Fly and Gear ordering and delivery: We can get flies to you within two to three business days from the time you place your order via Priority Mail. If you provide a budget for flies, we will select them to match the budget and get them to you on time for your trip. Please see the bottom of this column for ordering options.
We also have custom Perfect Fly selections in 3 different price ranges for this stream that come with or without fly boxes. They make excellent gifts. Click Here To Order or Call us at 800 594 4726 or email us at sales@perfectflystore.com.
Type of Stream
Tailwater
Species
Brown Trout
Rainbow Trout
Brook Trout
(Stocked)
Size
Medium Size River
Location
Western North Carolina
Nearest Towns
Dillsboro North Carolina
Sylvia North Carolina
Season
Year-round, Delayed Harvest Oct.
1-June 5 Hatchery supported waters
closed during the month of March
Access:
Good for wading, Fine for drift boats
Special Regulations
Delayed Harvest, single hook
artificial only, C&R only
Non-Resident License
State of North Carolina
Recommended Tackle & Gear
Fly Line:
4, 5 or 6 weight
Leaders:
Dry fly: 9 to 12 ft., 5 or 6X Nymphing:
71/2 ft., 3 or 4X, Streamers 0-2X
Tippets:
Dry fly: 5 or 6X, Nymphing: 3 or 4X,
Streamer 0-2X
Best Fly Rods:
Perfect Fly Supreme Four, Superb Five
or Ultimate Six
Fly Reels:
For 4/5/6 fly line
Fly Floatants and Misc Items:
Floatants, KISS Strike Indicators
Tools & Accessories:
Nippers, forceps, retractors, etc.
Fly and Gear ordering and delivery:
Email us at (sales@perfectflystore.com) with the dates you will be fishing and we will send you a list of our fly recommendations. We can get flies and gear to you within two to three business days from the time you place your order via Priority Mail. If you provide a budget for flies, we will select them to match the budget and get them to you on time for your trip. Your can also call us at 800-594-4726 and we will help you decide what flies and gear to use. All orders are shipped free in the U.S. If under a $100 order requiring Priority mail is a charge of only $8.10. Orders over a $100 are shipped free via Priority Mail.
Copyright 2016 James Marsh
Tuckasegee River Fishing Report November 20, 2024
All sections of the stream are flowing near a normal level and mostly clear. Our pre-rigged in tandem larva and pupa midge flies are working good as well as our sculpin streamers. We received two good reports from customers fishing this past week.
Afternoon Water Temperature: 48
Clarity: clear
USGS Stream flows at Bryson City: : 897 Cfs, 2.23 ft.
Recommended Trout Flies:
Brown Sculpin and White Belly Sculpin and Articulated streamers, size 6/4
Black Matuka and Olive Matuka Sculpin, size 4/6
Aquatic Worms, size 12, pink, red, and others
Midges: Cream and Red (Blood) midges sizes 20/22, larva, pupa and adult. Our larva and pupa midge flies, pre-rigged in tandem, are very popular here. You can fish them under a strike indicator keeping the larva fly near the bottom. https://perfectflystore.com/product/pre-rigged-tandem-midge-larva-pupa-tippet
Blue-winged Olives: size 16, nymphs, emergers, duns, spinners
Mahogany Duns, size 18, nymphs, emergers, duns and spinners
Perfect Flies are designed and tied to to imitate and behave like the natural foods the trout rely on to survive as much as possible. The more your fly looks like and moves through and on the surface of the water like the real things, the higher your odds of success.
Fly Fishing Tuckasegee River North Carolina: The Tuckasegee River begins in the North Carolina mountains from several tributary streams. It combines into two forks, the East and West, each of which is dammed. The cold water discharges combine into one river that provides a suitable habitat for trout for most of the year. The popular Delayed Harvest section is approximately five miles long and located between the small towns of Dillsboro and Sylvia North Carolina. It is heavily stocked by the state with brown, rainbow and brook trout. There are numerous parking pull offs along the North River Road that follows the stream closely. Access isn’t a problem.The stream can be easily waded unless water is being released. It can be floated by drift boat and other small vessels during the times water is being released. The Tuckasegee River will remind you of fishing a Western River in many ways. The surrounding scenery is not similar but the water looks much the same as some Western streams. There are numerous rock ledges crossing the river creating deeper areas of water and lots of riffles Where there are breaks in the ledges, there are long runs creating perfect places for the trout to feed.Be certain to check the water levels before you make a long trip to fish the Tuckasegee River. Two different dams can affect the flows. The links to your left shows the schedule of discharges. Also, keep in mind that the delayed harvest section of water isn’t the only part of the river that holds trout. Trout are present throughout the entire system including a few miles below the delayed harvest section. The delayed harvest section can become crowded at time, so keep in mind there are other areas to fish.If the flows are low enough to wade, you can wade the river just about anywhere. There are deep holes but they are mostly small areas you can wade around. You do have to watch where your stepping. Since it is quite wide in places, there is a lot of water to cover.The Tuckasegge River was one of the first North Carolina streams to be put under Delayed Harvest regulations and one that has certainly proven the program to be not only successful from a fish management standpoint, but one that’s highly popular. Like any good stream, it can become crowded at times but that only serves to show the fly fishing opportunities are good.
