Tough Fishing in Town Fork Creek - still sporting a Shiner

[Johnsfolly]

It's Saturday and I have no work obligations. I just get to fish😁. I had plans to make an hour run up to Town Fork Creek in Germanton, NC, then another hour and 45 mins out to a creek in the mountains further west. The targets were crescent shiners and redlip shiners in Town Fork Creek and Fiery black and Warpaint shiners in the mountains. Since I was not able to catch a snail bullhead on Friday, I wanted to fish the Eno River near Hillsborough which was another 30 mins east of where I would start in Mebane. Looking at the proposed 6 to 7 hours of travel, I dropped the trip into the mountains and gained another 2 to 3 hours of fishing time. 

Throughout this trip I was using my phone GPS to locate the spots that I wanted to go and then playing that through the car's GPS. The map was always about 0.2 to 0.3 miles delayed from where I actually was at any given time. Also frequently I lost GPS signal. The trip to Germanton resulted in me having to reconfigure the system a couple of times to find out where I was and how to get to where I wanted to be. I wish that I had some hard maps.

Anyway, I found the spots. First spot was a small park that I thought might get me access to the Town Fork creek. Nope. The next spot did not have any roadside parking anywhere close to the creek. The next spot had the most promise with deeper water for fishing. However, it was off of a private road. Finally, I found a spot that I could pull off and access the creek 😉.

On a few of the recent trips with my daughter we have been seeing antlions. We would see a couple to maybe a dozen cones in spots. Under the bridge on this creek was the mother lode of antlions. I just had to send Livie a photo. This photo was about a tenth of the number that I saw in the sands.

Under the bridge there was a deeper trough on the far bank. I could not see any fish in the creek. I had on a #20 long shank hook with a small piece of worm under a float. My first drift and I hooked into a possible bluehead chub (more work to id this guy).

 

I made several more casts and never got another bite. One thing to say is that many NC streams just don't have the numbers of minnows and chubs that you would typically find in the Ozarks. This may be a tough day with few fish caught. I fished a few more runs, maybe getting a small strike or two or nothing. then I found a deeper run with an undercut bank. I got several strikes but no hook ups. I switched to a Tanago #26 hook and was able to land another one of the chubs before they stopped biting. 

Fished a couple more spots again without success. I even saw one darter and it was not interested in my bait. After about 90 mins of fishing, I found a bigger and deeper pool that had fish actively surfacing. These were larger fish and I switched back to the #22 hook. I missed several strikes since they would hit as soon as the bait hit the water and before I could take the slack out of the line 🙄. After missing a couple of strikes at the end of one of my drifts, I hooked up. When I saw the fish, I knew that I had a lifer, but which one? I got the fish in the bag and could see that I caught my very first crescent shiner 😁!

A caught another chub and then followed that with this big male crescent!

Since it was later than I had intended for this spot. I left soon after catching that last crescent. I had an hour and 45 min drive to the next spot and hopefully a snail bullhead or roanoke bass.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

It's not nice to leave us hanging,  sir.