Don't disturb yourself by reading this if you aren't getting out to fish enough!

Bright spots in the dappled sunlight

I had asked Bryan whether he wanted to go bassin or stalk mountain brookies, wasted words, as he's a trout addict...I should have known.  Our last trout trip together was a wash-out in central PA and with Catholics around here building arks we decided to head to the headwaters of the upper Rapidan to see if we could climb out of the locally high waters.  

Standard Rapidan Brookie

Bryan had heard me worship the upper Rapidan before but had never been before so I was happy to take him on one of my favorite pilgrimages.    We met in Manassas and worked our way up well-rutted Quaker Run Road until we hit the SNP gate above the Marine Cabins.  

The road is getting worse so if you try this route without a high clearance 4x4 plan on leaving parts of your ride on the road.  The drive up was wet but the river had shrugged off the storms and was running clear at optimum/low pool.  We didn't see anyone else fishing on our way in, always great news.   

On a mossy rock ...careful...slippery when wet

We geared up, Bryan with a trusty 6' rod that his dad may have made and myself with a full flex 3wt 7'6".  We hit the water at 0900 with an overcast sky.  I didn't take the water temp, but it was probably in the low 60's, refreshing to me, but more importantly still cold and oxygenated enough to keep the brookies happy. Bryan and I tried everything that floated and settled on a 14 or 16 adams parachute as the fly of the day.  I worked a dropper for a few stretches, but the action was excitingly on the top water.  

We caught and returned trout in the first 5-minutes and knew it would be a good day. We worked our way up the stream leap-frogging and hitting likely spots.  The action picked up mid-day, say 1000-1300, with hungry brookies eagerly slurp-slapping well crated presentations.   The fish seemed to be concentrated in the deeper runs and tight to the riffles probably taking advantage of the higher oxygen content of both areas.  There was a consistent stonefly hatch on the water through much of the morning and the marine layer over the stream was full of food. 

This is a near trophy on the Upper Rapidan

 We lost each other on the upper half of the Rap as we took different sides of an island and I thought that he was in front of me when I got to the upstream tip of the island.  Turns out that fishing was so good on his side (note to Scot...the left side I usually take) that he was slow and enjoying himself.

Simple glory

  I fished up the Hoover retreat by myself catching my largest trout in the first pool where you can look up and see the top of the Brown House.  I waited for 20 minutes in a fine mist and headed downstream to find Bryan slowed by good fishing even after I had walked through this same water already!  We fought our way out of the stream and walked up the retreat as Bryan had never seen it and on our way out we stopped on the bridge at the Brown house and Bryan pulled a presidential brookie from the hole underneath the bridge.  

Bryan with his trout in the shadow of the Brown House Bridge

The Brown House -- President Hoovers Trout retreat

Rapidan perfection

On the walk back to the jeep I showed Bryan the little mountain spring pool at the intersection and told him to approach it carefully as it holds brookies all year.  I'll be darned as the little brookies were rising to a hatch on the surface of that little pool.  Bryan flicked his dry straight down into the pool and in 2 seconds was rewarded when one of the small broookies slapped his fly on the surface.  Scott and I have always marveled at these trout in their tiny pool and to catch and

Note more mature structure of this more underwater brookie

return one was quite a treat.  We ended the day walking...ok... limping back to the jeep after a long rewarding day on my favorite stream.  We didn't count but probably brought 50 to hand and missed at least twice as many of these aggressive fellas. 

Adams Parachute was the fly of the day

 “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories