"Pa told me the Yadkin River used to freeze over so solid, they would ride their horse carriages across it," said Stevey Ray McGrady as he leaned against his truck. We were standing in the parking lot of the state park, chatting with a group of other hikers. I personally had a hard time believing a river as large as the Yadkin could freeze, but to call Stevey Ray's pa a liar wouldn’t have been a wise decision. "It used to get a lot colder back then, ya know," he followed up w

On a crisp fall morning last October, I left my apartment in Asheville and headed west toward the large tract of southern Nantahala. It was only a few weeks removed from the storm that devastated areas of western NC and, for an angler like myself, drastically changed many places I frequented. Thankfully, farther west of Buncombe County, toward Swain, Haywood, Macon, etc., all was more or less fine from a fishing perspective. As I got farther away from Asheville, some sense of