Tube-Float-Fishin on the South Fork

Paul has been tempting me with the promise of a float tube fishing adventure all summer and we finally found a chance Friday afternoon as the weather cleared and humidly dropped -- a gorgeous day. Paul's normal float is just downstream from the Hwy 340 bridge (see area) along the main stem of the Potomac just south of Harpers Ferry, but after our recent successful adventure on the South Fork we've been looking for floatable stretches and opportunities to work the South Fork in float tubes. 

The Team at Put in

After an appointment at Bethesda/Walter Reed for me (Note: if you ever need to keep life in perspective take a trip to W Reed and see the injured and recovering Soldiers and Marines...amazingly, though missing a limb is pretty common, almost all have smiles on their faces, they're happy to be alive & back in the country so many complain about)...and a week in North Carolina for Paul we put in at Indian Hollow Bridge just off Rt 684 in Bentonville just south of Front Royal intending to float downstream (no kidding right?) to our takeout at the Karo Boat Ramp.

Standard sized Smallie for this water

The water here is big and owing to its width and depth seems slower than upstream where the river bottom makes the water a bit more exciting. The deluge that parked itself over Northern VA must have been east of the Mtns and only raised the water level on the Front Royal

This is the section we tubed

River Gauge from 1.24 to a very manageable 1.3.  I didn't have my companion canoe/rod locker so I only had a single 6wt as I donned borrowed flippers and followed Paul's lead into the warm summer water.  This part of the Shenandoah is known as a numbers fishery and I was looking forward to targeting deeper submerged structure in the hopes of finding bigger smallies.

 I began with a #5 long shanked (hook) golden-retriever weighted with 15 turns of .20 lead behind 10' of full sink line directly above my terminal leader with hopes that this pseudo anchor line would sink my streamer to the depths. I found some challenges with line management and casting in the float tube and with the river relatively low found myself bumping my bottom on the bottom more than I expected! 

Spinning rod is tailor made for tube fishing

Paul, a more accustomed float tuber, handled the river very well and without the line management issues of a fly rod began to catch smallies at a very high rate. "Fish-on", "Got-one", "There we go" punctuated the float every minute or three!  I probably caught 12-15, Paul I'm sure was in the 50-60+ category! 

Paul w 20"+ catfish

 The smallies here were decent sized, bigger than the North Fork and similar, maybe a little bigger than upstream on the South Fork. The smallies were dispersed throughout the river but in heaviest concentration in the normal gathering points in the deeper water at the outflows of runs and riffles.   Paul seemed to have equal luck with both a gold rapalla and a pumpkinseed tube bait.

I think both smallie and Paul are smiling

There were many casts where Paul was fish on no more than a second after his offering splashed.  As the afternoon wore on we knew that we'd misjudged the time and distance to the Karo Boat ramp and started looking for opportunities to shorten the trip.

Panorama of the beautiful river

 We finally decided for me to walk from Shenandoah Park Campground downstream to the van as Paul fished and stayed with our tubes.   Fortunately I hailed a fellow in a car and he drove me to my van as it would have been about a 5 mile walk (whew---lucky).

  "The man who coined the phrase "Money can't buy happiness", never bought himself a good fly rod!"
  Reg Baird