Rivanna River, Charlottesville

Long-time follower, first-time blogger

Pat, Taylor and I have been enjoying some much-needed time on the water since finishing our surgery rotation in early October. We continued this trend on Thursday afternoon after getting the nod from our resident. We headed to the Rivanna to try our luck at pulling out a bass on a fly. It was a great cloudy afternoon and all three of us had success as soon as we could get our gold Kreelex patterns in the water. We caught fish steadily until dark, and Pat hooked up with the biggest fish of the day that ended up breaking his bug off before he could land it. A fifteen minute drive up 29 is well worth the effort to spend an afternoon catching some of these little guys.

I went back on Sunday afternoon after getting a lot of rain on Saturday. The river was moving a lot of water through and it was pretty tough to wade more than about ten yards from the bank. Fortunately that was all it took because I caught fish steadily until it was too dark to see what I was doing. More smallmouth, bluegill and the occasional crappie.

Rivanna Largemouth 9/2011

Greg and I spooked out the Rivanna below the dam on the north end of Charlottesville this week. We found a mediocre bite until about 530 when the largemouth really turned on. This is one of the few spots on the Rivanna where we regularly catch largemouth bass as opposed to smallies. We mainly used silver and gold standard floating Rapalas, but I'm sure if we had been fly fishing we would have had great success with kreelex or any wooley bugger pattern. We should have another couple weeks of great bass fishing left this season before the bite cools off with the weather. Get out there and take advantage of it!

Longnose Gar on the Fly: Rivanna River

Yet again the Rivanna proves how awesome it is. This past week I was fortunate enough to find a few huge longnose gar to throw flies at. I would equate it to flat fishing for reds (although I've yet to actually catch a red, thanks Rich for continuing to rub it in). I had several successful casts which put my flies right in front of these prehistoric fish but was unable to elicit and serious bites. A green CK baitfish allowed me my first bite but the fish didn't commit. Finally, after sifting through my whole bass fly box, I turned to a white streamer I made to mimic Harry Murray's streamer, the Murray Marauder. Turns out that white flies with tons of action do the trick. I had several follows and hits before finally getting a solid hook set. It was a big guy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40626436@N00/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Five minutes later, after a fight that reminded me of my trip to the Delaware river, I carefully landed the gar. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, I was camera-less this trip out so I'll have to make do with exaggerations about how big it was. The gar must have been about 30 inches. Perhaps longer. Unfortunately, that snout really makes it tough to estimate the fish's size accurately so I may be way off. Regardless, it was an awesome fight and a great fish to pull in with a flyrod. I highly recommend it.

Fishing Report: Rivanna River at North Milton Road

I went to check out another place to wade the Rivanna for smallies. I parked at the boat ramp parking area off of North Milton Road, crossed the street and followed the well blazed path along the river. I found a nice put in and wet waded downstream. I initially was in a section with fast moving water in the middle and nice deep pools with overhanging trees along the shoreline. Several nice smallmouth and a ton of bluegill were taken with my styrofoam poppers (I'd give them a name if I thought no one had made them the way I make them...) and safely returned to continue to grow larger.

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Farther down the water started slowing down and the river bottom became more silted and grassy. I caught a few more here on a white CK baitfish but the wading became difficult and I found myself pulling myself out of muddy banks hoping not to lose my crocs. (Yes, I wear crocs. They are God's gift to man.)

All in all, I'd say it's a great section. A lot less pressure than at the Darden Trowe Park section and better places to find big fish. If and when I go again, I'm definitely going to walk father upstream.

Fishing Report: South Fork of the Rivanna

Hit up the South Fork this past Saturday with some new bass poppers I made. I started out at the dam just off of route 29 and fished downstream. Had some great luck in the slower sections hauling in several largemouth and smallmouth. It was my first time using these new poppers and I must say they worked just as well as any of the 4-5 dollar ones I've bought in stores. I'll be posting instructions for how to make them and what materials you'll need sometime this week.

Here's a largemouth I caught as he was actively searching his grass bed for a meal. He put up a great fight and tried to lose me in the grass. Thank god I had on Ox tippet.
And my best smallie of the season so far. Also taken with one of my handmade poppers.

Rivanna/Shad Run/Rapidan Update

I'm going to try and make this as short as possible but a lot has happened in the past two weeks.

Two Mondays ago, after a productive day of studying at Shenandoah Joe (best coffee ever, if you haven't gone... go and get the Smoky Mountain Roast) the perfect weather forced me to go out and fish for a little while. I headed down to the Rivanna to see if the smallies were out feeding yet (had no luck), but I did happen to find out that with the muddy water being a little higher than normal... it gets hard to see where you're wading. Basically, I stepped into a huge pool and started getting pulled downriver with water seeping into my waders. I pulled my iphone out of my pocket quickly, fast enough to keep it from getting waterlogged, and found my way to the far shore. Pretty terrifying experience as anyone who has felt their waders filling up knows.

