It's been years, and I don't have extensive knowledge, it was 1 week in mid-summer, and I know you can't judge places like that. But my memory...
Cosby Creek - Camped there, kind of away from the hubbub of Gatlinburg, was the nicest park campground I thought. I caught all 3 species right by the campground. Was a place you could really get into them without going waaayyy in and without ridiculous crowds. I liked that place. There was good hiking around too, and you could hike to some less travelled big falls and such, some of the streams along the way looked very inviting.
Gatlinburg was a traffic hell. Yes, we went, you kind of have to in order to say you were there. But I hated that town with a passion. Terrible traffic, everything's a fortune and "fake country" touristy stuff.
We did the Roaring Fork motor trail out of Gatlinburg, which is a pay to ride touristy trap thing. The nice thing was all the people on it were sightseeers or short hikers to see waterfalls and stuff, there weren't any fishermen. On the ride out it parallels Roaring Fork, and while the (now ex) wife parked and did something or other I took the rod down to the creek and proceeded to catch a pile of smallish rainbows in a very short time right by the road.
We jumped over to Townsend, which was a much more laid back place to stay, the difference between Gatlinburg and there was very noticable. We camped right on the Little River, and I fished it hard each evening, to no avail, but we were probably too far downstream. Bigger water, tuber hatch, heavily stocked and water was getting too warm. Little River Outfitters in Townsend was a very good fly shop.
Went through Cade's Cove. Hike along Abrams to Abrams Falls. Abrams Creek didn't impress me none where we were at (from Cade's Cove down to the falls). I only fished a little and caught nothing, but hiked a good stretch and it just didn't look all that attractive. Might be better to hit the lower end as it comes out of the park and fish up, gets into better country up there. Cade's Cove was kinda interesting with some of the old buildings and such, but, it's just a farm valley in the mountains. Yeah there was wildlife but too many cars, every animal caused a traffic jam. Oh my God it's a deer, everybody stop and cause a 45 minute traffic jam!!! Was kind of the area everyone points to in the park, but it was not among my favorite areas.
Parked and fished a couple spots along Laurel Creek. Didn't do any good.
Spent much of a day fishing the the Little River above Elkmont, which was supposed to be good. This was my dedicated full fishing day, rather than stealing and hour here and there. I covered 4 miles or so from Elkmont up. I caught a couple of fish, including a real nice brown, but it was dissapointing!!! The fish were there but very skittish and you could tell it was fairly heavily pressured.
Drove up the Middle Prong to the upper most parking area, walked down, and and fished the upper most mile or so back up. This area was nice and I did pretty well. All rainbows but some sizable ones. Continued up one of the branches, I think it was Lynn Camp Prong, and did well there too, with brookies.
Drove over the top, did Clingman's Dome and such. Kind of a must see on the tourist side of things. The highway follows the West Prong of Little Pigeon River up to the pass. It looked inviting but I did not take the rod that day, just jumped out and looked in a few spots. My kind of place but the highway is right by it. Crossed into North Carolina, did not do any fishing on that side.
