Mr. Rapidan Himself

Rich has successfully caused me to spend hours this week thinking about fly fishing instead of physiology and neurology. Okay, actually it's probably my fault.

More importantly, however, is that he keeps mentioning some great flies. First the Kreelex and now another favorite of mine, the Mr. Rapidan. And just how the Kreelex was designed by a local fly fishing star so was the Mr. Rapidan.

Harry Murray, owner of Murray's Fly Shop in Edinburg, Virginia has created several versions of this successful attractor pattern (meaning that it is a general pattern and doesn't necessarily match a specific hatch). Also, Harry's quite the expert on smallmouth bass fishing. In fact, I read his book, Fly Fishing for Smallmouth Bass, from cover to cover several times before I realized that he was also the creator of the Mr. Rapidan. The man has invented so many successful bass flies and trout flies that I'm pretty sure he's already reserved himself a spot up in fly fishing hall of fame next to Norman Maclean and Izaak Walton. So if you want to talk to a real expert (I've yet to meet him, though I plan to stop by his shop next week so I can ask him a couple questions about floating the Shenandoah for smallies) feel free to head over to his shop, check out his blog, or even some of his Youtube videos...

So why is the Mr. Rapidan such a popular fly for use up in the mountain streams of the Shenandoah National park? I think the reason is because it can cover several different types of hatches. The wild brookies in the park are, in my opinion (Rich may disagree), enterprising in their eating habits. I think this is mainly due to their living situations. With briskly moving water pushing through small pools, these fish don't get the luxury of being picky eaters (like those damn cats who eat fancy feast...god, I hate cats.) Granted, there is some selection going on. To be successful, your flies need to be at least the same size as the other flies that flow past these fish and ideally look vaguely like them (meaning they have all of the appropriate vital signs... a wing, hackle that imitates legs, tail, etc.). But everything other than that is pretty much fair game for these brookies.

Last year I even experimented with using differently colored wings and body dubbing (absurd colors like bright blue and pink) and was still able to catch fish. But still, in my opinion, I've been way more successful with the Mr. Rapidans and my number one favorite, the Elk Hair Caddis. So be sure to stock up on the successful dry flies that Rich mentioned in his post and also, in my opinion bring some Adams, Parachute Adams, and Royal Wulffs. And of course we'll be posting more details on these flies as we find time to.

Finally, for those of you who enjoy tying your own, get your hands on some yellow calf tail and check out these fairly straightforward instructions.

photo courtesy of Rob O'Reilly via Hipwader

Check Out Our Google Map!

So we've embedded our map of our favorite fly fishing hot spots.  Currently, it's still pretty rough and we'll be adding more to it in the coming weeks.  But for now, try it out and get directions to some of the best places to put in at the local Virginia rivers.  

Credit goes solely to Rich who had the technical genius (aka computer nerd skills) to figure out how to put it together.  

In upcoming posts, we'll also add more information about each of these rivers, where exactly they are, how to get to them, what to fish with, etc.  Hopefully, we'll be able to link each place to those blog posts (figure out how Rich). 

Enjoy.

A River Runs Through It Online!

One of the best movies ever made in my opinion is now available online for free (just a couple commercials to deal with).  A must-see for those who are into fly fishing and even those who aren't.  For those who aren't, you'll probably want to start fly fishing after watching this:

From Crackle: A River Runs Through It

 

"Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters." 

- Norman Maclean

Fish with Rich

Sorry to break it to you, but this post is not exactly the ego trip you are expecting.  Since I'm stuck in the library this week I'm going to blow off steam by telling fish stories.  Here's one about Rich Waldner.  He's the best fishing guide in Southern Louisiana and the reason that I have such a cool fishing hat.

I am lucky enough to know Rich through my father, the two are old friends from their Marine Corps days.  This connection has earned me first-class accommodations in the "trout room" and "bass room" of the late, great "Camp Waldner."  That's the Ruebism for Rich's home built on stilts alongside the levy of the Mississippi River.  As if staying in a treehouse isn't already cool enough, listening to Rich's 95 year old father (Buck) tell stories of fighting railroad bulls and stowing away in freight cars adds that extra element of danger... but then those are tales for another day.

