39 Hours later

With weather closing in it had been 39 Hours since my last trip to the shad run, I hope it won't be so long before I'm there again.   I had the island tip hole to myself for the first hour as the rain built in Friday morning, the river had begun to rise but nit enough to effect the run or its fishability, so with hood up against the big drops I rigged up with this sparkly self tie.  

This dart is tied on a 1/16oz jig head and still needed more weight to bite into the current.   When I added weight If ound that it really began to reduce the casting efficiency of my HF 5wt so I took off my splitshot and added 10 feet of sink tip line to the leader.    This worked out well but the long casts required to get into the optimum strike area are tricky with the backcast bank brush.




The fly above fished slowly today so I changed to a pattern Fritz tied last year, a chartreuse jig head with a silver chenille midesction and a sparse buck tail.   The shad really liked this pattern and it with its offset eyelet it seemed to bite deeper into the current.....fish on.

This old HF SF is amazing its got butt-backbone and great flex for the first 4'

 

I was joined by a very nice long rodder from Williamsburg after an hour or so and enjoyed watching him manipulate his 5wt switch rod with a silky switch cast (no backcast).    He got into them immediately and his shooting head really allowed allowed him to cover lots of water.  Next time out I'll fish my 5wt switch and work on my switch cast.    The fishing kept up steady, the water rose a bit but never was a problem.   I ended the day with a great fight from this daddy...

Big daddy Hickory shad

 panorama of the hole

Thx for looking

Spring has sprung and Shad are here

Spring teased the Mid-Atlantic in February, the promise of an early fishing season ending with an early March Snowstorm.  I have been itching to get back on the river and headed south on 95 with my very game boss after work to check the Shad Run on the Rappahannock.    Jessica had never fished the run so I let her know that we'd either hit them and have a great time or have casting practice for 15 minutes and head back if they were not in yet.   Turns out that the run is building, Fritz had reported a few hook-ups three days ago, and we were blessed with enough fish to keep us busy and few anglers at tip-of-the-island hole above the Falmouth Bridge.  

Jessica gamely donned XL waders and boots a few inches too big and we moved across the island to the pool.   Osprey were diving for herring (always a good sign) and as I moved into the hole a spooked a pod of hickory shad etched smile on my face. 

I rigged Jessica with a medium spinning outfit w a shad spoon under a sliding sinker and used my Orvis SF Henry's Fork 5-Wt with weighted silver-chenille shad darts tied over the winter.    Steering my backcast through pockets in the bank-trees I was able to nearly reach the rapid break on the far side of the pool, mend the line to the left as it drifted to the right to get some depth....then WHACK -- shad-on!  As Fritz and I found last year there's a sweet deep slot that holds the moist shad if one stands on the rock ledge and casts out and then retrieves back, after the offering leaves the fastest current it sinks into the slot and hook-ups are a good bet.   

 I love these fighters and when Jessica hooked and landed a beauty the day was a total success.   We only stayed for 90-minutes, but had a great time. I'll be back in a few hours.

Winter's Spring on the Rapid Anne

In snowy NH Henry and I surveyed the abnormally warm week ahead and knew it would mean warming water and the prospect of activating mountain trout.  It turns out that they never really turned on as their biological clocks hadn't caught up to the 53 degree water and 70 degree days, but we still had a great time.

We started our adventure at Junction Pool and walked down past the ford for another 4-5 minutes to where the gradient mellowed and the steep walls flatten as the Rap flows into Graves Mill Valley.  We were early and knew the best fishing would be between 1100-1700 but couldn't help ourselves and started fishing the clear plunge pools of this lower section at 0915.

  The water was low and the sun had yet to penetrate the tight valley when we stopped to collect ourselves after an hour of little action.   We enjoyed a good sit on a rock with a plunge pool upstream while we trimmed leaders and re-rigged Henry's 7'10" 1-oz Orvis 'Ultra-fine', he'd been working a long leader and wasn't getting any line out to load the rod. As we lounged on the rock 1100 approached Hen took a seated cast at the pool at feet and after a second of drift his Mr. Rapidan Dry dipped sideways below the surface, Hen lifted his tip setting the hook in the jaw of a lovely spotted, fat 8' brookie.

With spirits raised we had great fishing for about 90-minutes until we reached the ford where it slowed. After 90-min of frustratingly slow fishing we came upon another pair of fisherman who had jumped in front of us!  I was not happy, but at least we knew why the fishing had slowed and we pushed passed them back to the jeep an Junction Pool. We jeeped up to the TU Parking lot and hopped back in the water where we fished toward net pool on the right hand side of the road.  I don't fish this section of the Rapidan frequently and was really pleased to see the lovely pools on this side.

