October: Is it fall yet? | Mainely Fly Fishing Blog

I don’t have as much to report on New England fishing during October because I was traveling. My wife and I took our small RV and drove down the Appalachian Mountains all the way to Florida, and then we kept going to the Gulf.

Lindsey and I mostly took in the sights, enjoyed camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and hiked part of the Appalachian Trail for old time’s sake (we through-hiked it in 1983.)

We did squeeze in some fishing of course. We took a day and fished the Davidson River for wild browns. A “river” in the North Carolina mountains seems more the size of a creek or small stream in Maine. Gorgeous water, particularly with the leaves turning, and we managed to fool a few small browns in the morning on small streamers and nymphs.

Each pool or deep run seemed to hold a few wild browns, but they weren’t easy to catch.

The smaller browns were as bright as a new penny.

Later on, we were sight fishing some massive wild browns that hang out in a shallow and silty section below the hatchery – the added nutrients provide a bonanza of midges and other invertebrates, I guess. I managed to hook and land a beautiful fish on a zonker-type streamer I have written about several times, including in the Maine Sportsman.

Not a surprise, the bigger browns were in the deeper and slower runs.

We could see half-a-dozen big browns in this pool.

This brown is one of the largest I have landed and was well past 20 inches.

We also floated Tennessee’s Watauga River, a tailwater known for its big browns and rainbows. The dam operators keep the water levels fluctuating all day, so we really didn’t have a good chance at any of the very spooky big browns, but we had a steady day with browns and rainbows of various sizes landed consistently. Lindsey landed both a three-pound rainbow and a cutbow. I caught the largest brown.

A double! That is when you know the action is getting hot.

My understanding is that the weather in New England stayed freakishly warm and folks fishing for fall-stocked trout or fishing other waters that stay open caught some nice fish because the water stayed so warm. Some rivers such as the Presumpscot River were tough to fish because of the high flows.

I came home after three weeks, expecting my gardens to be frost killed and was surprised to see that we had not had a killing frost, so I just kept picking tomatoes, peppers, beans, radishes, squash, etc. as well as fresh cut flowers such as sunflowers, glads, and zinnias. Just crazy.