Soco Creek trout fishing with Pautzke Baits

Soco Creek in Cherokee is loaded with stocked trout

Anglers in the Carolinas have access to some top-notch trout fishing. To be sure, much of it is for stocked trout, but anglers who don’t mind that can have a blast at Soco Creek in Cherokee, N.C. This creek gets regular stockings from the Cherokee Indian Reservation.

When most folks think of stocked trout, they think of 10-inch fish and an occasional 15-incher. But anglers catch some considerably larger than this often enough on Soco Creek. A small percentage of stocked fish are much bigger. And rumor has it that the tribe is bumping up the number of large fish they stock this year.

The guys with Pautzke Baits fished Soco earlier this month and show how they landed one of the biggest rainbow trout they’ve ever seen in North Carolina.