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| Ford across Conway where I started and ended my day |
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I had been wanting to scout new water on the eastern slope of the Shenandoah so I set my sights on the Conway River two ridges SW of the Rapidan River but still in the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area (RWMA). I found a post by Steve Moore that helped me understand this rather remote area. The area is accessed by taking 230 off 29 towards Wolftown, in Wolftown bear right on 662 towards Graves Mill (Rapidan River flows on your right). At Graves Mill bear left on 615. After several miles you'll pass a RWMA kiosk on the right, the road will turn to dirt, ascend the ridge, descend the hairpins and the Conway River is on your right.
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| Upper Devils Ditch looking upstream |
You'll see a sign that reads, "Hunter Access to Devils Ditch Path". You can descend the STEEP path and you'll come to the confluence of Devils Ditch and the Conway and be able to access Devils Ditch from that point. I moved upstream .85 miles and pulled Clifford into a river side camping spot where the old road (615 "Bluff Mountain Road") fords the Conway and heads downstream (Rt 667 on maps), but you can also stay on the main road (now named Conway River Trail) as the stream narrows ascending towards Skyline Drive. Next time here I plan to park in the same spot and fish upstream...it looked great.
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| Conway River Brookie |
I rigged up w a 3wt in the moderate rain and was pleased to see that the river was still clear even though it had been raining overnight. I caught my first native on my second cast into the fording pool and on that fun note walked down the old road (667) for 13 minutes until I came to Devils Ditch crossing my path. Devils Ditch is a nice stream in its own about the size of the upper Rapidan by Camp Hoover. I fished up the "ditch"for two hours, noting that both the air and water temps were an even 50 degrees. I started with a #16 parachute adams and a #18 pheasant tail, but after the first four trout hit the dry I snipped off my dropper.
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| Conway looks just like the Rapidan |
By this time the rain was pouring down and I was having a very hard time distinguishing my "dry" from the from the exploding water drops. I'm sure I missed many fish as I just couldn't track my dry 50% of the time. Several times I huddled under logs and ledges to keep out of the worst downpours. The rain moderated and the water looked great ahead, but being a long way away from Clifford and soaked, I walked down a trail down-ridge of Devils Ditch back to the Conway.
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| D Ditch (left) - Conway (right) confluence |
When I hit the Conway I was 200 yards downstream of the Devils Ditch-Conway confluence and the augmented Conway was about the size of the Rapidan by the Junction pool but wider and not so channelized by boulders....just beautiful. Throughout this period I changed flies for fun and returned to a parachute Adams as (again) the most productive fly. At this point I was about 1 mile (by trail) downstream of Clifford and decided to try to fish back up. I fished upstream for a hour with steady but not lights-out action.
These fish were VERY spookable and the more tired I got the harder it was to be sneaky. The hard rain started again, I was having a hard time tracking my adams so I tied on a dropper (again) and my luck picked up with bigger trout. Up till now the majority of the trout had been brilliant, but small, from here on up the fish were noticeably larger and hitting both the dry and dropper alike. By 1445 I was tired and soaked so I hopped the bank and walked the final 400m to Clifford's camp-spot.
Wanting to finish the day with a fish on the last cast I re-fished the first pool I had hit 5 hours ago and caught a gorgeous 7inch brookie on my final cast. So...my fishing friends this is a spot to revisit when we have a full day to creep back into this remote
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Caught by flash underwater! | | | | | |
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area.
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| Gorgeous spots! |
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