Misty Morning on the Shenandoah

Conor, Scott and I headed to the Rt 50 Bridge over the Shenandoah River this morning for a smallmouth excursion.  We arrived at 0715, the sun breaking over the rolling river valley, mist wafting off the water and smallies rising under the bridge...gorgeous. 

Morning on The Shenandoah

We fished the left bank for 250 yds in a train of three in knee-thigh cool, clear water, the conditions seemed perfect, but the smallies were not active.  We picked up the occasional sunfish in the likely haunts, but the smallies were scarce and only Conor picked up a few small ones with a beetle-spin fished on a 4-lb ultralight spinning rod. 

Full sized fighter

When we hit the island we expected the bite to pick up in the swift water of the left channel.  The river deepened and quickened to waist-chest depth, but the smallies didn't turn-on despite the seemingly ideal conditions.  We rounded the island and came back upstream on the eastern/DC side of the river hitting the deep slower water along the back. 

1st bass the Access

We fished the next 150 yds inline all casting towards banks-structure and shuffling upstream.  The fishing turned-on in this unlikely area.  I caught my first bronzeback on my new Access 5 wt and Scott began to pick up smallies too.  Conor laid into the largest smallie of the day who broke the line just as we were lining him up

Shenandoah Bronzeback -- our Target

for a picture. Damn he was nice. We probably caught 10 smallies between us in this section.  It seemed like we could have kept up this pace as the structure remained constant and the bite continued, but we needed to cross the deepening river and get back to the van so we crossed to the Winchester side to end the day.  A great morning on a beautiful river with great company. Fish well my friends and remember Paul Pfeiffers' first rule, "Be There".

Looking upstream (island on left) Conor and Scott