I attended the ROFF (the Rec.Outdoors.Fishing.Fly newsgroup) Fall Ball '99 from October 12th to 14th. This is my report. NOTE: my camera was not working very well so there aren't many pictures. Sorry.

Tuesday, October 12th

I picked up Billy the Kid at his house in Raleigh at about 7:30am and we headed west on I-40 in my jet black Ford Expedition—well, actually it’s a brown Toyota minivan, but a man can dream, can’t he? In the back of the car we had more gear than the local sporting goods store—eight fly rods, ten reels (including a couple of bait-chucking reels just in case things got really bleak), eight pairs of shoes, warm-weather clothes, cold-weather clothes, wet-weather clothes, a Coleman stove and lantern, four flashlights, and a huge bag of Tootsie Rolls. When I travel on business, it only takes me about 15 minutes to pack and I can fit everything into a single piece of carry-on luggage. But this trip was different—we were headed to the ROFF Fall Ball in search of monster trout and we had to be prepared for any situation.

After an enjoyable drive, Bill and I arrived at the KOA campground in Cherokee at about 12:30pm and walked over to the general store to buy a Cherokee reservation fishing license. That brought the total of required licenses for this trip to three: a regular North Carolina state license, the trout stamp, and the reservation tag. We parked the van at our KOA Kabin (a corny term meaning extremely small cabin) and immediately pulled on our waders and strung up our rods. I started out with my favorite rod, a 7' 4wt. Bill chose an 8' 5wt. Unpacking the rest of the junk would have to wait until later.

Steve Zimmerman (aka CodeMarine)

Bill Crone (aka Billy the Kid)

Rather than drive to an obscure stream, we decided to fish the creek that runs along the campground. Officially, it’s called the Oconaluftee River, and it’s hailed by the city of Cherokee as being one of the best trout waters in North Carolina—which, if that’s true, is only because it’s stocked three times a week. I’m sure there are some big fish somewhere in that water because it has some nice holes (not to mention three stocked ponds next to the KOA campground), but we sure didn’t see any of them.

I started fishing a nice pool using a size 16 Yellow Humpy and immediately got several strikes. In fact, it seemed as though something was bumping my fly nearly every cast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually see the fish or set the hook. Perhaps they’ll take something smaller, I thought, so I switched to a smaller fly—a size 20 Sulphur as I recall—and I immediately started catching fish. I probably caught ten of them over the next half hour. Unfortunately, none of the fish were over three inches long. The following photo shows a typical specimen.

An Oconaluftee Whopper

I fished up and down a sizeable stretch of water and despite getting annoyingly frequent strikes from the minnow trout, I could not get a rise out of anything over three inches long. Still, the casting was enjoyable and the sound of the cold rocky stream was fantastic.

Although I’m a beginning fly fisherman with almost no experience on moving water, after about an hour of fishing, I started feeling pretty good about my timing and presentation. I have a lot yet to improve upon, but at least I was keeping the flubs and hang-ups to a minimum and there were occasional moments of drag-free drift. But my swelling pride was soon brought soundly back into check when I tripped over my own wading shoes and fell backwards into the water. From the pictures above, it doesn’t look like the water is deep enough, but I managed to find a hole with enough water in it to cover everything but the tips of my toes and the top of my hat. The only saving grace was that Bill was facing another direction and was far enough downstream that he couldn't hear the sharp cry I let loose when my waders filled with ice-cold water.

Sopping wet from head to toe, I decided to try my luck at the ponds. The woman at the general store told us that we'd have the best chance of success if we used whole kernel yellow corn (completely legal on the reservation, I presume). In fact, there were cans of corn for sale in the fishing supply aisle. We bought a can when we checked in (go ahead and make fun of us if you must, but we weren't about to get skunked on this trip, even if it meant bringing a couple of sticks of dynamite).

Regardless, I wasn't sufficiently frustrated to resort to corn, so I switched to my 8.5' 5wt travel rod and began fishing the pond.  I tried fly after fly and various streamers without any luck. Right before we called it quits, Bill finally managed to get several strikes and finally land a perky brown trout using his secret "Golden Terrestrial" pattern. I'm sworn to secrecy, so you'll have to ask him how he ties it, but I can tell you that it involves placing a fresh piece of something yellow on the hook of a size 16 Flying Ant.

At about 5:30 we headed over to the Alarka Creek Cabin where the rest of the group was staying (we didn't stay there because by the time we decided to go to the Ball the cabin was already full). Although I had exchanged emails and phone calls with many of the attendees, I had never actually met any other ROFFians.

Let me just say that although everyone looked quite a bit different than what I imagined, everyone was at least as friendly as I had hoped. The occasional flame that these guys deliver on ROFF might lead one to think that they are mean-spirited in real life. They are not. Everyone was very nice and completely willing to be accompanied by two newbies such as Bill and me. If you are new to fly fishing and have been intimidated by some of the ROFF old-timers, don't be. They were very happy to compart their knowledge, show us their fishing equipment, and share a laugh. Thanks guys, if you're reading this, for showing a couple of "trout virgins" a great time.

Anyway, about ten of us from the group went to the  steak house in Bryson City made "famous" during the spring ROFF clave. I say "famous" only because from what I could gather the food was disreputable when the ROFF crew last went there, but half the guys wanted to go there again anyway on the off chance they'd see the looker waitress who served them last May. She wasn't there, unfortunately, but the food was actually quite good.

The dinner conversation consisted primarily of a discussion of the relative merits of okra, whether or not Oprah Winfrey could get elected president, and a discussion of recent threads on ROFF. At one point Indian Joe announced that he was going to impose a  mandatory $1 charge for every subsequent reference to George Gehrke.

As dinner was winding down, Tom Brown and Walt Winter offered to take Billy the Kid and me to the Nantahala on Wednesday to catch big trout. We accepted, of course, and with that the day was essentially over.

Click here to read about Wednesday...