I hooked and landed a fish on my first cast, but the morning’s reward came even before that. Reward came the moment my daughter Autumn and I stepped out of the woods to descend the final slope to the edge of the Chattooga National Wild & Scenic River.
We’d hiked a little less than a mile down a lightly used trail after driving a few miles down rough Forest Service roads and had ducked through a rhododendron tunnel to get to the river.
Walk-in spots are special, from my perspective, and even modest effort reaching a fishing location adds a value that’s hard to rightly quantify. There’s a bit of extra ownership of the spot and the day, and every fish feels a little more earned.
Don’t get me wrong. When I can hop out of the car, walk a few steps to the water and start catching fish, I’m always thrilled to do so, and I’m not trying to make some snobby claim of walk-in fishing trips or catches somehow counting for more.
For me, sometimes the hike in and out are part of the adventure, and an added value comes in finding little or no company at water’s edge and finding an area that seems lightly fished. Autumn and I fished all morning and never saw anyone else.
Of course, the spot we fished has its own set of rewards. We reached the river beside a fabulous green pool, flanked by a 200-foot cliff, with rapids upstream and downstream and car-sized boulders to climb and fish between. I’ve fished a lot of marvelous spots on the Chattooga but can only think of one that might rival where we were from a scenery standpoint.
We also caught quite a few fish, which never hurts. I can truthfully say, though, that I would have very much enjoyed our morning adventure even if we hadn’t caught a fish.
If you’d to check out our morning of fishing, I shared a video on the Fishing on Foot YouTube channel.
Hike-In River Bass Fishing Adventure with my Daughter
https://youtu.be/Tcc56ma3k_I