Drenched, mad, and fishless I starting trying to figure out how I was going to get back to the car, and with no clear path on the side of the river, I decided to hike up to railroad track and see where to go from there. On the tracks, I had two choices, I could 1. cross the bridge to get back to the path I had taken to get section of the river or 2. not be an idiot and go the other direction which may take longer but wouldn't cause me to play chicken with a train. (Below is were I was when this all happened, you can see the river, the train tracks and the bridge which I was considering crossing)

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Of course, thank god I chose the direction I did because just as I was stepping off the tracks towards the sketchy broken-down graffitti-laden C&O building, a coal train cruised by. The train scene from Stand By Me kept coming to mind...

I then spent the next week trying to get my Iphone fixed. It was pretty much functional. It just wouldn't recognize my SIM card. Basically, after heading to richmond, the ATT store in Cville, and having the "smart people" at IresQ.com tell me that they couldn't fix it for less than $438, I was able to fix it myself... for free. Apparently none of these geniuses thought to try a different SIM card holder.

The only good thing that came out of this whole phone fiasco was that I got to talk to the guys at the Richmond Orvis store about the shad run. Every year during the months of April and May, the hickory and american shad run up the James River to spawn. This allows fishermen to, if they get there when the conditions are best, to catch tons of fish. (I've added the location of the public access boat ramp in Richmond to our google map, if you're interested in going on your own.)

Unfortunately, my first attempt that next weekend at catching shad didn't turn out so well.

Problem 1: The water levels were still up from all the storms we've been having lately which made it feel more like being out on the bay than out on the river.

Problem 2: My fly line is a floating line. This made it extremely tough to get my flies down deep enough to reach the shad which tend to hold about 10 feet down. Practically no amount of line mending could get my fly to where they were.

Since I couldn't find a store that had the shooting heads or sink tips for a 5 wt. rod (shooting heads are heavy sinking lines that help in situations such as these and sink tips are cheaper weighted line that you can add to your existing line, Orvis makes some for a pretty good price... Check this out), I decided to make my own version of a sink tip. With some 12 lb monofilament and flytying lead wire, I constructed a fairly sturdy, heavy, and yet flexible section of line in hopes that it would do the trick.

Unfortunately, while it did work somewhat well considering how ridiculous it looked, it still didn't get my fly down deep enough and it had some trouble turning over my fly on the really long casts (which are harder in a kayak).

I did end up catching one hickory shad on a orange colored mr. twister curly tail grub. That's right, when I couldn't catch them fly fishing, I resorted to spincasting. The guys next to me had some deep diving green and orange tackle (which I saw and therefore was trying to copy with my set up) which brought in about 8 shad for them. Not many others out there had any luck though. I definitely need to go back another day when water levels are lower and with a sinking line.

Since I didn't have a camera with me (or a working Iphone), here's what a hickory shad looks like:

And here's a video that our local store owner, Gordon from Albemarle Angler, put up from his trip to the James (notice how calm the water was... I wish it was like that when I went)

Finally, this past Thursday as I was preparing to head to the library, my friend Lena just had to mention how perfect the weather was outside. This caused me to completely change plans and instinctively head out to the Rapidan.

It was a perfect day for fishing. There were several hatches going on. From what I could tell, there were still BWOs coming off the water, some midges, and Hendricksons. Best of all, the fish were sipping flies off the surface all over the place. Since there were so many different types of flies hatching, I had a difficult time figuring out what I was going to throw at them. My new darkdun and tan snowshoe caddis patterns caught a few fish each. Parachute adams did as well. But I had the most luck with some red-bellied humpies. This was mainly because the water levels were just a little higher than normal and the section I was fishing had particularly rough water (which apparently hid a greater number of large fish). For those of you who don't know, humpies are extremely good at floating and will do a better job of staying on the surface than practically any other dry fly.

In water levels like this, it's definitely harder to fish with dry flies. In retrospect, I should have stuck to nymphs, but hell, it's springtime and it's hard not to want to see a fish soar out of the depths to attack your size 18 fly.

One of my most exciting hook ups occurred as I was standing above a deep pool trying to mend my line over a small waterfall. On my second drift, as the fly got near the waterfall, I saw the big guy attack my fly but missed, most likely because of the rough water conditions. Excited I tried several more times, but with no take. On my last attempt, I started raising my line up and literally had my fly a couple inches above the water when I saw the brookie take flight after my humpy. I had never experienced something like that before. I set the hook and for a second feared that I had mishooked him in the side or something during his acrobatic show of hunger and determination. Fortunately, once I pulled him in, I found my fly set in his mouth (and pretty deep in there as well... I had to use my hemostats to get it unhooked). All in all, probably one of the coolest experiences I've had fly fishing.

Here's the brookie before I returned him back into his pool:

Overall, it's been an interesting two weeks. I'm definitely looking forward to the second spring break session after finals. VAMFFers, look forward to a couple trips during the earlier part of the week before I head to the Delaware River on the 29th.