Hiking Hazel

One of North Carolina’s blue-ribbon trout streams beckons anglers to get away from it all.

Traveling up the Hazel Creek Trail into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park affords excellent trout fishing and so much more.

Each elevation change brings an appreciation for the Native Americans, settlers and pioneers who used to live off the land in this area — seemingly cut off from other concerns.

Fishermen must focus their efforts on setting up camp before they can enjoy the wild-trout streams and wonder what it took to scratch out an existence in such a rugged place.

Arranging transportation across Fontana Lake is the first step of the journey, which also includes reserving a campsite on the trail:

• The Proctor Camp very near the lake;

• The Sawdust Pile Camp 3½ miles up the trail;

• The Calhoun Camp 10 miles up the trail, just short of Newfound Gap, which leads to Clingman’s Dome, an alternate entry for the Hazel Creek Trail only used by hikers.

Anglers must contact the Fontana Village Resort Marina to secure boat transfer service across 10,230-acre Fontana Lake and to the national park. Day trips are available with local guide services for those not able to enjoy a longer stay.

No mechanized travel is allowed into the national park, so hikers must haul all provisions up the mountain in backpacks or wheeled carts. The latter allows campers to bring in tents, cooking equipment, lighting, coolers, and perishables — not to mention breathable waders, fishing vests and fly rods. Carrying gear three miles uphill is a chore to be sure, but an early challenge brings satisfaction to all that their time spent fishing will be earned.

It’s likely that you’ll meet other groups heading down the trail while you’re ascending, and brief exchanges of information lend a feeling of camaraderie. A cell-phone camera photo of a really nice brown trout from up near Sugar Valley Creek can set one’s imagination flowing, and those seen shaking their heads relay tales of woeful fishing.

Trout are not stocked inside The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and not everyone can crack the code and catch the wild trout of Hazel Creek, but everyone likes to try.

Gene Laney, a boat captain from Fontana Village, used to live on Hazel Creek at the Sawdust Pile — the camping area named for its proximity to an long-ago removed sawmill. In 1941, at the tender age of 14, he worked at Ritter Lumber Co., making 15 cents an hour — working like most other boys because all the young men were off fighting World War II.

“I have fished Hazel Creek from where you get out this boat all the way up to the headwaters,” he said.

Fishermen disembark the ferry with their gear packed onto the wheeled carts, sort of a Hazel Creek Trail phenomenon. With an open top, the wooden carts can haul all manner of gear, and after reaching camp, a board across the top can create the perfect table for cooking chores. For mental preparation, Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart is recommended as important reading for Hazel Creek rookies.

When the extended sunlight of a late summer afternoon beckons campers into the stream, it’s as if a weight of anticipation has been lifted. After donning a set of felt-soled waders — they provide sure footing on slippery and rounded stream rocks — an angler approached a likely pool on the stream.

Placing his dry fly on the water for the first time, a fish offered a strike, but his reaction was too slow and the fish was missed. After a few false casts, he waded to the next pool and caught a brown trout with red and brown spots that was nine inches long. The fish was admired and quickly released, and the fisherman enjoyed the fact that he was “back” fishing for trout in Hazel Creek.

There is always another pool upstream to tempt the angler to continue, and at the next pool, named the “Boat Dock,” some deer were grazing streamside. When startled, they crossed the stream like gazelles, seemingly impervious to slippery rocks.

Coldwater trout streams can hold red-eye bass and smallmouth bass — they signal the angler that he needs to move upstream and gain elevation to find better trout waters. On Hazel Creek, move way up to the skinny water if you want to find the native brook trout.

On the first full day of the trip, Harry Lipham of Waynesville headed back down the trail to fish a lower stretch of Hazel Creek, noticing dead and dying hemlock trees, killed by a fungus — similar to the way the Chestnut blight wiped out huge stands of chestnut trees early in the last century.

Lipham used a 3-piece, 9-foot, 4-weight flyrod outfitted with an STH reel. He tied on a black stonefly nymph, which soon thereafter produced a 7-inch rainbow trout. The morning was interrupted by the roll of thunder and a quickly-darkening sky.

The 20-minute hike back to camp and the safety of a tarp tied between two trees for just such a scenario was Lipham’s only goal as daylight turned to almost total darkness in the midst of the storm. Rain poured from the sky, and other fishermen soon appeared on the trail, looking like wet rats. Being Hazel Creek veterans, a block of fire-starter had been included in gear to make sure that wet wood wouldn’t preclude an evening campfire.

The next day, the fishermen headed well upstream, thinking clearer water would be found first at higher elevations. Knowing where to find trout after a deluge is the kind of tidbit that makes an outdoorsman tick.

Hiking along Gunlock Ridge until reaching some of the Hazel Creek headwaters, the fishermen split up. First, there is Bone Valley Creek, a tributary named for a herd of free-ranging cattle lost to an aggressive winter storm decades ago. Then, Sugar Fork Creek and Eagle Creek were forded — the skinny-water fishing in those streams call more for roll-casting and pin-point placement because of the mountain laurel and rhododendron encroaching on the streams’ banks.

Mike Dennis of Waynesville, who fished Bone Valley Creek, said, “Always keep your eye on the dry fly and be mindful of your line management.” Line management comes in two forms: taking care to keep flies from being hooked on hanging vegetation, mid-stream stickups and even wading boots; and keeping the line that lays on the water after a cast from creating drag — which will turn off the hungriest trout.

The plan for the final day was to use nymphs due to the rising waters and relative lack of success using dry flies. With a supper of wild trout planned, the change was necessary.

Bill Owen of Mills River showed the more inexperienced fishermen how to add a nymph, or dropper, to a dry-fly rig. Although trout will rise to eat flies at the surface, as much as 90 percent of their diet are nymphs, the developmental stage of insects that live on the stream’s bottom.

Owen tied a Palmer dry fly to his tippet, then attached a green inchworm dropper with a tungsten bead head using a Duncan loop knot, finished off with a strike indicator. An experienced fisherman recently back from a trip to New Zealand, Owen was using an 8-foot, 4-weight Lamiglas Appalachian Travel Series Rod with a Ross-Cimarron One reel.

Having brought two sons to Hazel Creek for the first time, Owen explained that the fishing was fun, but, “Just getting away into the Smoky Mountains is reason enough to hike up Hazel Creek Trail.”

The core group of fishermen has made the trip a dozen times since 1988, and photos, memories and fish tales seem to grow fonder with each telling. Camping on the Hazel Creek Trail in May, with temperatures still cool at 2,000 feet above sea level, guarantees a lot of togetherness as you begin and end your day at the campfire.

Lipham finished the trip with a splash. He struck gold while fishing near an abandoned copper vein and mined the upper waters of Hazel Creek for a 19-inch brown trout. The water temperature was 56 degrees and the air temperature was 65 when the trout took a gold-rib bead-head hare’s ear nymph, initiating a 20-minute fight.

That fish was enough for the rookies on the trip to appreciate the wild-trout fishery, and almost certainly ensured a return trip.