Western NC Flyfishing for Trout 12/14/22 - 12/18/22

I saw a pier on this trip so I think this report is relevant for this forum.

Until this trip I had not flyfished for about a decade. And that was my first time. I had gone to Brevard with a good friend in April and we walked in to a fly store and said "we want to flyfish for trout". We walked out with a couple 8' 2 piece 5wt reddington combos and a handful of flies. We did catch a few trout that trip on green worms.

Fast forward to this week. I went to Western NC with my girlfriend. She has shown a lot of interest in fishing and I bought her a 9' 5wt fly rod for xmas. I spent weeks researching what to use to catch trout in December. I ordered a bunch of #20 and #22 wet midges and nymphs online. I also bought a dozen 7x leaders and 7x tippet material for tying double wet fly rigs under strike indicators. On Wednesday I started the 3.5 hr drive to the mountains as 24 hours of rain began to settle in. The forecast was for about 1.5" Wednesday afternoon-Thursday at noon.
As I got near hickory I decided to stop by Caster's fly shop just to ask for a couple pointers before I lost cell service for 4 days.
When I got to Caster's I walked in with my tackle box. The man working the counter greeted me and I spread out all the flies I owned on the counter and explained the research I had done and what my plan was. He looked over all of my flies and said I had done good work, except that I won't catch anything on these flies on this trip. He explained that with the rain the water would be up and it would be dirty, and that I would be more successful using flies that were more 'flashy'. He was very helpful and spent a lot of time explaining what I needed to do to fish those conditions.
I left with some 4x leaders, pink salmon eggs, pink fuzzy things, red and orange worms and some white streamers.
We got a late start fishing Thursday to wait out the rain. Then we drove to a larger well-known creek and began fishing. I immediately caught a nice rainbow on the white clauser fished under a red worm and couldn't have been happier. I hoped it was the start of an action-packed trip in cold weather.
Ten minutes later I slipped on some rocks in a foot and a half of water and somehow managed to submerge myself over the top of my waders for a few seconds. That started a trend for the week.
On Friday we returned to the popular, large creek and fished new spots. We had the place to ourselves which was very nice. We saw lots of trout but had no takers. Since my fly collection is modest, it did not take long to go through all of our options. I also saw a fish (pictured) that I can not identify.
I fell in over my waders again on Friday trying to climb a large flat rock out of the creek. It was cold.
On Saturday we decided to explore and fish Upper Creek on foot. We bush whacked for about 1/2 mile in both directions. There were a lot of promising spots but we had no takers until right before dark when a small trout was briefly hooked on my pink salmon egg while my strike indicator was floating a couple inches from a partially submerged log in about 18" of water. That was the last action of the trip unless you count when I fell in the water, again, over my waders, trying to climb a sappling that had my fly hung in it.
This morning we returned to the partially submerged log and tried all the flies I had with no luck. Our line was freezing to the guides which made things difficult. After about 20 minutes we decided to go to Denny's in Morganton before I fell in the water again.

It was very fun and my girlfriend said she cant wait to go flyfishing again. As long as she maintains interest we will fish and I will report back here how we do. We tried only wet flies and no dry flies.
We did run into a man who said he caught 4 trout in about 2 hrs on yellow salmon eggs. I didnt have any color except pink which was a bummer. I will have a lot more options for the next trip.