Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies: The Classic Guide for Sportsmen

Jim Gasque’s classic 1948 work offers a period portrait of outdoor life in the Great Smoky Mountains. Filled with anecdotes, fishing and hunting stories, and recollections of legendary local sportsmen and guides, Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies presents a social history of these activities before the founding of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934. The book also offers an insightful glimpse of the region just prior to an era of significant development and growth. Gasque’s guide covers trout streams and trout fishing, lake fishing, and hunting. Thanks to careful preservation by the park, the streams Gasque describes still draw sportsmen today. His tips on prime fly-fishing spots are remarkably up to date and remain valuable for twenty-first-century anglers. Hunting is now prohibited within the park, but in surrounding areas it is still common. Jim Casada’s introduction for this new edition provides a biographical profile of Gasque, puts the hunting and fishing ethics of the period into perspective for today’s sportsmen, and offers Casada’s thoughts on fishing in the park as it exists today.