Lisa and I hiked around the Panthertown Valley near Lake Toxaway today. In fact, this is right in the shadow of Cold Mountain, made famous by the (incredibly good and powerful) book by Charles Frazier. Lisa was kind enough to find us a place that had some amount of hiking and some righteous fishing – beautiful small stream with many native brook trout.

Once again, I didn’t see a bear, but we damn sure smelled one this time. We were going through a dense foliage area when we were both hit by a distinctive musky smell. “Bear,” said my companion. “Shoulda bought the bear-bell at the Mast General Store,” I thought. But I really do want to see one, so we’re getting closer.

I got quite a few strikes on various dry flies and managed to land one beautiful 7″ native brookie (which is all that’s in these streams). There may be something sweeter than dry-fly fishing for native brookies on a gorgeous Appalachian mountain stream. But it’s not immediately obvious to me what that would be. And yes, I think of Dean C. Jones at times like this.

And as a parting gift: here’s 30 seconds of Greenland Creek, with no commentary or anything. Just the sound of the stream.