Bucketmouth Bliss

Last Friday my friend Bob Close and I made a bit of a study of chain pickerel in Virginia and found that the highest reported concentration of them in Virginia was in Little Creek Resevoir in Toano, Virginia.   I rode the bus home and determined that I would give pickerel a try.  I happily found James up for a Saturday adventure so we headed south on 95 for the 2-hours schlep towards Toano (near Williamsburg).  

No Jokes please ....at least I caught something

We arrived at 0900, paid our launch fee and got some free advice from the tidewater native running the launch/bow/fishing/hunting/taxidermy shop.  There was a fleet of bass boats there but the fella told us that if we stayed in the skinny water and shallow we might have luck with the pickerel.  We launched and began prospecting with spinning rods and floating rapalas planning to locate the pickerel then turn over to long rods. Unfortunately the wind was up, the water was deeper than we anticipated and shallow, sheltered coves with structure were few and far between.  I also wonder if the cold snap the night before might have turned off the shallow pickerel bite.   I did catch one pickerel and had several follows, but the fish of the day went to James.  

Bucket-mouth bliss

He got tired of chucking the rapala so he rigged a gaudy, yellow deep-diving crank bait and sure enough caught a log that began moving and turned into a handsome bucket-mouth as we neared the end of our allotted time.  The fight and the fish put a grin on my face and a smile that I'm pretty sure is still on his face.   Well done!

In Spring....my fancy turns to thoughts of Mountain Trout

Like an old friend who welcomes you back with a hearty embrace, the twists and turns, holes, glides, pools and plunges of the upper Rapidan welcomed me back to share its secrets.

Orvis Days

The upper Rapidan is high gradient, skinny water, its holding water protected by a web of deadfall, boulders and new growth branches which demand constant attention to any backcast as they protect these colorful brookies.

Ready to head out

 The flow today was moderately high and cold at 44 degrees and as the air temperature never beat 50, our hopes of finding an early season epeorus hatch never materialized and almost all our strikes today were subsurface on nymphs and streamers.

Fat Brookie from Bryan

 Bryan and I had begun our day linking up on 28 West of Manassas and catching-up on life as we made the familiar trip to towards Culpepper and up the increasingly rough Rapidan access road.

Glide Pool in its green glory

We checked out the Junction pool where the water was abit higher than ideal but having read some reports of hatches in the headwaters of SNP streams we headed up to the boundary gate to fish my favorite stretch of the river towards the Brown House. Bryan was baptizing a beautiful new 6'6" 3wt pocket water stick from LL Bean and I walked down the familiar trail with an Orvis 6' 2wt hoping that its short length would be perfect for the tight conditions.

At the center of the web

We leap-frog fished and I think that we both caught a brookie in the first pool or two we fished.  Bryan's was a colorful 7-8 incher and mine was a fingerling!  I began  the day working a size 16 beadhead pheasant tail nymph under and adams parachute and throughout the day stayed with the pheasant tail but also tried a Mr. Rapidan, yellow humpy and elf hair caddis to little reward. 

Bryan with Brookie

Bryan ended up having the most success on size 8 bucktail streamers! While I was going small he was going large and surprising (at least to me) he did very well plumbing the depth of pools and swinging the streamer through the riffles.  We ended the day with bout two dozen brookies brought to hand.

Bryan at Scott's favorite Log pool..Bryan hooked a nice trout in the upper pool

We caught about the the same number of fish but fish for fish hie technique produced larger trout.  A few times ma weather started spitting on us but never really opened up and then occasionally got sunny and breezy.
The temp never got above 50 and I suspect that we missed the hatch by one day as it's forecast to reach 70 tomorrow. We fished for 4 hours and covered about 2/3 of the way to the Brown House.

True to Scott's teaching,  I caught my best brookie, made that my last cast and climbed out of the river happy to be back on the water with a good friend and looking forward to doing it again..  Given the conditions we found I think that next week may begin a great stretch.

Lahontan Cutt Adventure -- no Cutts!

Sitting at McCarran Airport in January my eyes found snow topped the Mt. Charleston sitting high in the Spring Mountains overlooking the Vegas Valley. 

Mt. Charleston from SW Las Vegas

Not having anything better to do I GOOGLED it and found that it’s rather unusual in that it has 6 distinct climatic zones from arid desert at its base (think Death Valley on the West) to arctic atop its windswept, rocky peak.

Heading into the Spring Mountains the snowline was at 5800"

  Between the arid desert and the frozen top there’s a zone of bristle-cone pines and several springs that form a small stream at about 7000’. 

There are higher peaks obscured by the snow

Shade + year round cold water often equals trout habitat so I GOOGLED further and found a BLOG reference from Oak Creek Angler check out his adventure...at least you'll see trout describing a trout-hike into and up what I soon learned to be Carpenter Canyon on the west face of Mt Charleston.

Heading up Carpenter Canyon Road it looked good ....at first

More research indicated that decades earlier Nevada Fish and Wildlife had stocked this small section of the stream with Lahontan Cutthroat, a species native to the lakes and mountain streams in the high mountains of the West.

A splash of red in a sea of gray

   Lahontan cutthroat at one time were in Alpha species in Pyramid Lake, NV and routinely pushed 35+lbs! In the mountain streams where they’ve been stocked intermittently and in this stream they seem to be in the 7-9” range. 

Snow clouds begin to close us out

Armed with a few tips from the author of Oak Creek Angler, a likeminded fishing adventurer I decided to make a trip my next trip to Vegas.   I persuaded my office-mate Jeff Horton to adventure with me and we left northern Virginia before dawn and arrived in Vegas at 0940 PCT where we rented an SUV and headed south around the Spring Mountains to Carpenter Canyon Road in the vicinity of Pahrump, NV. 

I had to stop here as the road and snow got worse uphill

Our first mile up the 14 mile road was easy-grade, but the road soon turned into a rutted trail as we crept uphill.   Like the Shenandoah, the mountains look like a solid front, but really have lots of depth to them.  At about mile 5 it started spitting snow as we gained elevation and the vegetation got worn wind-worn and swept.

Jeff smiles in the desert blizzard

At mile 7 the ruts and rocks in the road gave us pause and the snow began to obscure the torn trail.

   At mile 9 a near blinding mountain blizzard closed in and we didn’t dare push our pal-to-pavement 4x2 SUV any further and admitted defeat.

This was the "road" ahead that protected those cutt-throat...to much for my little SUV

   We had another 4 miles to go and had climbed to around 6400 feet on the mountain.

Prickly beauty

We took some pictures, resolved to creep back down the mountain and live to fight another day. I’ll be back with a jeep and I will find these trout…anybody want to come? 

Jeff with Pahrump, NV in background

unforgiving but beautiful

Rainbow sends us on our way back to Vegas