Head for the Mountains Archives - Page 9 of 19

June 2, 2026

Dropper flies can be dynamite on heavily pressured trout waters.

Drop a dropper on trout

Droppers give fly fishers the advantage of fishing a dry fly and a nymph at the same time, an especially effective measure when it’s not obvious how trout are feeding. […]

Fishing small, backcountry streams is the key to successful, late-summer fishing.

Late-summer trout fishing requires a slow hand, patience and endurance. Hatches are fewer, and as water temperatures rise, trout seek cooler places in streams: undercut or overgrown banks and deep pools. […]

Fishermen can fish streamers either downstream or upstream, although they might be more effective downstream.

Sculpzilla: king streamer

Robert Satterwhite

Streamers are flies that imitate a variety of aquatic life, especially minnows, and when fly fishers fish big waters for big trout, they’ll usually tie on a streamer. […]

Mike Kesselring fishes Rough Creek in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

A fly in the ointment

Robert Satterwhite

Mike Kesselring of Bryson City has, by his count, 7,500 trout flies, a collection that includes dry flies, wet flies, nymphs, streamers and terrestrials that he has accumulated over 25 years, and, he said, “The only flies I’ve ever tied were at the end of a tippet.” […]

Trout are raised in hatcheries and stocked in hopes that they’ll wind up on an angler’s dinner table.

April is new beginning

Robert Satterwhite

I’m old enough to remember when the trout season on hatchery-supported streams closed in the fall and remained closed until the first Saturday in April. […]

This beautiful brown trout was caught in Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which has more than 1,000 miles of trout streams.

A trout angler’s paradise

Robert Satterwhite

It is possible to fish a different trout stream every day for a year and cover only a fraction of the streams in western North Carolina. […]

The author supervises his granddaughter on a trip to the Tuckasegee River upstream from the delayed-harvest section.

Don’t miss the other Tuck

Robert Satterwhite

On just about any day, fair weather or not, the delayed-harvest section of the Tuckasegee River in Jackson County is crowded with trout fishers, either wading or floating the stream. […]

Tying flies to replace ones you’ve lost or simply adding new patterns is a great task for too-cold-to-fish days.

Don’t waste the winter

Robert Satterwhite

January and February usually are the harshest months, with cold, ice and snow, but the sun shines frequently enough, even in the dead of winter, to provide pleasant fishing respites from the cold. […]

Drifting a nymph through deep holes is an accepted way to catch sluggish trout hanging along the bottom.

Slow down and go deep

Robert Satterwhite

Spring is undoubtedly the ideal trout-fishing season, but trout fishing in the winter also has its merits. What most winter anglers discover is that they catch fewer, but larger, fish. […]

Brook and brown trout are fall spawners, especially in smaller streams.

It’s prime time for trout

Robert Satterwhite

November can be a tough time for fly-fishing with all the new leaf fall in the streams. Consider snagged leaves on retrieves as a normal, if not annoying, part of the normal fishing day. […]