Return of the Padwans 24-25 May 2021

'Return of the Jedis suggests mastery of our craft and after months chasin different species we each found delicate fly fishing skills are perishable...so Padwan learners we are and were ...thanks for asking.   

Fritz, Henry and I do dedicate ourselves to getting out more often to keep skills fresh.    This was our third adventure to Little Juniata and Spruce Creek about a dozen miles WNW from Huntingdon, PA.  

This trip was planned for last year but got virus'd.  Our trucks met at the Penn State public access lot on Spruce Creek and we geared-up as dark clouds bore down and pea-sized rain pelted us ...no worries, waders and gore-tex make fast moving storms no more than an inconvenience and Spruce was running low and looked like it could use a drink.  

For anyone who cares about such things Spruce Creek is a semi-famous brown trout stream that's questioned presidents' and angler luminaries' skills in its storied past.   The majority of Spruce is off limits to the public, but fortunately there's a beautiful stretch kept up by Penn State upstream of its confluence with the Little Juniata in the hamlet of (you guessed it) Spruce Creek.  Fritz and Hen drifted nymphs in the rain, but I can report I fooled a nice 9" brown with dry on a special fly rod that came to me by way of Bill Pfeiffer. 

She was treat of a catch on his rod and a great memory.  With no trout rising and slow action in the rain we left at 1300 and hit Spruce Creek Outfitters to support our local fly shop.  We each left with a pocket full of flies and a tantalizing report, that  Green Drakes had appeared recently in the evening!  Armed with excitement and a few green drake spinners in our vests,  we visited familiar waters at the quarry pool.  

The river was low but quickly added 80% cfs (recall that rain) which brought it up 4 inches and with it a bit of bank debris and bugs, bugs and more bugs!  The frothy surface layer was silly with insect activity in the current seems. 

these appeared late afternoon

Soon Yellow Sulphur mayflies were rising through the water/emerging and browns livened up ascending through the water like breaching submarines.  Excited by the inevitability of the spinner fall we waited as the sun dipped over a ridge and the bridge swallows swooped and darted feasting on the fat bellied sulphurs. Henry and Fritz put away their ESN rigs and with standard 5wts we brought a few to hand, but unfortunately the excitement of the hatch did not bring all the fish to hand we had expected.   Perhaps we needed to stay later?

our imitation

As we were about to leave the river we took one last look at the river and saw a mature brown rising 5 feet from the step-in 2 feet off the bank.  Feeling thwarted thus far we threw in a size 16 sulphur dry which was inhaled by the brown to end the day!

We found our way back to Huntingdon's lone modern hotel, A Fairlfield Inn and Suites, bedded down and the next morning, loaded with coffee and Gatorade, made our way to a riffle-pool-riffle section downstream of the Spruce Creek confluence, (join us next year to find out where :-) where we had an amazing day.  

 

sulphur nymph was a producer

We found we could pick up sporadic browns nymphing seams, but had better fortune targeting individual rising trout in deep cuts under overhanging tree boughs.  

Instream positioning was key to successful, often sidearm, casts looking to get 3-6 feet of dragless drift to the rising trout.   If you could solve the stream-positioning/casting/ drift riddle the browns played their part and we each all caught our share throughout the afternoon.         

Hen w a fat brown ...that log structure provided a natural buffet line for feeding browns

Browns-on ...Fritz and Hen double-up 

Fritz has enough of the world to himself 

Comradery was great throughout, but the catching improved on a steep curve from arrival at Spruce Day until we were forced to quit squinting in the ghostly light of the harvest moon.

Fishing beneath the harvest moon

The best hours of the day were clearly 1900-2115 and the river explored with activity from 2040-2105 as yellow-sulphur and green drake spinners fell to the water fueling a burst of activity.   We surely annoyed a nearby campground with exclamations of, "Fish on" or Hens', 'Fritz get down here its crazy/it's amazing mate!" Cause when you fish with brothers like these you always want to put your mate on the best bite 🐟🎣💪

This'll be an annual trip so let me know if you want in next May.

Fish on friends.

Hen w a colorfully spotted Brown

Fritz: Large brown on is watched by Hen

James River Recon

The water hasn't stopped coming down in the Mid-Atlantic for two months so when I found a bathtub in the River Level on the James river Fritz, Jacob, Paul and I jumped at it.

  The James is the major river draining central Virginia.   Its formed when two magnificent trout waters join, the Jackson and the Cowpasture in Far Western Virginia and runs its course ESE cleaving the Shenandoah Ridge-line before flattening and making its run to the ocean.   On its southern banks, the English  settled Jamestown and Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. 

 Our Crew was relatively new to the James, Fritz and Paul had each fished a couple sections before and we decided on a popular whitewater stretch as our destination between Glascow where the Maury flowing from Lexington to Snowden, VA 5 miles downstream.   The river's white water features were named and the fishing was supposed to be superb.

After 3 hour drives from NOVA and pretty fair chow at the Pink Cadillac Diner. We bunked down at a local hotel and made it to the water by 0800 Saturday morning.  The river was running clear at a perfect 2.93 feet on the Buchanan river gauge and the overcast skies, dripping mist promised a great fishing day.   Floated by my kayak, Fritz' trusty Old Town Discovery and Paul's new float-fishing Pontoon we shot through a narrow slot and the Maury pushed us into the James.   

