Perhaps we humans could be considered semi-aquatic ourselves, so strongly does water attract us. In the Smokies people love to visit waterfalls, plunge into favorite swimming holes, play among the rocks and white water, and fish up and down the streams. One of my favorite activities is simple stream-watching. Just pick a sunny rock, sit down with your lunch, and watch. That’s all there is to it. Trout will eventually grow bold enough to come out of hiding. Birds fly out of the dense forest to feed in the sunlit shrubs along the stream. Butterflies wander down this open avenue, and dragonflies dart after winged prey. Sometimes the unusual happens. One fine October day as I was just finishing my sandwich, a little red squirrel appeared on the opposite shore, edged down a rock to the water, and plunged in. It drifted with the current and then scrambled out on a rock near me. A swimming squirrel I had never expected to see.
In the Smokies you are seldom far from the sound of water. These tumbling streams—the Little Pigeon, the Oconaluftee, Roaring Fork, Hazel Creek, and all their many brothers—have voices as various as a hound dog’s. They talk, murmur, shout, and sing, rising and falling in tone. Porters Creek once actually convinced me that people were talking and playing guitars on its bank. This is the soul music of the mountains.
Smokies Trout
Brook trout, or “spec,” are a glimpse of nature at her best. Their colorful delicacy is a sharp contrast to the mountains’ mass. The three-toned fins most easily distinguish it from other species while it swims. A mountaineer here once paid the local dentist 200 trout—caught in a morning—for some dental work, as attested by account books. Park regulations now prohibit catching the brook trout because it has lost so much of its original territory that its numbers have been severely reduced.
Brown trout, a European fish, has entered the park recently. It inhabits the park’s lower waters, which provide the warmer, slower conditions it prefers. It will eat its own young as well as those of competing rainbow and brook trout.
Rainbow trout were introduced from the West during the logging era via milk cans to improve fishing. They are larger and more aggressive than brookies.
The streams and rivers of the Smokies are famous for their purity. All who come to these mountains are impressed by the beauty of the waterways that have carved their way into the lush wilderness. More than 300 streams flow throughout the park. To many of us these streams mean only one thing, trout. Actually, more than 70 species of fish have been collected in the park, such as chubs, shiners, minnows, dace, catfish, suckers, sculpins, darters, and even lamprey.
Trout live in fast-flowing water where their streamlined bodies enable them to maintain themselves in the current, often close to the stream bottom. Brookies, especially, require such pure water that they are often considered a clean water “index.”
This little creature is known as a mayfly, one of the five insects most widely imitated by artificial fly patterns. The imitations seek to simulate, as dry, wet, or nymph patterns, the insects’ larval and adult stages and their aquatic habits.
Male Adams
Dark Cahill
Olive Caddis
Leadwing Coachman
Yellow Hammer (antique gold)
Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear
Adams Variant
Royal Wulff
Light Cahill
Secret Weapon
Yellow Hammer (peacock)
Muskrat Nymph
Yellow Forney Creek
Humpy or Guffus Bug
Grey Hackle Peacock
Yellow Wooly Worm
Light Cahill Nymph
Tellico Nymph
To rile up trout anglers just assert that one fly pattern is the best. But in fly fishing areas such as the Smokies, a few patterns inevitably emerge as favorites. Here as elsewhere, most artificial flies imitate five varieties of insects common to most waters: mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, alderflies, and ants. There are, in all, about 5,000 sorts of human-tied flies in existence. Does that sound overwhelming? Well, there are probably hundreds of thousands of varieties of insects which trout may feed upon at one time or another. The following advice will help you narrow your choice.
Dry Flies Mayfly imitations: Light Cahill, Quill Gordon, Royal Coachman, Dark Hendrickson. Caddis imitations: Henryville Special. Ant imitations: Black Ant, Red Ant.
Wet Fly and Nymphs Black Woolly Worm, Hendrickson, Light Cahill, Hare’s Ear, March Brown.
Streamers Olive Mateuka, Muddler Minnow (imitates grasshopper or sculpin).
Watch out for low-hanging branches!
