Upper Ramsey Cascades (Part 2 of 2)

Recently I was able to explore above Ramsey Cascades by finding a small path to the top of this popular spot and sloshing my way upstream for about an hour. There were several rock-and-water barriers that I had to hike around, but there were often small, pink pieces of surveyor’s tape to show the best route through the brush and thickets. A few people, but only a few, had been here before.

The Upper Ramsey Cascades – as far as I know, it doesn’t have an official name – was about a half mile from Ramsey Cascades. It’s hard to compare waterfalls because they have different shapes and volumes of water, but in some ways the Upper is much bigger. Its drop is not as steep as the lower Ramsey. It’s a long, sloping series of 10, 30, or 50 foot cascades, and for this reason it’s hard to say where it begins and ends. Some folks might say it’s 100 feet high, others would say 200 or more, and they’d all be right. Standing at the bottom, you think you can see the top, but as you make your way up through the woods, you see cascade after cascade after cascade coming into view. It’s so long and sloping that there’s no place you can stand and see the entire cascade, so it’s impossible to take a picture of the entire thing. In fact, I took just one picture (from the bottom looking up) and gave up.

Only as I hiked up alongside this upper cascade was I encountering new territory. This was the reason I came, not to see any fabulous new views or to make any dramatic discoveries but simply to see a bit of Ramsey Prong that I hadn’t seen before. So I weaved my way along a vague path decorated with a few pink strips of plastic until I reached a point where I could safely re-enter the river. I suppose this is what I would call the “top,” probably 200 or 300 feet from the bottom where I had to get out of the river to circumvent the cascade.

An unnamed pool between the lower and upper cascades

It was at this point that I unpacked my fly rod, assembled it, and tied on a Light Cahill, a yellow mayfly imitation about the size of a dime. I spent the next hour gradually working my way upstream, casting to likely looking chutes and pools. Whenever I fish I fight the urge to get my hopes up, but if there was ever a piece of water that had potential, this was it. The number of people who fish this stretch of water in a year must be incredibly small. In that respect, this water is every fisherman’s dream, about as close to virgin water as can be found east of the Mississippi. On the other hand, the quarter mile of water above the upper cascade was fast and rough. If any fish were there, they had to be native survivors from 50 or 100 years ago, or they had to have been stocked in the days when the NPS still stocked these Smokies rivers. Migrating from below was not an option.

I spent about an hour sloshing and climbing over rocks, and the answer to one of my questions was obvious from the start: “No the landscape doesn’t level out above the upper cascade.” This is rugged country, more than average for the Smokies.

The bottom of the upper cascade

More of the upper cascade (it just keeps going and going...)



I desperately wanted to catch a fish to answer my other question, but it was not to be. I didn’t get a single strike – no splashes, no tugs, nothing. This, of course, was the worst possible outcome, not only because catching fish is better than not catching them, but also because of the nature of proof. Catching a fish would prove that there are fish in this water, but not catching a fish proves nothing. The river could be fishless, or it could full of fish, but I just couldn’t entice any of them to show themselves.

Which means I still don’t know about the fish. Which means I’ll have to keep coming back until I either catch a fish or am skunked enough times to convince myself that there are no trout up there. Of course, if I come back and manage to catch some fish, then I’ll have to keep coming back because I will have found a lonely stretch of good water – a trout fisherman’s dream.

Such is the gloriously twisted logic of fishing new water. Whether you catch fish or you don’t, both lead to the same conclusion: keep fishing, even if – no, especially if – you have to walk three hours and past two waterfalls to get there.