Capt. Rich at the helm during sunset on the marsh

He calls his guide service "Fish with Rich," but in reality it's almost unfair to use the term "fish" since it implies that you might not catch anything.  Aboard Rich's boat, you are basically guaranteed to catch beautiful fish each time you step onto the casting platform.  It's almost like he can smell the redfish, speckled trout, and bass from miles away and then pole you right to them.  Yes, I said pole you.  Rich has this incredible Dolphin Renegade with such a shallow draft that he can silently maneuver it in mere inches of water with a guide pole.  We catch fish on flies Rich invented and still hand-crafts.  Some of his notables are Waldner's Terminator Crab, Waldner's Mardi Gras Mama, and Waldner's Spoon Fly, which has been fooling massive fish by the boatload for years.  Check out the proof on his website.

Fishing for Louisiana reds is a far cry from fishing my home waters, the mountain streams of Virginia.  These reds range from 3 to 30+ pounds and are found in brackish water (where freshwater meets saltwater).  Basically, I am talking about big time fish in big water.  My blogger profile picture shows me with a 10 pound red I caught with Rich back in 2004.  It took a good 10 minutes to tire him out and land him.  Don't get me wrong, I love fishing for brookies at home, but fighting a redfish is something else.

Rich pulls in a nice red at about minute 2:10

So now you know where I got that stylish ball cap inscribed with my (Capt. Waldner's) name and something about my family's connection to him.  Fishing with him is an awesome experience, and I suggest you dial him up if you are ever visiting New Orleans.  By all means you should do yourself a favor and spend a day on the water fishing with Rich.

Information About Kreelex Flies

Rich knows that I talk a lot about Kreelex flies.  Personally, I love fishing any of the flies invented by one of our very own Charlottesville locals, Chuck Kraft.  

If you try to find any information about Chuck online, you'll only come up with a few articles about him getting in some legal trouble because of some selfish landowners were trying to use obsolete British crown grants to prevent people from fishing on "their land" without paying fees.  But you'll also come up with several articles attesting to the fish-catching abilities of his flies (such as this one about his C.K. nymph).  Obviously, the man knows how to tie a mean fly.

I have yet to get my hands on a C.K. nymph or a C.K. baitfish.  But I have definitely seen the ability of his Kreelex flies and Claw-dads to catch fish.  In my opinion, the Kreelex and the Claw-dad are great for catching monster trout and bass.  When all else fails, a Kreelex will catch 'em.  Locally, the stores sell out of Kreelexs extremely quickly.  So if you head to the Albemarle Angler or Mossy Creek and they're available, load up on 'em while you can.  Or you can go ahead and hit up his website and purchase them online.  

If however, you are into fly tying like myself, you may want to try and throw together a Kreelex on your own.  The Trow brothers were kind enough to put together a Youtube video with great instructions... (just be sure to use Kreinex flash and not your typical flashabou... the Kreinex seems to have much better strength and looks a lot more lively in the water.)

As for how to fish a Kreelex, you can practically use any kind of streamer retrieve with them.  Personally, I'll fish it downstream and across with either a slow retrieve or a fast jerky retrieve to mimic a minnow trying to evade a predator.  Just from this past weekend, I was having more luck with the 'bows at the Moorman with a slow retrieve until I was able to catch a fish's attention, at which point I started to speed up my retrieve to entice them to bite.  It really is amazing to watch a predatory trout just go nuts over an escaping streamer. 

Moormans Fly Fishing

Since Cam decided to take a little time away from studying (we have mid-terms approaching) I guess I can take a break to introduce myself.  My name is Richie, and I'm a pisces... just kidding.  I started going on fishing trips with my dad when I was five years old.  At first I probably played with rocks in the river, but eventually I graduated to slowly learning the intricacies of fly fishing the mountain streams of the Shenendoah National Park.  After that baptism by fire, I have been able to hold my own with the brookies and smallmouth in Virginia, the redfish in the coastal brackish waters of Louisiana, and the big water and big sky browns of Montana.  My fairly long fishing career has been off-and-on, however, so I still have plenty to learn and I am not too proud to ask Cameron (or anyone for that matter) for a hand.  Through this blog and the VMFF, I hope that we can provide a resource to compare notes, answer questions, and learn more ourselves about the art of fly fishing.

