This afternoon, I hit Long Hunter State Park's Bryant Grove Trail. My main mission? To find a nice spot and fish. I made good time to the half-way mark about two miles in and then angled over to a point on the adjacent cove. Since the lake bottom there slopes gently away from the bank, as it does around so much of Percy Priest, I flung a quarter-ounce spoon as far out as possible. I only caught three, but each was different—a largemouth bass, a freshwater drum, and a catfish. I tried hard to land a smallmouth and complete a personal quad-fecta on Priest, but had no such luck.
Also today, I tested out a new hot-drink kit consisting of a Snow Peak ti mug, a Gram Weenie alcohol stove, and a homemade windscreen and cook lid. As the days are starting to cool down, it's nice to partake of a hot drink on the trail, and the compact size of this kit will make it easy to stow in pack or pocket.
All told, I covered nearly five miles, but that was chump change compared to the people I met who were finishing a convoluted 26-mile day hike around Long Hunter. With some car shuttling here and there, the participants covered all but three miles of the Long Hunter trails. They "cheated" a bit on the Volunteer Trail—turning around midway since it's a six-mile, one-way, dead-end hike. But still, twenty-six miles in a day ain't bad.
Hike & Fish on Priest
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Fall Hike and Fish on Percy Priest
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