Fishing The Cullasaja River In Franklin, N.C.

Fishing the Cullasaja River In Franklin, N.C. proved to be great fun this afternoon.

Although I'd much rather be fishing for reds and spotted sea trout in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, nailing a few trout, perch, and chubs is better than not fishing at all.

When I decided to go on a scouting trip to find some good trout fishing in the area, I picked up a map from the Franklin, N.C. Chamber of Commerce and started picking likely looking spots.

There are tons of places to fish in this area, but most are really tough to get into.  You have to be part mountain goat and have a good strong heart to walk into and back out of many areas.

This afternoon I picked a couple of new spots to fish and caught something at each.

The first was at a foot bridge that crossed the Cullasaja near Buck Creek Road.

The parking was easy for this spot and when I walked across the bridge, I spotted several decent sized fish in the deep pools.    A couple in their kayaks were floating down the river and when he mentioned that he saw a nice size fish, I decided to spend some time at the spot.

I caught a couple of bluegill on a Mepps spinner before switching to nightcrawlers.  Apparently, that's what the trout wanted because on the first cast into the riffles above a deep pool, I picked up a nice little brown trout which I quickly released.

I caught two more small trout at the spot and several small perch; all on crawlers before moving on.

I drove up towards Highlands, N.C. on Highlands Road and stopped at a pulloff next to a steep drop.  The water looked "fishy" so I skinnied down the hill and came to a neat little areas that produced a small brook trout and several creek chubs that seemed to always beat the trout to the bait.

After getting my fill of catching a mess of little creek chubs, I decided to try another spot but it started raining like crazy.

Usually the rain perks up the fishing and I was getting a couple of strong bites but after missing two more fish, I decided to hit the truck and call it a day.

I slogged back up the hill to the truck huffing, puffing, and soaking wet.

As I started up the truck, I realized that although the trout fishing in the area didn't measure up to catching a 30 " redfish in the Mosquito Lagoon, it was great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed catching these fish.  It's an entirely different type of challenge.

Till next time, Tight Lines.