A great hike on Staunton Run

James and I were looking forward to chasing some trout, so after my scout of the Conway found it inaccessible we set our sights on Staunton Run high up in SNP.  We started from NOVA and soon found ourselves at the Graves Mill confluence of Kinsey Run and the Rapidan.

James at Conway River 662/667 Campsite

I still wanted to show James the Conway so we decided to see if the access road was still inaccessible.  Five minutes and one ridge line later we found that what had been snowed in recently was now passable with Clifford in 4-wheel drive.  We took it slowly and after another ridge-line the gurgling Conway emerged on our left.  We passed the Devils Ditch access and made our way up to the campsite at the top of the 662/667 intersection.  We walked down to the river to give James a feel for it.

Clifford has never let me down yet atop the Conway Campsite access trail

Though the day was gorgeous the Conway at this point still drains a large watershed.It was running clear, but fully loaded and fast. It was just fish-able if needed, but not optimal and with that in mind we decided to stay on our original plan and headed back towards Graves Mill and Staunton Run.
          Clifford rolled us slowly back to the Rapidan/Stanton SNP gate above Graves Mill and I was very surprised to see the cul-de-sac filled vehicles.  I surveyed their backseats and to my joy found that they were hikers not fisherman and throughout the day we met

Geared up and ready

pleasant hiker after pleasant hiker, all curious to see us fishing. As we geared-up we had one group of 8 from Fredericksburg snap this pic of us as we prepared to head up the trail.
We walked up the trail with the tempting middle-rapidan on our right for 10-minutes until we hit the spur trail to our left which follows the southerly bank of Staunton Run just south of Fork Mountain into McDaniel Hollow. We began just below the gauge pool, James with a 3wt caddis/ followed by hares-ear nymph and me w a 2wt, parachute adams followed by a small dark green zebra midge.

Middle Rapidan on the walk to Staunton Run

James takes in The Gauge Pool, the first large pool on Staunton Run

 I was sure we'd run into the same action I'd found here recently and was very surprised that we couldn't raise a strike all day. The weather had been consistently nice, the water was 42 degrees (I know...still pretty cold), the stream was nicely loaded and very fish-able.  I wonder if one of those "hikers" might actually have been a fisherman and if we might have been unknowingly fishing behind him for the 3.5 hours we spent on the river.  In any event we had a great time fishing this little run. It definitely holds enough water to fish it in drier times and I was pleased to see a hiking path on the left side of the run which looks like it continued up quite far. 

James had a great presentation in the backside eddy ...but no fish!

The high gradient provides nice plunge pools consistently

The path certainly made the return trip easier but didn't seem to bring in much pressure as I suspect that most fisherman would rather hit the more popular and accessible Rapidan or Conway.  I'll be back on another day.