Short casts: Brookies, clingers and stillwaters

Bringing brookies back to the Southern Appalachians

With all the divisiveness in the air these days, it’s refreshing to see people working together to protect fish that have lived in the same streams for almost 2 million years.

The brook trout, which first a

rrived in the southern Appalachians about 1.8 million years ago, has historically thrived in rivers and streams stretching from Maine to Georgia. But it has been under pressure since the influx of European settlers in the 1800s.

Read more at the Greenville Journal

Video spotlight

Brian Chan | Highway 24 from Corbie Fieldwalker Studio on Vimeo.

Watching Brian Chan fish reminds me that I know absolutely nothing about stillwater fishing.

Are you still using round flies for flat nymphs?

Klewein’s Flathead Nymph. Photo By: Louis Cahill via Gink and Gasoline

I’ve always felt like there was a long way to go when it comes to improving our clinger nymph imitations. Kent Klewein shows off a great, quick tie that looks pretty fishy.

If you take the time to to flip over enough rocks in moderate moving water you’re bound to find lots of Flathead Mayfly (Heptageniidae) clinger nymphs of various sizes.

Read more on Gink and Gasoline

The Citizen-Times profiles John Miko, Tenkara Evangelist and President of our Land-Sky chapter

I was a tenkara skeptic, until I got a 30 foot drag-free-drift through a stretch of choppy pocket water while keeping all of my line off the water. Well, to be honest, the big fat cuttie that destroyed my stonefly at the end of that gorgeous drift also had a lot to do with my conversion,.

John Miko is a tenkara evangelist. He fishes the rivers and streams with this technique developed in Japan more than 200 years ago. To him, it is the perfect approach for catching lots of fish in Western North Carolina. And he does catch a lot of fish.

Read more from the Citizen-Times

Until next time,
Brennan Sang

By Brennan Sang. I’m a father, a husband, a jack-of-all-web-trades, and an avid outdoorsman.