Beaver Creek, VA 1-14-13

I've been  wanting to revisit Beaver Creek since my last trip in November, and Monday was clear on the calendar.  I left the house at 3:30 and headed west. I arrived at the Ottobine Country Store at 5:35 a.m. and was the sole car in the lot.  I waited till about 5:45 when I saw some activity in the store. I paid $10, grabbed my pass and headed up to the elementary school parking lot.  Daylight would not be for another hour -- that's the downside of Beaver Creek fishing.  I rigged my 4-wt Orvis TLS Power Matrix ( predecessor to the Access line) with a sculpin and hit the water.  Weather was overcast and air temps 45-50 degrees... good fishing weather, or so I thought. Nothing seemed to be working swinging streamers downstream. I changed up colors and patterns of sculpins and woolly buggers and varied retrieves -- no luck.  A disconcerting image I found in one pool that has an overhanging edge that allows you clearly look down was the presence of suckers in huge numbers.  When I was here in November, the pool was full of trout... now suckers and an isolated few trout?  I switched tactics to dead drift nymphing and finally found modest success.  Using a tandem rig of copper john and zebra midge I finally enticed a 14-in rainbow to strike.

I had a couple other strikes, but nothing was brought to hand.

I'm not sure why the fishing was so tough today compared to my last trip.  The presence of suckers this time of year also has me puzzled.  Until next time... tight lines!  spl