Sometimes the pleasure is just getting out

Take me home ...country road

With my hopes of heading to Salmon River on hold for this weekend, I was joined by James to adventure to a remote Mountain Blue line I hadn't visited in years.  This stream isn't a place in the travel guides, but I know it holds small brook trout as it falls through the George Washington National Forest. 

We motored west on 66 through rain and clouds until we found a muddy and familiar looking pull-off deep in the woods and high along the VA/West Va border.  Bear hunters were our only company, that's right, pickups loaded hounds kicking along the back roads waiting for the lead dog (tethered high on the kennel in the back) to pick up bear scent and start baying!  Yep, no-kidding that's how they do it.   When the lead dog picks up the scent the other hounds are released and GPS tracked until they tree the bear. Bang. 

So...extra attuned to bears, we bushwhacked East for 200m until we found the lovely and happily lonely water.  With the water at 64 and the air at 52, after a weather front blew through, we couldn't entice any brookies, but I know they are here and I'll be back.  After climbing back in the truck we motored 15 minutes to catch a few trout at a better known stream so we could end the day on a high note and James could notch another stream to his belt.  We found this second stream unexpectedly slow and but that just made each catch more exciting, food tastes better when your famished, and when we were finished we found that unbeknownst to us we had been fishing probably 15 minutes behind another pair who'ed just walked through our water -- drat!

Note the small minnow at 7-O'clock to the trout!