By Joe Woody
I’ve been giving entirely too much thought to a social media post I read last month. Why? I don’t know.
The premise of the post was fairly benign, but its conclusions have done nothing but set off little back and forth battles between the voices in my head. Remember the movie “Twelve Angry Men”? It’s kind of like that.
One of my voices will stand up, clear his throat and with the tenor of a smooth southern lawyer, set forth reason after reason why the author of this inflammatory post has lost his marbles. His voice is so calm, and his delivery so rehearsed that even the most head-strong of the other voices begin to turn to his convictions.
Then when the argument is almost resolved, another more verbose and slightly inebriated troubler maker will jump up on the table, a hootin’ and hollerin’, banging his fist and kicking stuff, screaming at everyone that all their conclusions are completely cockamamie horse-crap.
What in the world could be causing me this much consternation?
Can you believe somebody actually tried to name the top ten trout streams in North Carolina? I mean…what the heck? There are far too many variables to go into that algorithm.
Here are just a few categories that could sway the list from person to person:
Experience
Physical Endurance
Rod Selection
Bait Preference
Targeted Fish
Stream Rules
Stream Size
Location
ETC, ETC, ETC
I know many people who would never list their favorite streams, if for no other reason than to keep people away from said stream. I’m sure there are also more devious fishermen out there who would name a stream because they know it’s their main competitor’s favorite waterway, thus ruining the spot for their lifelong antagonist.
There are those fishermen whose favorite streams are blue lines on a map and have no names other than the names they and their buddies have given to it. I’ll give you an example…”Camp Coon Dog”. Just ask Ben Bailey. He knows where it is.
There is just too much water in our mountains to narrow a list down to simply the “ten best streams.” Yes, there are the obvious ones—Nantahala, Hiawassee, The Tuck, Davidson, Watauga, New, and on and on. But just by naming those, my inner voices have kicked back into full argument mode.
Perhaps we should make a list of our top 100 streams…would that stop the voices in my head? Probably not…Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone has 800 miles of viable trout streams! Add to that the Pisgah National Forest and Nantahala National Forest…well, you get the picture.
Most of my favorite streams are sentimental. They’re my favorite places to go simply because of the memories I’ve made on their banks with the people I love. Some are incredibly hard to fish. Some are stocked streams where you can literally step on the trout as you walk up stream. Some have ridiculously hard trails leading to them, while others are roadside. Some are tiny creeks you can jump over. Others must be fished from a drift boat.
What really matters is making the commitment to spend time in different types of streams until you find the water that’s right in the slot of what makes you happy. Of course, that’s when you’re liable to make a list of your favorite streams, causing my inner voices to resort to fisticuffs.
By the way…here are the top five you should visit to make my life-long nemesis mad enough to spit nails:
Davidson River
Tuckaseegee River
Watauga River
Laurel River
Green River
But, by all means, trust me and don’t waste your time on Cataloochee Creek. There are no fish there and its ugly.
Stable Rocks, JW
Joe Woody is Co-Publisher of The Angler Magazine Great Smoky Mountains with his wife Debra. He is an Army Veteran and a self proclaimed “Adventure Angler”. You can usually find him wandering around Western North Carolina telling fishing lies. He is also a baseball nut and a crazy FCS Football fan. He has a Bigfoot magnet on the back of his truck.