 The trout were striking 90% of the time on droppers, a #20 beadhead prince hung on 6x was the top producer, but we kept on dries savoring those far between surface strikes.   We really had to work for our fish today, but the 17 out of the 20 trout brought to hand were in the 6-9" range, good size for high mountain brookies.  We'll be back!

Thanks for looking!

Skunked on Gunpowder Falls!

Henry and I grabbed a mid-day fishing opportunity on Wedesday and re-learned that fishing is great but not nearly as fun as fishing + catching!   With the weather and water both hovering in the early 40's we were stymied by the cold.   We had several hookups on midge droppers and I had three top water strikes during 20 minutes of surface activity and then there was ...nothing.   We did have a great time and commend Bagel Meister in Phoenix, MD as a great breakfast meeting spot, but the fish were not playing today.

Tiny Henry fishes from a rock tower

New Water ~ North River

Anxious to get on the water and get away from D.C. on Inauguration Day Fritz, James and I set out on wet roads for an adventure to the Delayed Harvest Section (DHS) of the North River West of Bridgewater, Va.  North River had been on my list for a year and the DHS is a 1-mile tail-water between the bottom discharge dam at Elkhorn Lake and Staunton Reservoir. My hope was that the bottom release dam would add consistent trout friendly water and that Elkhorn lake would serve as a buffer to rain. Turns out I was right on both. The flow was optimum and running at a winter-warm 46.👍

James and Fritz atop the dam with Elkhorn Lake and the WV Ridgeline behind them

With Fritz driving and a worn Delorme in my lap we found our way to the headwaters of Elkhorn Lake in about 3 hours.  The section of North River that flows down the VA/WV border and feeds Elkhorn is supposedly good native Brookie territory and will get its chance soon too. We found the parking area at the head of Elkhorn, geared up in the rain and drained our last drops of coffee before the .5-mile walk along the southern side of the lake toward the dam. We'd heard this section was decent sized trout water for the VA Mtns so we took an assortment of rods not knowing exactly what to expect.  Expecting to thrown tandem nymphs under an indicator I decided on a stiff TFO 8' 2wt, Fritz a 7'6" 4wt and James his trusty 7'6" 3wt.

What a sledding hill this would have made!   Fritz and James head down

It was a chilly and damp walk in the rain to the spillway and I thought of Camas Creek as I headed down to the spillway.  We noted the spillway pool BLOG-chatter claimed always held trout to our delight saw trout suspended in the pool.  

trout, bass, river suckers, pan fish this discharge pool held them all

After a few strikes in the spillway pool we decided to walk down the stream-side trail and fish back up to the pool. I thought the trail led all the way to Staunton Reservoir, but it turns out that it ended after about half a mile.  

 

DHS between the two reservoirs the trail ends at the 90 degree bend midway between

 With James and Fritz catching up I examined the forest, the rock ledges carved by the rivers constant cutting and the beauty of it all.   Fritz had seen nesting Bald Eagles at the car and attuned to their presence I smiled as one dropped down into the riverbed and swooped ahead alighting on a branch down river.  

When we reached the end of the streamside trail James decided to fish up from there and Fritz and I resolved to head down stream toward Staunton Reservoir.  We followed deer trails, broke brush, hit a few pools and finally came to the top of Staunton reservoir.

Top of Staunton Reservoir and our furthest point downriver

 

View from the bottom looking back into the Special Regs/Delayed Harvest Area

To our delight and frustration 10-12 Bows and 2 brookies made this large rock their home-base

I approached from the farside while Fritz roll casted from the near bank using the current to carry his wholly bugger into between the rock (see above) and the bank... bam rainbow-on.

 In the pod in front of us were a dozen rainbows and 2 somewhat larger white-finned brookies, for near an hour, Fritz and I crept and crawled bloody through the thorny bank trying our best to entice another trout to hand to no avail.  After nodding respectfully to these finicky stockers we began our trek upstream to close with James.  

We found James just upstream of a gorgeous bend pool bisected by a large trunk splitting the pool, another 12-15 trout were in the pool and as the afternoon had warmed to a super comfortable 60 degrees the trout turned on eating emergers coming off the cobble strewn bottom.

Here I am drifting my split shot-weighted fly under the log to the feeding station

We all enjoyed hook-ups and talking each other onto trout...steady...steady...to the left...here he comes..now.now...set the hook, but Fritz was the only one to come away with a bow, see video below.

 

 With the shadows starting the creep up the river valley we decided to fish our way back up and call it day.    I'll come back here again (can't abide being skunked on such lovely water) and next time I'll be sure to work the North River above where it enters Elkhorn Lake as well.

Thanks for following along!

 

 

 

 

 

 Here are the directions