On that note, I'll share a little bit of my experience with the waters near Charlottesville.  Yesterday, Cameron and I fished the Moorman River, an easily accessible nearby trout stream.  It is only about a 25 minute drive from Charlottesville to the reservoir at Sugar Hollow and the "headwaters" of the Moorman, if you can call a concrete dam headwaters.  The Moorman is stocked throughout the year with rainbow trout, and you need a pass (available at Albemarle Angler) to fish there.  So far, the experience has been fairly positive.  

At the moment there are hundreds of fish mostly concentrated in the deeper pools.  They seem a little sluggish and maybe even disoriented right now, probably because they were just stocked last week.  We were most successful with egg patterns (yes, we did stoop that low) and copper/gold kreelex.  Correction, Cameron had luck with eggs and kreelex, I only caught one fish (you can see it above) on a kreelex.  

These rainbows learn pretty quickly what is food and what is not.  Eggs caught fish initially, but the fish soon ceased to even look as our eggs drifted down right in front of their noses.  Once we switched to kreelex we caught a few more fish and generated a lot more strikes.  We had the best luck on slow retrievals with small jerks on the line to give the fly some life.  The only real downside to fishing the Moorman is that you will find plenty of other fishers there on weekends, so try to make it out mid week if possible.  Oh yeah, and the $45 fee for the pass to fish there hurts the wallet of a med student on loans, but hey, if you live in Cville it makes sense to have access to such a close, fun fishery.

Welcome to the Virginia Medical Fly Fishing Site

I probably shouldn't start another blog for fear of wasting even more time but I feel like there is a definite need for better information about fly fishing in Virginia.  Don't get me wrong, there are some great sites like that of the Trow brothers over at the Mossy Creek fly fishing store and the Albemarle Angler has started doing a better job updating their posts to their website.  But there are several things that I thought were missing.  How does one get to the Rapidan's upper reaches by car?  Where should I go that is near to Charlottesville so that I can throw a line out during my lunch break?  What techniques work the best at each river and when?  

Thus, my co-founder, Richie, and I started the Virginia Medical Fly Fishing Club (yes we're med students).  And to help with information organization, I've decided that this would be a helpful site to make.  So I thought I'd start by explaining how I got to this point.  (Hopefully if Rich is down with blogging, he'll explain how he got here too)

A good size brookie pulled out of the Rapidan River

First, let me say that I'm not an expert in the field of fly fishing.  I'm constantly learning and I think that the best thing about fly fishing is that you have to be constantly learning.  If you're not learning, you're just catching fish, not fishing.  So anyway, here's some background on my experience thus far...

I started fly fishing about two years ago when a good friend of mine convinced me to tag along with him to the lower reaches of the Rapidan River.  I'm sort of a leech for information and therefore I love to start new things/hobbies/passions due to what I pick up from others.  (My poor parents have had to see me through several changes in musical pursuits throughout the years... not an inexpensive habit)  But I digress.  After watching my friend, Scottie, deftly hook about 20 brookies in the first two hours out there, I decided I wanted to be as proficient as he was.  

So after that, I started researching fly fishing.  I went to local stores and asked stupid naive questions until I was able to figure out how to tie on tippet to a leader and distinguish some of the most famous dry flies patterns.  I went out to the rivers in the area (with a cheap pair of rubber hip waders I got from Dick's Sporting Goods and a 5 wt. my dad lent me).  In those first months, I think I caught at least one hundred tree branches and zero fish.  But that made me want to fish even more.  I can't stand not being good at something.  Finally, after about 6 months, I started catching brookies at the Rapidan.  I thought I had mastered fly fishing because I was able to catch fish consistently on one of Virginia's most famous rivers... Boy, was I wrong.

That's enough for today, I'll finish explaining in my next post.  Again welcome to the site.