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.