Female Adams
① Head ② Wing ③ Body ④ Tail ⑤ Hackle
Choosing a pattern may challenge today’s trout angler in the Smokies, but choosing your bait does not. Fishing is confined to artificial lures only. No bait is allowed. Pictured here is Mrs. Clem Enloe. She was 84 years old and lived on Tight Run Branch when Joseph S. Hall took this photo. She was the last person—and the only one in her own day, in fact—allowed to use worms as bait in the park. She was also allowed to fish here any season of the year because she flat refused to obey the new park’s newly-instituted fishing regulations. Park rangers didn’t have the heart to throw the book at her. “I was told that if I took her a box of snuff, she would let me take her picture,” photographer Hall said. That’s the snuff in her blouse. Someone later suggested that the rangers should have tried snuff too.
We ask that you, however, please follow all fishing regulations!
Logging
“These are the heaviest and most beautiful hard-wood forests of the continent,” read a 1901 report from President Theodore Roosevelt to Congress. Lumber entrepreneurs were impressed, and the Little River watershed was sold that year for about $9.70 per hectare ($4.00 per acre)—all 34,400 hectares (85,000 acres) of it! Throughout the Smokies, entire watersheds were staked off like mining claims. Largest of all was a timbered plot owned by the Champion Coated Paper Company. It included Deep Creek, Greenbrier Cove, and the headwaters of the Oconaluftee River.
Horse team hauling logs
Logging came to the Smokies on a large scale about 1900. Settlers had always cut trees here, but the lumber companies and their money and methods injected a major new element. Instead of a few oxen dragging heavy logs to mill, the lumber companies introduced railroads, steam loaders, and steam skidders on the landscape. As you drive from Elkmont toward Townsend along the park road, you are driving atop the old railbed that was laid down by the Little River Logging Company.
New towns sprang up: Elkmont, Crestmont, Proctor, Ravensford, and Smokemont. These provided something new to the Smokies, a cash market. For a time, one egg would “buy” a child a week’s supply of candy. Local families sold farm products to the loggers and sawmill men.
Steam-powered saw
Cut lumber
The Smokies yielded board feet of lumber by the millions. Cherry was the most valuable wood, and most scarce. Tall, straight yellow-poplar turned out to be the most profitable because of its large volume.
Fires and Flooding
The devastation seen in the photograph is the aftermath of a fire that was set by sparks belched out of logging equipment, an unfortunate source of several devastating fires in logging’s heyday.
The ravages of logging led to fires, and the fires led to flooding. Many fires were set by the flaming sparks from locomotives or log skidders. More than 20 disastrous fires took place in the 1920s alone. A two-month series of fires burned over parts of Clingmans Dome, Silers Bald, and Mt. Guyot. Intense destruction occurred in the Charlie’s Bunion area of The Sawteeth in 1925. Hikers on the Appalachian Trail still see the effects of this fire.
The fires created conditions for massive flooding. Parched soils were no longer secured by living roots and the dense mat of plants that makes the Smokies world famous today. Streams and rivers flooded, carrying unusually heavy loads of sediment. These conditions were intolerable for the native Southern Appalachian brook trout and apparently speeded their disappearance from lower elevations.
Rainbow trout were introduced and proved able to survive. More recently brown trout were successfully introduced. The brookies now occupy less than half the territory they did in the 1930s.
Some flooding is still common today. This is natural. The Smokies get their fair share of rainfall, making seasonal flooding expected. And every few years prolonged or bad storms can cause unusually heavy flooding of the streams and rivers. Here you see the Little Pigeon River in flood near park headquarters in 1979. Whenever Smokies streams or rivers are flooded it is very dangerous to attempt crossing them. Don’t try it. Revise your itinerary instead.
What about fires today? Lightning-caused fire is as ancient as the mountains themselves and has always been a part of the forest’s life process. Some tree species actually depend on fire for regeneration, such as the pin cherry. And the heath bald shrubs, such as blueberry and mountain-laurel, prosper after a light burn. Fire is necessary as well to dozens of flowering plants which quickly seed new forest openings the fire creates.
We have long viewed fire on wildlands as a catastrophe, and indeed it is often a piteous sight. But the urge to suppress fire completely sometimes results in other unsatisfactory conditions. On many large public land areas limited wildfires are now allowed to burn if they don’t threaten private property or human lives.
Fire-fighting airplane
Fire-fighters on the ground
