Smallmouth on the Rapidan with Conor

Conor and I hit the Rapidan up-stream of Ely's Ford looking for smallies and were not disappointed.   I was happy to see that the VDOT access at Ely's ford was clean as a whistle, I was going to clean it up but, thank whoever did.  The water was stained and running higher than I thought as we slugged our way upstream about a mile and a half to the cigar shaped island which was our target.  On the way up we saw a gorgeous bald eagle high up in a tree at the first rapids staring us down.  Past the red-neck swim hole we saw two deer crossing & splashing the river.  When we finally arrived at the island it began to spit rain.  We fished together up the left hand channel and began quickly picking up a mix of sunfish, shiners, rock bass and smallies.  Conor was using an ultralight spinning rod with a beetle-spin and I was using a 4wt with a yellow-jacket siz
e 6 popper and a size 8 green wholly bugger dropper.  Conor hopped on the fly rod after a half dozen fish on the ultralight and really improved his casting and catching.  The fish were generally tight to cover, but with the lots of water in the stream and no sun they were distributed throughout the river too.  As we reached the top of the island the rain
began pouring and hammered us.  In stead of fishing our way back down the river, by where Fritz caught the huge smallie we walked it out back to the canoe afraid that the river was rising around us.  All and all a great day of fishing and fun.  We ended the day with our 60th fish as we neared the canoe.