Matthew, Drew my son, and I went fishing to Dupont State Forest near Hendersonville, NC Saturday. We took the easy and secluded 1.5 mile hike in to Wintergreen Falls to try our hand at fooling some of the plentiful rainbow trout. Aside from the sheer fright for Drew of seeing several horses on the trail up close and personal, the hike was pleasant and easy. The creek for the most part is heavily covered and difficult to fish, but it opens up a bit in the near vicinity of the falls.
Upon reaching the stream, we geared up with dry flies, and started fishing. In just the second pool, Drew and I had a couple of hits, landing an 8-9" rainbow trout. We worked upstream a couple more pools without action, to find Matthew coming down the stream. In addition to catching his first trout ever while fishing after just a few minutes on the stream, he inadvertently decided to put our newly introduced waterproof cell phone bags to the test. After not zipping one of the pockets of his vest properly, he dropped his cell phone (in the waterproof bag, fortunately) in the stream, where it sank to the bottom out of sight in one of the deeper pools. After 10 - 15 minutes of searching for it by feeling along the bottom with his hand, he was able to locate the phone, which was unharmed. What an unusual way to get a testimonial on one of our products.
We stopped for lunch at a spot overlooking a pool where a trout was sipping flies from the surface. Matthew couldn't resist the temptation to try a dry fly, and while he had a strike, the trout got off. After lunch we came to the falls, but there were a number of sight seers and swimmers in the pool, so we made the tough scramble up the makeshift trail above the falls, but we had no action up there. Next, we continued downstream to a couple more places that were somewhat open, where Matthew and Drew (with some help) each caught another wild rainbow trout. All trout were caught on dry flies, and released unharmed. Once again, the creek is very tight, so fishing it would be very difficult in most places.
Note that there are a number of streams in the forest, which, in times past was a corporate retreat for the Dupont corporation, but not all of them have trout. There is one Delayed Harvest stream in the forest, and several lakes, some of which have bass in them. There is even an old airstrip on one of the ridges. The forest has many miles of trail suitable for hiking, biking, and horseback riding. The fishing isn't the best, but there is enough action to make it interesting.