 In what I'd later view as odd but fortuitousness I caught 3 bass in the span of 20 minutes then the catching part of fishing got few and far between!

We caught a few in the 12-13 inch range but not the hundreds we'd expected

Fritz and Jacob question a rock strewn pool

This should by all rights have been exceedingly fishy, it had all the elements but over the course of 7 hours on the water we probably only caught 35 smallies between us.   Very Odd.

Paul spins caught in a back-eddy hydraulic of Balcony Falls

Fritz shows me the extent of his massive Raspberry -- youch!

The fishing wasn't great but the scenery and company was magnificent!

Thanks for looking

Scott's Run

A couple years ago Fritz, James and I were deep in the Big Run Watershed and had just started our walk out when we spied a sizable tributary flowing out of a hollow and joining the far side of Big Run .2 miles downstream from the intersection of Big Run Trail and Big Run Portal. I thought about gearing up but decided to study, see what stream it was and save it for an adventure for another day.   It turns out the trib was unnamed and there's only scant reference to it in a watershed study of the area.  Audaces fortuna invat so I decided to claim it and name it.     Here it is flowing into Big Run from the east/right of the map.

Here's what it looks like from the satellite view:

The hike down was 2.5 miles and took 71-minutes, with the mountain laurel in full bloom lining the path it was beautiful, but every step down reminded me of the hike out to come.

12 minutes into the hike at the 2nd switch back you cross the headwaters of Big Run.   2.2 miles into the the hike at the bottom of a descending ridge-finger finds the intersection of Big Run Trail (heads off to left) and Big Run Portal (follows Big Run down stream).

.3 Miles below the trail intersection located at 38.266146, -78.699944
Eppert Hollowing and the newly names Scott's Run pushes into Big Run.

Scott's Run to the left, the headwaters of Big Run to the right

To my excitement I caught this sweet little guy right under this sign.

This long pool was as far as I got up Scott's Run

I fished up Scott's Run for 200m, it holds lovely squaretails that I can't imaging see fishing pressure at all.    They were spunky and seemed happy to reward the effort, it was a thrill each time they rose to slap my fly.   Scott's Run, found, named and fished I walked 12-min downstream from the confluence and started fishing Big Run.   The air was a cool 58 and the water temp was the same. As the sun found its way deep into the run, bug life exploded.   Several pools I just watched as hatches emerged and trout rose to take them from the surface film.   An amazing morning.   I fished for three more hours and with plans to be corral smallies the next day, I began my walk out.  Enjoy these pics...

 

Big Run

Harry Murray's Mr. Rapidan took this fellow 

Foot rest for him

Foot rest for me

This 16 Parachute Sulphur was the most product fly today

If you're ready for an adventure get down to Scott's Run

A great hike on Staunton Run

James and I were looking forward to chasing some trout, so after my scout of the Conway found it inaccessible we set our sights on Staunton Run high up in SNP.  We started from NOVA and soon found ourselves at the Graves Mill confluence of Kinsey Run and the Rapidan.

James at Conway River 662/667 Campsite

I still wanted to show James the Conway so we decided to see if the access road was still inaccessible.  Five minutes and one ridge line later we found that what had been snowed in recently was now passable with Clifford in 4-wheel drive.  We took it slowly and after another ridge-line the gurgling Conway emerged on our left.  We passed the Devils Ditch access and made our way up to the campsite at the top of the 662/667 intersection.  We walked down to the river to give James a feel for it.

Clifford has never let me down yet atop the Conway Campsite access trail

Though the day was gorgeous the Conway at this point still drains a large watershed.It was running clear, but fully loaded and fast. It was just fish-able if needed, but not optimal and with that in mind we decided to stay on our original plan and headed back towards Graves Mill and Staunton Run.
          Clifford rolled us slowly back to the Rapidan/Stanton SNP gate above Graves Mill and I was very surprised to see the cul-de-sac filled vehicles.  I surveyed their backseats and to my joy found that they were hikers not fisherman and throughout the day we met

Geared up and ready

pleasant hiker after pleasant hiker, all curious to see us fishing. As we geared-up we had one group of 8 from Fredericksburg snap this pic of us as we prepared to head up the trail.
We walked up the trail with the tempting middle-rapidan on our right for 10-minutes until we hit the spur trail to our left which follows the southerly bank of Staunton Run just south of Fork Mountain into McDaniel Hollow. We began just below the gauge pool, James with a 3wt caddis/ followed by hares-ear nymph and me w a 2wt, parachute adams followed by a small dark green zebra midge.

Middle Rapidan on the walk to Staunton Run

James takes in The Gauge Pool, the first large pool on Staunton Run

 I was sure we'd run into the same action I'd found here recently and was very surprised that we couldn't raise a strike all day. The weather had been consistently nice, the water was 42 degrees (I know...still pretty cold), the stream was nicely loaded and very fish-able.  I wonder if one of those "hikers" might actually have been a fisherman and if we might have been unknowingly fishing behind him for the 3.5 hours we spent on the river.  In any event we had a great time fishing this little run. It definitely holds enough water to fish it in drier times and I was pleased to see a hiking path on the left side of the run which looks like it continued up quite far. 

James had a great presentation in the backside eddy ...but no fish!

The high gradient provides nice plunge pools consistently

The path certainly made the return trip easier but didn't seem to bring in much pressure as I suspect that most fisherman would rather hit the more popular and accessible Rapidan or Conway.  I'll be back on another day.