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.