Not all days fish equally -- slow day on Dry River

James and I had high hopes for our trip to the Dry River when we set out Friday morning.  The Dry River tumbles down from Switzer Reservoir on the West Virginia border and I thought would fish like the Rapidan had yesterday. Scott turned me on to the Dry several years ago as he guided one of his clients in the area and its been very good to me on most trips.  As we moved west on 66 and south on 81 the rain picked up and we were pretty sure we'd be fishing amid heavy showers. Unforecastably it substantially stopped raining by Harrisonburg and by the time we hit Rawley Springs there were shards of sunlight piercing the clouds. It appeared that we had the river to ourselves until we pulled in the normal parking place and found a fisherman's car empty...already on the river. 

James and a nice brokie

We geared up, happy to do so dry and picked our way 300 yds back dodging trucks on the narrow road.  There was alot of water in the low area and we were almost tricked by one of the false streams, we stayed on task and made it to the main flow where we usually start.  The main channel was visible, but water spilled everywhere in this low bank area and the current in the main seam made floating dry flies nearly impossible.  Improbably I caught a  small brookie in the tempest-churn but that was not to be the pattern for the day.

The tree pool produced a brookie for James

 James and I moved up the river and targeted breaks in the river where the flow slowed enough for a fly (and hopefully a trout) to linger.  We each caught a couple and James caught one nice one as we approached the bridge where we paused to have lunch.  I did manage to find some fishable water and was really was trying everything I could think of and the bite was just not there.  We approached the big lake-pool with high hopes at 1300 and saw some fish rising.  We worked the pool methodically but couldn't entice them to play with us.  I moved up the long-wide run above the pool and saw a small brookie rising repeatedly to a hatch I couldn't see on the left bank.  I determined to catch this trout I stripped off my old leader and tied on a fresh-straight-unmarred leader and a #18 BWO parachute. I made a slow approach and a long cast and caught him on my second try.

BWO Brookie!

My spirits lifted out of proportion to the 5 inch brookie I moved up stream with renewed purpose.  I got turbulent again so I changed to a thing-a-mabobber and a # 18 Prince nymph and picked up another three in quick succession and then the action slowed to a stop. As we moved up the stream by the cliffs me met a two meat eaters fishing down towards us and knew that what little chance we had upstream was done.  We slogged through the woods to 33 and Clifford.   Next trip here I''m going to focus on the outflow from the reswevoir where its a higher gradient stream than the valley-flow right along 33.