Alighting on the film

Heaven has got to be like April on a VA trout streams.  Stream temps in the low 50s, clear running water incubating bugs to life and causing brook trout to look up for their next meal.   They are so eager to slurp the hatch from the film of the surface...it's a show to watch. 

Low Water in the log pool

With a Friday off I headed to my home waters of the upper Rapidan and was pleased to find only a truffle hunter parked at the upper limit of the fire road.   I was greeted by a swarm of flies as I started rigging a trusty 2wt built for casting in these narrow confines.   I didn't tie on a dropper as is my habit and was rewarded with amazing dry fly action for my stay.    

Tight casting required in this crystal clear pool

The Glide Run is one of the loveliest on the Upper Rapidan

The flow was low this high on the mountain and the dry spring caused the trout to be staged in the pools not the normal holding runs... so I went pool hunting.   I soon was reminded to approach each pool stealthily as a spooking even the bottom/near side of the pool would decrease me chances throughout the pool.   

With no schedule to keep I approached each pool slowly and really worked on alighting my fly first cast in the right spot with the right presentation and brought brilliant brookies to hand in 7 of the first 10 pools before I stopped counting and let the morning flow through me.  I watched in wonder as brookies submarine-porpoised 2-3 inches out of the water attacking their surface meals.   All my brookies were caught on a single warrior of a parachute-adams before the hackle was torn off and I retired.  An amazing day in an amazing place.

Swarms of trout food!

                          "The older I get the more I strive to spend time in beautiful places that inspire me"

                                                                                                                            said some angler

Nymphing darts on the Run

          The Shad run has yet to be steady.  The run has only been thick one day thus far.   My seventh trip was greeted by snow squalls and falling temps, grey sky and gusty winds breeding shivers.  I had to really work for my fish. Resident shad were in the usual holding water in small numbers and after moving around I finally found shad in one of the lower (bridge-side) deep slots of holding water.             
          Swinging streamers didn't work today and the best presentation was to cast upstream of your target water and nymph these heavy shad-dart-type flies back through the target following the fly with rod tip until the fly rides up at the end of the drift.  All in all a great day to be out on the river corralling these silver swimmers.

The Best things in Life are the People we love...

The Places we've been,

 the Rivers we've fished 

and 

the memories made along the way

Shad arrive at the Rappahanock Fall-Line

The slot size on this run was really nice, the colors were amazing

Fritz and I had a combined 7 recon-trips to the Falmouth Fall line on the Rappahanock waiting for the Spring Shad run to begin.  We knew one of these days we'd find shad in numbers and today was the day...the poor man's tarpon had arrived.  Its easy to see why once folks thought there was an inexhaustible supply of these silver swimmers and there was no way to even estimate the pulses of them as they finned past our feet.  They weren't quite as aggressive as we've seen in past years, perhaps that will change later in the run.  Fritz, James and I had to work for our fish.  The best way to bring them to hand today was dead drifting (nymphing really) small, weighted red and silver shad flies on a sinking leader and then just waiting for the line to tighten.  If you're fly is above these aqua-athletes its just casting practice.  If you want to hit Shad with us in the next 20 days give me a holler.  With Osprey, and Eagles watching we kept remarking what a perfect day it was.

Fritz pulled many from this upper-island pool

Fritz caught this Large American Shad, deeper but less athletic from than today's hickory shad

Fritz and James work the top of the island pool at the Falmouth Fall-line

Love these guys! 

B&B Family -- All Over the Water

What a wonderful time of the year for the Brookies and Bronzeback Team.   Last week Fritz and brother Paul nailed bull, redfish, amberjack and speckled trout in LA where the Mississippi runs into gulf! Two days ago Henry worked the Gallatin River in near Big Sky bringing to hand a grand slam or browns, bows, cutts and white fish and now the shad are here in force here in Northern Virginia.

Paul and Fritz and AmberJack

Hen and Family w a new snowy brown on the Gallatin

I hadn't been back to the Piney River in years, my last trip there was with Scott before he headed to Florida.    It's a place with nice memories.    Its hard to access with only a single bridge-side parking spot then a climb over a forbidding fence to reach the public SNP right of way.   A .3 mile brings you past the private cottages and to the SNP trail pillar.  Another 5 Min upstream brings you to a river gauge station.    Use this water gauge as a catching feature and force yourself to walk another 15-min past beautiful water before you drop in.  The further you walk the greater the fish density.

This beauty was caught by James on his last  cast of the day!

Spring has Sprung

Things are looking up to include this spec

Every Spring my soul anticipates the start of trout season.  There's a sense of longing that's only quenched with a spring brookie in hand.  In mountain streams catch and release waters the start isn't marked on a calendar, it's
when the water pushes 41-42 degrees, usually in the first week of March. With forsythia blooming and red-budded branch trips ready to burst their winter shackles I decided to hit my home waters of the Rapidan.

The water above the second bridge is amazing

As I jeeped around a familiar bend in Criglersville I glimpsed a full pool on the Rose, but I knew my destination waters would be a fishably lower a thousand feet up the Shenandoah Ridgeline.   I love the process of getting to the river and sipped coffee as James and I crept up the deeply-rutted Rapidan Fire Road noting new trees chain sawed across the road and rock slides.  Normal cars don't make this trip.  People would be normal(er) if they did.  Descending the switchbacks we found three trucks at Junction Pool, a gang of grey-haired children gearing up.   

