Conway, Staunton, Conor and Pizza

I was meeting Conor to fish at 1330 so I took advantage of the morning and hit the upper Conway from the 667 ford upstream.

even the water can't hide those spots

Be careful if you fish the Conway as a high clearance vehicle is now required after the rains have washed deep gullies in the narrow mountain road. 


I began the day with a dry-dropper combo but quickly moved to just dry presentations as all my takes today were on the surface. The bite was slow and steady. The water was optimal (low) and the trout easily spooked.

#16 stimulator pattern was the fly of the day

No fish were in the shallower tails of the pools (I spooked many out of the tails with my approach) and the majority hit in the standard backeddys at the upper riffles. I didn't catch any browns and think that the brown population decreases the further upstream one fishes. I tried all sorts of dry flies in an attempt to boost my strike rate and though I caught trout on all the dries a #16 parachute stimulator worked best.

Conway Brookie in her element

Interestingly the trout brought to hand got bigger the further upstream I fished with the largest (9") coming on the last cast of the morning. At noon I made my way back to the jeep and found that fishing slowly I had spent 3 hours covering only 300 yards of river. I drove back down through Graves Mill to Wolf Run Mercantile Store and waited for Conor. We shared a sub from the ladyfolk at the store and headed back towards Graves mill for the Staunton River.

Conor on the Staunton

We rigged up and headed up the access trail with the shimmering Rapidan River inviting us to linger on our right. We stayed true to our plan and found the Staunton after a 10 minute walk. The Staunton was low but as it's spring fed at its headwater it holds a decent volume year round. I was planning on great success but the bite was off and as the Staunton is very skinny and technical we found the tree limbs more often than we'd care to admit.

meaty brookie

Even so Conor and I had a great time. I looked back at him carefully crawly over some boulders and urged him on to which he responded, "hey shorty, when you fall from up here it's a long way down."  We ended up catching a few brookies and turned around as an afternoon thunder banger closed in on us. We ended the day with a delicious pizza at a hole in the wall called 'Pie in the Sky' in Madison. All in all a great day.

does it get much prettier?

Dappled light on the Staunton