Mitchell River: good fishing, bad scenery

[flyakker]

This week I had the great fortune to spend a quality day with my oldest son fly fishing for trout on the DH section of the Mitchell River. Any day that you can spend with you kids is golden, and if you can spend that day fishing with them, well it's a real gem.

Despite some stiff breezes that challenged our casting, we landed a half dozen fish and hooked but lost just as many. We landed brookies and browns (see pic), largest about 11". Some were caught on dries and the rest on bead head nymphs and wooly buggers. All in all, it was a pretty good day for catching.

If you have not been to the Mitchell this season, be aware that there is a major logging operation going on in the upper reaches of the DH section, on the private land beyond where the gravel road ends. There were logging trucks and equipment everywhere, and lots of dust being kicked up that I'm sure is silting the stream. It's a real shame that what was once a mature hardwood forest filled with deer and wild turkey is now barren hillsides on both sides of the stream. This was not selective thinning, it's a clear cutting operation. This was always my favorite section of the Mitchell to fish, I'm going to miss the way it was.