even better egg laying flight. To much dismay I only found sporadic activity. I found some feeding fish about five minutes before complete darkness and I lost several bows. Only landed two small rainbows on Sunday night. Monday we got up early and everything was somewhat damp after the Sunday night drizzle. We hiked down to meet the boat and the hike out was a little hard on my psyche. It was a wonderful trip but it wouldn't have been so fun without the good sport of Pete Czornohus who is a real outdoorsman who knows his way around and is very great in estimating distances and such. I hope to go soon again but have to recover, I did about 24 miles in two days and I feel somewhat drained but in a good way.