My destination waters were above the second bridge.  Scott taught me that the steep terrain there keeps less hearty anglers from questioning its narrow walls and the river sees less pressure.  The holes are to die for.  Fly-fishing in this stretch is alot about rock scrambling and unlocking the beautiful mysteries of the next pool.

We geared up with 2 and 3 wts and high hopes.   The cold water soothed deep knee bends and we found small black stoneflies creeping on rocks and brook trout stirring from their winter lethargy.   As the sun peeked down over the high ridge line surface strikes increased, but the majority of the takes were on size 18/20 BH droppers suspended under dries. 



This wasn't a day for long casts, but more for micro swings and placement into quiet water giving the dropper an opportunity to fall to depth rather than being trailed through the froth and current.   "Watch you drag", "rod tip up",  "line off the water" and "that's a fish" were our refrains.  

View from below the 'log-pool' ref below, the trout hit about 4' in front of me

We lunched on PB&Js and pretzels in a setting I wouldn't have traded and leapfrog-fished all the way up to the Rapidan Cabins.   I thought I'd caught my last trout and wasn't planning on taking another cast when James scooted ahead determined to catch one more.  I chased him and found a newly created log-pool stretching the
width of the river creating a 3 foot waterfall along its length.   I LOVE standing below a waterfall and fishing chest-level into the pool.  With cold silvery water finding a hole in my waders (I was deep) I lower my sight line
just a few inches above the pool and watched my dry in profile.   When the small trout lifted 2" out of the water to snatch my dry I gave a whelp of joy and hustled him in, only to find another larger trout on my dropper!  A
double on my last cast.   With that great memory we called it a day and made our way back to the muddy jeep.

Men in the Arena

The more I fish the more apparent it is all I do not know.

Henry and I had planned on a two day red fish adventure to break the grey cold wintery cycle and we decided to focus on the Wilmington, NC area as, in our mind, the most northerly watershed where we might reasonably expect winter redfish action.  It turns out that our anticipation to fish caused us to hustle past our (great) guide’s local knowledge of his water.   Capt. Jud and I had linked up about a month ago and agreed to a go-no-go decision about 48 hours from the trip.   Jud knowing the tendencies of the micro climate suggested we hold for more favorable weather, but fortified by excitement and plans made we took our chances.  

After picking up Henry in Raleigh we made our way down Hwy 40 to Wilmington and had a great dinner at Georges on the Wilmington Riverwalk.   Strengthened by ribeye and beer we checked the weather and it still looked decent 65 and 12-15 MPH wind.  After a hearty breakfast we headed to our link-up boat ramp at Fort Fisher on the tip of the Wrightsville Beach (Barrier Island).  As we left the hospitable climes 5-miles inshore and felt the bite of the Atlantic winds the weather as Jud forecast it would grew rougher, grayer and windier.    The plan was to fish the grass flats of Bald Island refuge which sits right in the mouth of the Cape Fear River, with Southport, NC to the south across the shipping channel and Fort Fisher to the North.

Henry and I exchanged “oh-shit what have we done” glances for a second, then silently decided to do our best with the conditions.  Fortunately this trip was as much about red fish flats education and area recon as about catching and we knew we’d learn a lot. Jud pulled in a few minutes later pulling an elegant 17’ Beavertail skiff.    I’m not a skiff expert (yet) but this skiff was a perfectly tuned fishing machine; clean lines, simple, high quality.  We stowed our gear (grabbed an extra jack or two) and headed out.  With steady 15-mph winds and choppy discolored water we knew we wouldn’t be sight casting so we didn’t take extra fly rods knowing we’d be survey-casting spinning rods to cut through the wind and cover all the water we could. We had a great time on the water.   The boat, Jud and the flats were right out of a World Fishing network Redfish Spot, but the weather, probably mostly the change in the barometric pressure conspired to keep the reds from biting.   As Jud poled us through semi-sheltered tight estuary channels as the tide went high then fell.   We saw mud boils as we spooked the reds but couldn’t get them to activate.  

We’ll be back to this area and with Jud again.    If you are looking to book reds in the Wilmington Area look him up http://www.muddyflyguideservice.com/

34 Air // 37 Water

A Cold Day but great flow on the Hughes

James invited me to get out of the office and have a mountain fishing adventure so who was I to say no.   We's hope'd the weather would be warmer, the forecast high was 52 but when we arrived at the Hughes River it was 34 and the wind had a bite which made us wonder if we had another layer.

James tip-toes up to casting position, one fall ends your day out here

 We rigged up w 2 and 3 wts and high hopes that we'd be able to lure a trout into a strike.   Up the road, over Brokenback Run and 35 minutes up Nicholson Hollow Trail we decided we'd out walked any pressure (who else would be crazy enough to be out fishing) and we hit the Hughes.   I love the Hughes, Its not quite such a high gradient as the Rapidan or Hazel and has a really nice bed.

When this male struck he turned over and his bright yellow belly made my day -- I didn't have him out of the water more than a few seconds

We decided to go with double dropper rigs w adjustable indicators so we could match the depth of each pool and run.   With a copper john on the top trailed by a #20 BH pheasant tail we worked each pool slowly trying to find the slow deep water.   Leapfrogging pool to pool James Picked up the first trout, a fingerling brookie, but hey any trout is infinitely better than no trout and the excitement of a catch renewed our attentiveness. 

By the end of the day we'd picked up another fingerling and a few respectable sized specs.   It wasn't much, but in February, in these conditions it was very rewarding start to the 2018 fishing year.