North Carolina

Western North Carolina contains the most extensive wild trout habitat in the eastern United States, a landscape of steep river gorges, high-elevation balsam fir forests, and cold-water streams that drain the southern end of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. From the border of Georgia to the Virginia line, the mountain counties of WNC hold thousands of miles of publicly accessible trout water managed by the state, national forests, and the National Park Service.

The Nantahala River below Nantahala Lake is the region's signature tailwater — a steep, technical freestone flow that produces excellent rainbow and brown trout in one of the most dramatically beautiful gorges in the Appalachians. The Davidson River draining DuPont State Forest near Brevard is a celebrated wild trout stream known for its technical dry fly fishing and exceptional wild brown trout. The Chattooga River forming the Georgia-South Carolina border offers challenging wade fishing in remote wilderness terrain.

Above 4,000 feet, the streams of the Pisgah, Nantahala, and Cherokee national forests harbor native Southern Appalachian brook trout — a genetically distinct population that has occupied these streams for millennia and represents one of the most conservation-significant freshwater fish in the region. Sight-fishing to wild brookies in a moss-lined mountain stream, surrounded by the biodiversity that makes the southern Appalachians one of the most ecologically rich temperate forests on earth, is an experience that belongs entirely to this corner of America.