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SWJr and I spent the last week of June in the Smoky Mountains and Camp Daniel Boone Boy Scout ranch. The weather was nice high in the low 80s and lows of 40 or so one night. The camp has all of the amenities like a rock wall, shooting ranges (shotgun, rifle, black powder and archery), a turn of the century village (blacksmithing, axe throwing, and pottery) and the swimming hole. The swimming hole is a largish pond where the bravest of the scouts learn to swim, canoe, kayak (in little 5 foot long white water kayaks), row and lifeguard. The water temps average somewhere between "way too dang cold" to "f'ing freezing". There are also trout in the pond. Most of the trout in the pond grow in a pond and until they swim downstream from a big truck into the stream but there are also some Brown trout, and some smaller native ?? trout (white tipped fins). Each participant is allowed to catch two trout per day and they are not allowed to catch and release due to the high mortality rate of farm raised trout.

I fished Monday through Thursday (we cooked the fish and hushpuppies on Thursday and I did not want to try to pack trout home) and I caught two trout each day except for only one on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I "helped" three or four Scout finish their merit badges by either casting or casting / hooksetting trout as well. I only took the camera along Tuesday to get some photo proof. All of my trout were the stocked variety of rainbow (hybrid?).

I also completed my Adult Merit Badge course and won (tied) the best entree in the Dutch oven cookoff (Greeen chile chicken enchilada bake - mine vs. feta cheese and spinach stuffed chicken wrapped in bacon - theirs.)

Here is a picture for cotton. The boys started a pickup ultimate game in front of the camp lodge / mess hall.



Here are the fish from Tuesday - pretty much cookie cutter trout. I used the 5 wt here and on most days. The 3 wt was more fun but was too hard to get far enough out past the spincast line. (The imaginary line around the perimeter of the pond where scout with spincast rods terrorize the trout for 20 hours a day.)





Final lesson learned : if you cast for four or five days several hours each day the cast do get longer (at least for the first two hours of morning).

looks like a great time!
trout on a 3 or 5 wt can be a blast.
the lodge doesn't look to shabby either.
thanks for sharing.

btw, what were they hitting?

I had the flies listed in the first attempt to post yesterday when the internet ate my post. Mostly I pulled some dry flies out of my 20 Orvis trout flies for $10 with free shipping sampler. The other scoutmaster who grew up in the area used a 5wt with a size 6 hook or so and half of an earthworm working uphill dinking and dunking in the creek and was very successful.

3wt was something similar to a gnat probably size 14 hook and not a whole more to it other then the hook. 5wt was some type of parachute (Adam's? maybe you can see it peeking out in the upper trout's mouth) and only picked up one on the 7wt on a gummy worm (early I was told minnows were the ticket.) Fishing pretty much entailed a blind cast to an area where the trout were rising and let it drift blown by the wind for about a minute and then move to the next surface disturbance. You could sight cast to fish in the shallow that only moved when the scouts hit them witha roostertail but that didn't result in a lot of fun. The biggest challenge was casting as there were two area to backcast one involved frequently stopping midcast and scout or leaders walk right by clueless. The other had a forty foot high dam forty feet from the surface of the water (extreme highcasting plane). You weren't allowed to fish from the "waterfront" and you weren't allowed to get in the water anywhere outside of the waterfront.

Scouts caught trout on roostertails and Mepps spinners, or earthworms / marshmallows under a cork. Sweet corn was against the rules given that these fish ate corn for years on the farm and made it too darn easy to catch them.

On Wednesday it was windy with lots of debris on top so I intentionally drowned the parachute and it worked better for that scenario. The rest of the fish were rising to the flies up top. I could see about half to the takes and a whole lot of rises with refusals. Never really changed out the flies once they started taking. I did have to swap the leader after a bad day of tired / lazy casting though. I was able to get the Scouts to hookset the fish (on my BPS / Cabelas 5wt) by having a good angle and polarized glass. I was not too willing to lend them my Costas though.

I did have one kid try to break the rod on the third fish I hooked / he fought when he decided to yank the fish out of the water and hit the rock face. I let his buddy catch the next one. Kid one went back to "spearfishing" with his whittled stick and twine. I think he may have been off his meds while at camp but I'm not really that kind of doctor.

Shorewalker wrote: I let his buddy catch the next one. Kid one went back to "spearfishing" with his whittled stick and twine. I think he may have been off his meds while at camp but I'm not really that kind of doctor.

i can almost see the letter home to his parents.

"It is with deep regrets that we are sending this letter home about johnny....."

These are the best times, though you might not always think so. I taught a kid how to fly cast in Canada a week ago and it was so cool to see his excitement. Enjoy!

abcarias wrote:These are the best times, though you might not always think so. I taught a kid how to fly cast in Canada a week ago and it was so cool to see his excitement. Enjoy!

You are so right, Steve. You took the time to show someone something new and wonderful. I'm sure it made a difference in his life, as well as your own.

I watched a friend today demonstrate, with relish, some new fishing techniques and wonders of an oyster bar. We saw the "student" later who was beaming with pride from his success.

It's the little things.

Good to hear Greg.