We've caught trout on several presidential waters; the Rapidan and Spruce Creek and wanted to add Big Hunting Creek to our list of POTUS escapes. It'd been a balmy 47 when I left Virginia and it was 41 when I pulled into Thurmont, a taste of the finger numbing cold to come. I wasn't finished my first cup of coffee when Henry jostled in for a great breakfast and review of our plans. Big Hunting Creek is the major watershed in this section of the Catoctin Mtns and draws water from both sides of Hwy 77 as it flows both into and out of Hunting Creek Lake. Above the Lake is Cunningham Falls where our adventure began.
After working around some construction we found hwy side access to the section above Cunningham Falls and the fall beauty took our breath away...ok sliding down the water worn rocks of the falls
took our breath away too.
Armed with a 7' TFO BVK 3wt Henry got the first action of the day with a surface-roll to his top dropper in the plunge pool at the bottom of the cascade of falls but try as we might we couldn't get the trout to hook-up. Trusting the metal crews in my boots (too much) I scampered up the smooth rocks and found a bathtub sized plunge pool 3/4 of the way to the top and dipped my dual dropper rig into a plate sized back eddy....WHAM, much to my surprise a 9-inch fall speckled brown nailed my offering. I net netted him and hollered to Henry to check out my net when he scaled the cliff. With a big smile on my face I sat among the Polar Cave-like boulders and didn't need to leave.
The Big Hunting Creek above Cunningham Falls quickly reaches the saddle in Catoctin ridge and loses the steep gradient which channelizes and gives it its character, we fished it for another 200m and walked back to our vehicles looking forward to checking out another portion before lunch. We surveyed the feeder trip in the lower left hand corner of the map above and decided our better option was to fish the special regs tailwater section along Hwy 77.
We noticed the nice flow and pocket water on our drive in and were soon questioning riffles and pools with dropper combos. We both got a few stikes but Henry was the the only one able to land his quarry.
With temperature dropping the the wind starting to whip up the river cut we decided to try our luck 15 Miles West at Beaver Creek. After gas station sandwiches we found our way to Beaver Creek Fly Shop and must have met the owner on a bad day as he didn't seem appreciative of our support your local fly shop ethos and seemed put upon to offer advice...weird. After I told him I wasn't interested in getting lectured about fall redds he broke out a map and gave us some advice (not sure if it was good or a false flag).
Beaver Creek is a classic spring-fed limestone creek. I don't have alot of experience on them and in my view they are advanced degree fly fishing. We tried a bit of everything (scuds, midges, nymphs, streamers) as we hunted likely flows, pools, undercuts, etc. w/o any hookups. As the our line guides were freezing and the sun was dropping behind the trees to the West we finally found a lovely pool with good sized trout feeding subsurface and occasionally breaking the water. Battling numb fingers, iced guides and the fading light we couldn't get these trout to come tight and left only when we weren't sure we could find out way back on the trail.
