Friday ~ Confluence
I fished the confluence for the first
time this year as a scouting trip for Bill Pfeiffer's trip to Va next weekend.
I parked at the end of the Richards
Ferry Rd and Mt biked in, 10-min. The
weather was sunny and 70 with light wind.
I noted when I crossed the Rappahanock at Ely's Ford that there was a
lot of water in the Rapidan and it looked quite brown.
When I got to the confluence campsite I
found, to my surprise 15 dudes there with 10 canoes, they were from the
Spottsylvania Fire & Rescue and had put in the day before at Elys. They were messy but pleasant enough. It was apparent that there was far more water
in the Rapidan than the Rappahanock. The
Rapidan was really unfishable and borderline dangerous. The Rappahanock was
high but much clearer and just fishable.
The reading on the Fredericksburg gauge was 3.28. This reaffirms that I
really want to fish the confluence at or below 3 on the Fredericksburg gauge.
There was one other gent fly fishing the
Rapp lower into the confluence his name was Lindsey and he was from Southern
MD. I began and fished the nearside of the Rapp up about 100-150 yards from the
camp site. I used a 4wt rod and line and
found that it was too light for the #6
bead head bugger I was casting, I'll bring a 5 wt next time. I primarily fished back into structure along
the bank as the flow in the middle was too much for me to target runs and
holes. I caught 4-5 good sized panfish,
great fighters, and 3 smallmouth in 75-min of fishing.
As I exited and looked over to the
Rapidan there was a large moccasin slithering in the roots close bye trying to
avoid the current.
This was a good
recon as the hike in is probably 20-min and I don't feel safe bringing Bill
here unless the water level is at around 2.9 or so. Mm
Scott and I took a day off to hunt Bronzebacks on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River just east of Edinburg, Va. Scott had fished the North Fork before, but this was a new spot for both of us. We think we hit the river where Murray's Fly shop takes their anglers for 'bass school'. If Murray doesn't he should! We geared up and headed down stream. The water was cooler than we suspected and running at 2.1 feet on the Strasberg gauge. I would guess in the high 70s and the runs were deeper than the crystal water suggested. We immediately started picking up smallies and the action didn't end all day till we quit. Scott fished a new Orvis 6wt 9ft popping a small white popper trailed by a hornberg. This seemed to be a great rig. Scott actively popped the popper and skittered it atop the water. I used my 4/5wt 8.6 and threw a variety of combos, my most successful was a yellow-jacket #8 popper and a #8 green wholly bugger. I caught some on the popper but 90% on the dropper. We lunched back at the truck then walked upstream a 1/2 mile and fished back to the truck to end the day. As we entered the water we walked thru some "fire-weed" which is still burning my calves as I write this post! Warning it looks like strawberry vines and stings like a jellyfish! Damn. There was so much action on this trip down to the truck that we grew tired of catching smallies. Together me caught more that a hundred smallies. At one point we pulled in an unheard of Quad...both of us caught two fish as the same time...popper & dropper! Unbelievable. Our only complaint is that they were almost universally small with only a few pushing 11 inches.
