While most of the state enjoys warm water fishing, western NC boasts the highest point east of the Mississippi River (Mount Mitchell at 6,684 ft), part of the Great Smoky Mountains. With watersheds that remain intact, protected as part of … Read More
What is a wild trout stream? The NC “Wildlife Resources Commission” has one definition, the NC “Division of Water Quality” has another. For the water quality community, trout are a bit like the “canary in the coal mine”, signalling (via … Read More
As part of the state’s ongoing water quality monitoring, the NC DENR/Division of Water Quality samples fish populations accross the state. Since 1990 more than 875 sites across the state have been assessed by the wadeable stream fish community assessment … Read More
The Great Smoky Mountains are one of the last preserves of wild trout water in the deep south. Below, you see the park boundary (Green) and brook trout habitat quality as rated by the EBTVJ dataset. It’s clearly the best … Read More
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission lists several hundred stream segments as “Wild Trout Waters”. If you look at other data sets, it’s clear that this represents only a relatively small fraction of the total wild trout water in the … Read More
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission produces an excellent series of county maps that clearly show wild trout water. This is basically the same data as you can dowload for Google Earth as “NCWRC Listed WTW”, though the maps have … Read More
NC enjoys a fairly large swathe of highlands containing wild trout streams, including a large portion of Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It also enjoys some of the best documented streams (along with PA, NJ, and several other states). Be … Read More