Fishing Report: South Holston - Marion, VA

After spending some quality time with the family down in Charlotte, I stopped off on the way back to Charlottesville in Marion, VA to fish on what sounded like an awesome stretch of the South Holston.  From what I read about it, it is a pretty short 1/2 mile section of water that runs alongside one of the hatcheries in Marion.  Being catch & release only and with VDGIF employees constantly around, it sounded like the perfect place to catch some big fish unharmed by the put & take folk.

When I pulled up, I ran into a guy, I'm sad to say I forgot his name, who had worked there for over 20 years.  He told me that originally, the section of water was stocked by the employees for their own benefit and wouldn't let others to fish there.  It wasn't until two fishermen refused to leave the water and the law got involved that they had to open the section to the public.  Fortunately, they were able to keep it catch and release.

My first impression of the section was that it had great rock structure, good flow, and certainly plenty of fish.  Only tough part is getting access to the lower half.  If you want to fish it, you pretty much have to go to the lower entry and wade up the whole section as the banks are high and overgrown.


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Fishing was good.  It wasn't great, but that was probably because I was dying in the 90-something degree heat.  Only caught rainbows but did see a larger brown in a pool near a bridge who wouldn't give any of my nymphs the light of day.  As for what I was using, it was all over the place.  Most were caught on nymphs but I was constantly switching to dry flies when I would find a trout honing in on surface insects.  There wasn't a solid hatch all afternoon, with the humid weather and sunny skies, but there were some small flies (I'm assuming midges?) that were hovering around the slower pools.

Most interesting part of the day was when I was tossing a prince nymph into the ripples at the head of slow pool.  Twice in a row my indicator was attacked by a nice looking trout.  Frustrated that he wasn't noticing the beautiful nymph I tied just for him, I switched to the only pattern in my box that was big enough to mimic my indicator (I guess you could say I was trying to match the indicator hatch)... a size 6 hopper, big, pudgy, and neon yellow.  Sure enough, just after I smacked that baby in the run, he went airborne for it.

Great section of water.  It's a little far out there so ideally, it should be part of a weekend trip where you also hit up Whitetop Laurel, or if its summertime perhaps you can get some smallies out on the Clinch River or New River.