Fly Fishing Guide to the Tuckasegee River: When you are fly fishing the Tuckasegee River during the delayed harvest season, you are going to catch trout unless you are just a terrible angler. Fishing is usually very good. The stream will have a huge number of stocked trout.As mentioned in the introduction, this river is wadable when they are not running water and can be fished from drift boats and other crafts when they are running water. If you use a drift boat, you will probably have to get out and pull it around the rock ledges if they are not running water.The trout are usually very cooperative and not difficult to catch. The river is heavily stocked. A lot has to do with how long the fish have been stocked prior to your fishing the stream. During the delayed harvest season period, many of the trout will be newly stocked trout. When the water is high and you are using a boat, we suggest you first try streamers. This tends to pick up the larger trout and well as cover a lot of water fast. It’s a lot of work to cast streamers all day and many anglers prefer not to do that. If you can find some rising fish, it’s best to anchor and fish them. Often that won’t be the case. When there are no rising trout, and you don’t want to try streamers, we suggest you use a indicator rigged nymph. Some anglers prefer to use tandem rigs which will also work well most of the time. There are a lot of areas where the water is shallow in one place, and deep just a few feet away because of the drop offs the ledges create. Often the trout are holding in the deep holes. This can be the case on cold bright clear days. During those times, you may do much better using a nymph without an indicator to where you can control the depths with your fly line, weight added to the tippet and mending. During the times when the stream is low, such as it is in most of the pictures, wading is the preferred method. You can just about wade the entire river if you watch and don’t step off into a deeper hole. The best way it to fish is in an upstream direction fishing the riffles and runs.At times the dry fly fishing can be fantastic. We have caught lots of trout (50 to 100) on several occasions. You can get by with just about any good attractor fly most of the time, but when a hatch is occurring, we prefer to use a matching fly. As you can see on our hatch page, this river has a lot of caddisflies. If you walk up or down the road bordering the river, you can often spot rising trout. At times they seem to congregate in schools and feed in certain areas. Often you can catch a lot of trout from one place if you are careful not to spook them. For example, on one fall trip, I was fishing an area about the size of a small house during a caddifly hatch and managed to catch over twenty trout. At times I had to stop casting and let things settle down before the action resumed.There are a lot of ways you can fish this river. Another great way is to single out larger fish or only fish to individual rising or feed feeding below the surface. This lets you catch the larger ones and provides more satisfaction for some anglers. All in all, the fishing is usually fairly easy with a lot of action. For that reason, the river is usually packed with anglers. It can get a little crowded at times, but it’s a wide stream with lots of water to fish.
Tuckasegee River Hatches and Trout Flies: Our information on aquatic insects is based on our stream samples of larvae and nymphs, not guess work. We base fly suggestions on imitating the most plentiful and most available insects and other foods at the particular time you are fishing. Unlike the generic fly shop trout flies, we have specific imitations of all the insects in the Tuckasegee River and in all stages of life that are applicable to fishing. If you want to fish better, more realistic trout flies, have a much higher degree of success, give us a call. We not only will help you with selections, you will learn why, after trying Perfect Flies, 92% of the thousands of our customers will use nothing else. 1-800-594-4726.We have used a kick net and some other types of insect nets on this stream to try to determine the available insects and hatches that occur. It has a lot of insect life in it. Most of them are caddisflies but it also has a good population of blue-winged olive mayflies. We have even found one species that we haven’t been able to identify.The Blue-winged Olives usually hatch starting in February. They seem to last through the month of April. There are several species of them that fall under this category.Most of the hatches are different species of Cinnamon caddisflies. These are net spinners which means that imitations of the larvae, pupae and adult stages of life will work. These hatches take place from May throughout the summer until November. They are not constant, but most of the time there will be one of the various species of them hatching or depositing their eggs, usually both.October and November usually brings about some huge Little Sister Caddisfly hatches. These start in June and July and seem to drop off and pick back up again in October. There are several species of them. In addition, you will find some species of Green Sedges. The larvae of these caddisflies will work great anytime during the season. There are several other species of small caddisflies, but none as important as the Cinnamon Sedges, Little Sisters and Green Sedges. We have also noticed a lot of craneflies on the water. I am certain the trout dine on them at times. If you fish the river during the winter and early spring, I am certain midges would be a key insect to imitate. The bottom samples we observed were full of midge larvae. There were a good number of hellgrammites there also. This river has a good population of sculpin, baitfish and minnows. Streamers work most anytime. Crayfish are also present in the stream.From about the middle of June through September and into the first of October, terrestrial insects should be an important source of food for the trout in the Tuckasegee River. Imitations of ants, beetles and grasshoppers should work. There isn’t a lot of vegetation along the banks and the river is very wide but there should be plenty of the terrestrials that get in the water along the banks. We recommend you try our “Perfect Fly” streamers and other flies on the Tuckasegee River. We also sell the generics and attractors and at a great price. Whichever you prefer, we hope you will consider our flies.