What did I catch?

Rockhound

Eight Pointer
Other than an absolute whopper of a fish, what is this? Caught on the South Mills last weekend. Caught two of the little buggers out of the same hole.
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thelivecanary

Eight Pointer
Other than an absolute whopper of a fish, what is this? Caught on the South Mills last weekend. Caught two of the little buggers out of the same hole.

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I think this is a 'Dace' but there's so many small creek fish, like chubs, shiners, darters, etc. But I feel good calling it a Dace.
 

darkthirty

Old Mossy Horns
I think this is a 'Dace' but there's so many small creek fish, like chubs, shiners, darters, etc. But I feel good calling it a Dace.

I’ve seen and handled thousands of war paints and Dace with my job. The fish Rockhound is holding is 100% a War paint shiner.
 

thelivecanary

Eight Pointer
I’ve seen and handled thousands of war paints and Dace with my job. The fish Rockhound is holding is 100% a War paint shiner.

Nice, that's expert advice and I've looked them up multiple times and always thought they were spawning colors of the Dace, now I know - Thanks.

I saw an article in the NC game magazine about the creek chub mating habits, building spawning pyramids, fascinating stuff. I am shocked by the shear number of different species of these small creek fishes.
 

darkthirty

Old Mossy Horns
Nice, that's expert advice and I've looked them up multiple times and always thought they were spawning colors of the Dace, now I know - Thanks.

I saw an article in the NC game magazine about the creek chub mating habits, building spawning pyramids, fascinating stuff. I am shocked by the shear number of different species of these small creek fishes.

It’s unreal. And everything utilizes those creek chub nests. Western NC is not much different, but in my case being in east TN. This area has the most aquatic diversity as anywhere in the world. I’m pretty decent with darters, but there’s still a ton of shiners that I depend on others to ID. Haha. Just in this case, war paints are very common around here and I’ve seen a ton of’em.
 

alt1001

Old Mossy Horns
Other than an absolute whopper of a fish, what is this? Caught on the South Mills last weekend. Caught two of the little buggers out of the same hole.
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As stated, that is a Shiner. The S. Mills is full of them and Hornyheads. A lot of people swear there are no trout in the South Mills because this is all they catch however if you learn to tie on streamers that mimic Shiners and Hornyhead Chubs, you'll catch the trout that eat them. There are big wild trout in the South Mills, you just have to fish it a little differently. Small flies typically catch all the Shiners and Hornyheads and you'll leave angry. Big Stones and Streamers are where it's at.
 

alt1001

Old Mossy Horns
I like your info alt1001. i suspect that is not the only water to be found where bigger fish can be found fishing outside of the norm.

The South Mills and the North Mills are my home waters. I cut my teeth on those trails as a young man.

I've been skunked more times than I could count, caught enough Hornyheads and War Paints to feed a village, learned a lot through trial and error on what it took to catch big wild trout in the South Mills, and ended up catching some of my favorite trout out of there. I've seen some that I swear were 20+", had one break me off while drifting a foam hopper under a Rhododendron branch along a shady bank that I swear was bigger. Ha!

Fish tales aside, it's a good river. It's just very temperamental. It's also very unorthodox in how you approach fishing it due to the amount of prey fish that inhabit it, unlike that of the surrounding backcountry trout streams.
 

alt1001

Old Mossy Horns
One thing to know about the South Mills according to those of my fathers generation who fished it, are that many years ago (before my time) it was managed by the state and local TU chapters as a trophy trout stream in the Turkey Pen section. I have my theories that this is why there are so many shiners and chubs in such a clean, cool water stream and why that differs so much from the surrounding streams. They just dumped forage fish into the river for the trout.

All of these are wild trout caught on streamers, caught recently out of the South Mills. It's not Montana. It's not the South Holston. However, these are wild trout caught in the backcountry of the Pisgah National Forest which will always be impressive to me.

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