I set out on my first camping adventure this past Thursday night. I left straight from work. I set up camp at Paint Creek Campground. I stayed there for two nights. The campground is very nice and has obviously been renovated since the big flood in 01. I drove over to a new destination for me in Unicoi county. I fished this small mountain stream for a couple of hours during the heat of the day. Friday was very hot and muggy but the water temp on this stream was a cool 56 degrees. I managed to catch half a dozen scrappy bows but no brookies. There are brookies in this stream but I was a mile or so below their preferred habitat.
I drove back to the campground in the afternoon and cooked some burgers on my table top grill. I was purposely waiting on the evening hatch. I began fishing on Paint Creek upstream from the campground at about 5:30 pm. The water level was great and the temp right at 60. I quickly caught an eight inch brown and thought the feed bag was on. Boy was I wrong! I didn't catch anything further up so I decided to hike back down to the stocked part of the stream. I managed to loose a handful of stockers in quick succession. It was obviously not my day. I saw sporadic hatches of some kind of drake. It looked like green drake or gray fox. The fish were not really feeding and I believe the cold front hampered the fishing.
That night was really a change from the night before. It dropped down in to the fifties and Saturday was very windy and a lot cooler. I drove up to my favorite Carter County stream and got on the river at 10:30 am. The fishing here was about as difficult as the day before on the other stream. I had to fight to get any strikes. I caught 10 brown in five hours of fishing different parts of the stream. The biggest fish was a 12 incher. I quit right at dark after breaking for supper. Now waited a long drive back to Knoxville. I was dead tired when I got home but a good tired if you know what I mean.
