Skunked ... again.

I may not have found brook trout in East Tennessee, but I'd be there today if I didn't have to work

Good morning from Porte’s hometown of Martinsburg, where some rain is in the forecast this weekend, but highs are about where I like them, below 60 degrees.

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Last week I was too busy having a good time to write a proper post, but I did send you a picture and asked you where I was. I offered no prize for correct guesses (too cheap) except a mention, but that simple prospect was enough for some members of this fake society to respond. And if you guessed the Great Smoky Mountains like PCAS readers Chris Byrd and Judy Hinnerichs did, you would have hit the nail on the head.

The Smokies — what a great place. Porte traveled there in the 1850s to gather fodder for his travel series A Winter in the South. He’d been given a blank check by Harper’s New Monthly Magazine to go where he wanted and write what he would following the smash success of The Virginia Canaan, the illustrated article that put Porte on the map as a literary star in 1853, much as the Appalachian Trail travel book A Walk in the Woods did for Bill Bryson in 1998— at least for American readers in Bryson’s case. He was already a popular travel writer in the U.K.

Porte took advantage of Harper’s largesse to follow up on his success writing about the high mountain region of what is now West Virginia with four 1850s travel series — Virginia Illustrated, North Carolina Illustrated, A Winter in the South and a Summer in New England.

For his series focusing on the south, Porte spent part of the winter in Jonesborough, in east Tennessee. My base last weekend was a couple of hours to the southwest of there, in the little hamlet of Walland. My wife (whose patience knows no bounds) and a couple of her old college friends rented a cabin outside Walland. I tagged along for the ride, figuring I could go brook trout fishing in the nearby national park when I got tired of hearing about bygone college days. I was the odd man out, after all. Plus, there are things I don’t really want to know about my wife.

Ignorance is bliss.

When we got to Walland, I consulted the internet and was delighted to discover that we were only about a half-hour drive from Lynn Camp Prong, billed by the internet as one of the best brook trout streams in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

It took some doing to get Lynn Camp back in shape for brookies. The stream has the same story as other eastern streams where mining, logging and the introduction of non-native brown and rainbow trout doomed the native population.

In 2008, though, the park embarked on a plan to restore brookies to a long stretch of Lynn Camp. Fisheries managers closed that section to fisherman and eradicated the competing rainbows and browns above the steep Lynn Camp Cascades, which is a short hike up a wide trail lined on one side by overgrown rhododendron thickets. The cascades serve as a natural barrier. Rainbows and browns can’t overcome it and Lynn Camp above the cascades is now said to offer some of the best brook trout fishing in the park.

At least, that’s what the internet says, but how would I know?

As usual, I got skunked.

I do know, however, that Lynn Camp is a stream to be admired. It’s rocky, as you would expect a mountain stream to be. Water flows through every nook and cranny, over and around boulders and forming small cascades that dump into pools that looked fishy to me, but again, how would I know?

I got skunked.

That’s not to say that I don’t think Lynn Camp Prong is worth it. I’d be casting a line there today if I didn’t have to work. But if you really want to know how the brook trout fishing is there, I’d ask a better fly fisher than me.

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What I’m reading:

• Middle East crisis — explained: (NPR)

• Mary Lou Retton's crowdfunding raises over $400,000 for health care (usatoday.com)

• October interims set to start Sunday; lawmakers to discuss education, health and more (West Virginia Watch)

• West Virginia gun deaths increased significantly after permitless concealed carry law (mountainstatespotlight.org)

• West Virginia is at center of billion-dollar Appalachian hydrogen hub project (WV MetroNews)

• The Beauty and Challenge of Fly Fishing for Wild Trout - Men's Journal | The Endless Season (mensjournal.com)

• The Best Fall Cocktail Is The Applejack Rabbit -- Our Recipe (uproxx.com)