Thursday, November 10, 2011

North Fork of the Moorman's - 11/6

I took advantage of the great fall weather to head out to the moorman's river on a tip from the Albemarle angler guys. Brent and I got to the river around 9:00 and I was blown away by the fall colors. It was prime time for the leaves, but fortunately they didn't cause too much trouble on the water. We took the right at Sugar Hollow reservoir to the north fork and pulled off at the second obvious pull out.

I caught the only fish of the day on a #16 orange/yellow Stimulator right next to where we left the car. It ended up being the biggest brook trout I've caught and it was fun having a dry fly take
so late in the season. The amazing colors on these brook trout have really won me over. Even though
they are the runts I've really enjoyed fishing these small streams. That being said we fished hard the rest of the morning with stimulators, dry-dropper rigs, and nymps, without another bite. Overall the water was pretty
low and there weren't many good holding places (at least that were obvious to me!) The banks are also pretty rugged and makes sneaking pretty tough. I'd really like to solve the puzzle on this river because it's so close, but I left not feeling confident that there were a lot of fish to catch. If anybody has any advice on what to try let me know I'd love to go back.


2 comments:

  1. Ben, I've spent a lot of time in the Park growing up, and my experience on the Moorman's has always been to hike up as far as you're willing to go. This river in particular, more than other park streams, has never seemed to fish as well "out of the car," so to speak. In the fall, you'll find surprisingly substantial water upstream with better pocket water, rather than fishing the bigger, shallow, spooky pools down where everyone is hiking. Also, I'll just say, I've simply never had the same success rate on the Moorman's as I have on it's neighbors like the Rap, Rose, and Staunton. All that said, that is an awesome Brook you've got there!

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  2. The Moorman's suffered from the '95 flood, but the upper reaches are still intact.

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