Kreelex Flies a.k.a. "trout crack"

Last Wednesday, Cameron and I took our neuroscience final, the last rite of passage in our first year of med school.  There were some late nights of studying and more than a few stressful times during first year, but I think we managed to keep our priorities straight.  That being said, it should be obvious how we decided to celebrate the end of our first year.  As soon as our exams were turned in, we hit the ground running and drove out to the Moormans River.  

Flow data for Moormans River courtesy of USGS

We have seen lots of rain recently, and the central Virginia rivers are up with fast, murky water.  Many rivers are between their 25-75 percentiles in water flow with some in the valley up above the 75 percent mark.  With so much water and little bug activity on the surface we chose the old standby, the copper and gold kreelex.  Between the two of us we easily caught between 10 and 15 rainbows out of the Moormans.  I attribute this bounty to the recent stocking by the folks at TU and to our dedication to what Cameron now calls "trout crack."  Yes, trout crack.  Seriously, can you think of a more fitting a name than that for a streamer that the fish literally seem addicted to?  Surprisingly, it almost seems not to matter where we throw a kreelex in the Moormans.  Throwing it in fast water, slow water, edge of the bank, or right down the main channel is likely to draw some serious attention out there.  Here's the proof:

Of all the fish we caught that day, I have to gloat and say the most exciting one was that last big rainbow I'm holding.  Cameron and I actually both had fish on at the same time and I had to convince him that "no really man, this IS a big one," to let his fish loose and come over to take some photos of this guy.  It took a good four minutes to land that fish after some tail dancing on the surface and fighting a pretty strong current.  I'd say a sore arm was definitely worth the effort.  Of course, catching a big fish and not letting your friend hear the end of it (even if it is good natured) is sure to come back to bite you, and that's exactly what happened the next day on Beaver Creek.

Beaver Creek is located in the Shenandoah Valley and runs through the town of Ottobine, about a 15 minute drive from Bridgewater, Virginia.  I got turned on to Beaver Creek by my dad who has been fishing there on a recommendation from the Trow brothers at Mossy Creek Fly Fishing.  Those guys let us in on a great thing.  Beaver Creek is stocked with big, beautiful rainbow trout and thanks to a limit of four rods per day, the creek doesn't get too much pressure from anglers.  My father is an avid fly fisherman too, and after hearing about the great day we had on the Moormans, he was eager to show us around Beaver Creek.

Beaver is unique in that it offers a lowland spring creek with a stone and silt bottom running through both pasture and woods.  It is also wadeable, making it easier to navigate than Mossy Creek and it doesn't have all of the underwater vegetation that Mossy harbors.  You can expect to hang up much less on the bottom at Beaver thanks to this.  Another awesome feature of Beaver Creek is the nearby Ottobine Country Store complete with a sandwich grille.

Upon arriving at the Ottobine Country Store, we paid for our three passes and met up with the fourth angler for the day, a former minister from Illinois.  This gentleman was on a fishing expedition across the U.S. and had been staying in a cabin near Afton Mountain while he sampled the waters here in Virginia.  He and my dad took a section across from the Ottobine elementary school and fished nymphs for the morning. To cover more water, Cameron and I started in a wooded section downstream and started with nymphs, but quickly switched to "trout crack."  Better stated, Cameron switched to silver and gold kreelex and caught a pretty rainbow in a hole I had just been fishing with a nymph.  Don't worry, I caught my fair share of fish too, it's just that they were slimy chubs.  I think Karma came back to bite and I ended up leaving the pretty fish to Cameron and my dad that day.  

Those two days on the water were an awesome start to my spring break.  Fortunately, I still have a whole week of fishing ahead of me.  

Virginia Fly Fishing Festival This Weekend

I know that if I were a sane person, after the physiology test on Saturday morning I would head straight back to the library to start cramming for the human behavior exam on Monday. Instead, I'll be heading to the VA Fly Fishing Festival over in Waynesboro (it'll be located where the South River tag is on our Google Map). For anyone else crazy enough, it should be a great chance to meet others who are interested in fly fishing. I know that the guys from Albemarle Angler will be there as will the Trow Brothers from Mossy Creek.

I'm particularly interested in listening to what Capt. Cory Routh has to say about flyfishing from your kayak which will happen around 1 pm on Saturday. Cory is the author of the book, Kayak Fishing: The Complete Guide, which is a book I definitely have wanted to get my hands on now for a while. That reminds me... I still need to figure out how to put my fishfinder on my kayak.

I'm also interested in checking out the flyrods and reels from the local company, Fly Fishing Benefactors. From what I've read, such as this great review of the San Juan rod from Steve over at Switch Fisher, it sounds like they make great stuff for amazing prices. If what I've read is true, I'll most likely be leaving with a new rod just in time to get used to it before my trip to the Catskill Mountains in two weeks.

Weather forecast for Saturday is perfect. Hopefully I'll see some of you out there.

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)

View Larger Map

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.