Dan Blanton and Lefty Kreh at Nacoochee Bend and Frog Hollow

Rex, Lefty, Jimmy, Dan

Henry Cowen recently hosted Dan Blanton and Lefty Kreh for some Lake Lanier striper fishing, and to help round out the trip, Henry arranged for the flyfishing icons to fish a couple days with us at Unicoi Outfitters. Dan's got a nice writeup over at his Fly Fishing Bulletin Board, here's an excerpt:

"The next two afternoons were spent trout fishing with the guys from Unicoi Outfitters Fly Shop, personally guided by Rex Gudgel and shop owner Jimmy Harris. We fished two different rivers and both were gorgeous pieces of trout water. I’d fished the second river, the Chestatee at Frog Hollow last year with Henry and Rex a beautiful place in every way. It was on this water that I experienced some hilarious afternoon dry fly fishing for trout so big they looked like steelhead holding in the run. I only hooked a couple of them but the follows and false rises from those monsters kept Henry and Rex, who were viewing Jimmy and me from the high bank, in stitches. I couldn’t see as well as they could but it was exciting nonetheless to hear their oozs and awes. I did hook and fight a monster that Jimmy estimated would have weighed eight or better pounds. When we waded out to the bar Jimmy wanted me to cast from, he said to Rex that I was going to hook a monster because he had forgotten the net. We’ll he guessed that one right. Indeed, I finally busted off the fish when it suddenly surged away when Jimmy touched its tail trying to hand-land it. It simply caught me asleep at the wheel. Hey, I don’t get to fish for monster trout every day. I was happy to just have hooked and fought it.

"Rex and Jimmy, both superb trout fly-fishers and guides, couldn’t have done a better job for Lefty and Me. Jimmy was my guide and I can’t tell you how many different rigs and flies he tied on for me, mostly because I kept tangling them up – we were nymph fishing with two flies below an indicator and I obviously needed more practice. Jimmy had the patience of a saint. The fishing was tough but we managed to hook a few. In fact, Lefty hooked quite a few but because of his limited mobility (bad knee) he lost many by not being able to follow them up or down the run. A number 20 midge doesn’t hold a big trout too well if you can’t finesse them."

Dan also wrote:

"The mornings were spent chasing stripers on Lake Lanier and the afternoons were spent pursuing trophy trout on gorgeous, Georgia mountain streams – private water that Henry had arranged for us to fish. Henry couldn’t have organized a better fishing program for us – stripers and spots in the morning, trout in the afternoon. I don’t know of many other places a fly fisher can do that." 

That last sentence is so true - we have a wealth of fly-fishing opportunities here in North Georgia!  To read the rest of the report, just head over to Dan's post on his Bulletin Board.  We were truly honored to have these guys fish with us.