My grandpa said he would like to take my brothers and I down to Hocking hills sometime. Is it a good area to fly fish for trout? Anyone tried there before?
Thanks, Blake

Tons of options for Smallies in the Hocking Hills area. As far as trout, good luck. As far as I know, the only trout that get stocked there are in the lakes during late fall and early spring.

The Mad River is a gin-clear river that has holdover as well as stocked trout. It is a VERY tough river to fish, and not very scenic at all. There are some very nice fish in there. Here is a map of the area.
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/LinkClick.as ... abid=19478 The Mad River is west of Columbus.

I'll be honest with you, though...there are some kick-ash streams and rivers in Ohio for smallmouth and saugeye... There IS another stream that is stocked with browns, near where you're wanting to go. PM me and I can fill you in. Most of the fish are small, and There is hardly any, if any, holdover.

I've not been to Hocking Hills so I don't know what real opportunities are there, but I've never heard of any trout there.

Ohio is not a trout State by any means. There is the Mad, which is a spring fed ditch, and also Clear Fork, all others are stocked fisheries with little to no holdover, with one exception, and that is the few native brookie streams up north which you can't fish. All the steelhead fishing is nothing more than put and take.

The Hocking through there fishes well, but I have never fished it this late in the season. It's usually a diverse, mixed bag. I have caught about everything (minus trout) in that river. Smallies, spotted bass, largemouth, crappies, sunfish, sauger...all are possible. I tend to fish small streamers that basically any hungry fish in the river would eat and get a mixed bag every trip. Don't overlook the carp, too.

That's the choice I have to make every time I need a trout fix. I have a little over two hours to drive to the Mad, three hours puts me in blue ribbon brookie water in WV. I choose WV every time.

Thanks for the specific information!

I was planning on going over to brookville over the weekend until I got hit with the honeydo list. You may also want to try applecreek for trout.

I realize this is an older thread, but thought I might jump in with some things I know that may be helpful to others who may be doing a search.
There was a time when there were some trout at Hocking Hills, in Clear Creek; browns, and they were stockers, of course, not very big but still fun to catch on a light rig. Though, it's been many years since I was there catching them ( I want to say around 2004 or so). I don't know if they continued to stock after that, and if not, I doubt there would be many holdovers, if any.
The Mad River holds some nice trout, but it's not what most anglers would consider to be easy to traverse.
It's been a few years since I fished the Clear Fork at Mohican; I've done okay there in the past, but it does get a lot of action, and the entire stretch from the dam all the way down through the picnic area downstream from the covered bridge is so crowded with campers, tubers, day trip people having picnics, that it can be difficult to do well; though I have pulled decent sized browns from that stretch in the past. As of Spring 2015, I was getting more action with smallies than I was trout, pulling woolybuggers and other streamers through some of the deeper holes. I have no idea if the Clear Fork Chapter is still doing any trout stocking on the CF.
These days, I find much more success in Western and Central PA, there are streams everywhere that hold some really nice trout; many are stocked but stream conditions on many bodies of water are good enough to support holdovers for several seasons. There are also a lot of little creeks that hold native Brookies. Very light tackle is advised for these, as many of these creeks are small, some no wider than the single lane of a two lane road. Tiny dries or nymphs in the #16-18 range can prove to be really productive.
I'm happy to give the names of a few of these if any of you would like to contact me via email:
donnyair@hotmail.com