Rivanna River, Charlottesville

Long-time follower, first-time blogger

Pat, Taylor and I have been enjoying some much-needed time on the water since finishing our surgery rotation in early October. We continued this trend on Thursday afternoon after getting the nod from our resident. We headed to the Rivanna to try our luck at pulling out a bass on a fly. It was a great cloudy afternoon and all three of us had success as soon as we could get our gold Kreelex patterns in the water. We caught fish steadily until dark, and Pat hooked up with the biggest fish of the day that ended up breaking his bug off before he could land it. A fifteen minute drive up 29 is well worth the effort to spend an afternoon catching some of these little guys.

I went back on Sunday afternoon after getting a lot of rain on Saturday. The river was moving a lot of water through and it was pretty tough to wade more than about ten yards from the bank. Fortunately that was all it took because I caught fish steadily until it was too dark to see what I was doing. More smallmouth, bluegill and the occasional crappie.

Why Fishermen Can Be Excited About Snow Days Too

I remember when snow days were looked forward to.  As a kid they meant neighborhood-wide capture the flag, barricading plow truck access to Chivalry Road's epic sledding hill, and hot cocoa (not that instant stuff but the mom-made stuff).  But as an adult apparently our perception of snow days is supposed to change into one full of bitterness, complaining about salt on your car, and hot packs to relieve sore backs from shoveling snow.  

The view from my apartment during the last snow storm

For fishermen, however, I think there's always reason to enjoy the wintry weather.  Why you ask?  Because the slow melt of huge snowfalls does wonders for our water table.  And high water tables equals greater reserves late in the fishing season.  If you don't believe me, let's go ahead look at some graphs (if you haven't realized... I love graphs.  Go ahead Rich you can say it, I'm a nerd.)


So here are the USGS water level stats for central Virginia since 2004.  

This basically just shows how our water table usually rises throughout spring and then falls as things warm up.  So while storms throughout the year provide us with changes in stream levels, these are just transient.  Starting off the fishing season with a high water table will provide us with much better conditions than having to depend on sporadic storms.

So where are we now compared to last year?  Take a gander at this:

At this time last year, our water table was sitting around 25.5 feet below land surface.  Currently, we're (provisionally) around 19-20 feet.  This was where we were at the peak of last year's season!  And we've still got a ton of snow still sitting around Virginia.  So unless we have a drought worse than the one we had in 2007, fishing should be golden.  I fully expect to see the north fork of the Moorman's running at more than a trickle this year.

So yes, while salt on your car is annoying and shoveling snow is so miserable that it makes you want to purchase a blow torch to do the job instead, there are things about huge snowfalls that can make fishermen just as excited as a kid on a snow day.  (Although it's impossible to beat mom-made hot cocoa.)

*still aching for more graphs? I've gotten you addicted haven't I.  Feel free to search around the USGS Virgina site for more.

Information About Kreelex Flies

Rich knows that I talk a lot about Kreelex flies.  Personally, I love fishing any of the flies invented by one of our very own Charlottesville locals, Chuck Kraft.  

If you try to find any information about Chuck online, you'll only come up with a few articles about him getting in some legal trouble because of some selfish landowners were trying to use obsolete British crown grants to prevent people from fishing on "their land" without paying fees.  But you'll also come up with several articles attesting to the fish-catching abilities of his flies (such as this one about his C.K. nymph).  Obviously, the man knows how to tie a mean fly.

I have yet to get my hands on a C.K. nymph or a C.K. baitfish.  But I have definitely seen the ability of his Kreelex flies and Claw-dads to catch fish.  In my opinion, the Kreelex and the Claw-dad are great for catching monster trout and bass.  When all else fails, a Kreelex will catch 'em.  Locally, the stores sell out of Kreelexs extremely quickly.  So if you head to the Albemarle Angler or Mossy Creek and they're available, load up on 'em while you can.  Or you can go ahead and hit up his website and purchase them online.  

If however, you are into fly tying like myself, you may want to try and throw together a Kreelex on your own.  The Trow brothers were kind enough to put together a Youtube video with great instructions... (just be sure to use Kreinex flash and not your typical flashabou... the Kreinex seems to have much better strength and looks a lot more lively in the water.)

As for how to fish a Kreelex, you can practically use any kind of streamer retrieve with them.  Personally, I'll fish it downstream and across with either a slow retrieve or a fast jerky retrieve to mimic a minnow trying to evade a predator.  Just from this past weekend, I was having more luck with the 'bows at the Moorman with a slow retrieve until I was able to catch a fish's attention, at which point I started to speed up my retrieve to entice them to bite.  It really is amazing to watch a predatory trout just go nuts over an escaping streamer. 

Moormans Fly Fishing

Since Cam decided to take a little time away from studying (we have mid-terms approaching) I guess I can take a break to introduce myself.  My name is Richie, and I'm a pisces... just kidding.  I started going on fishing trips with my dad when I was five years old.  At first I probably played with rocks in the river, but eventually I graduated to slowly learning the intricacies of fly fishing the mountain streams of the Shenendoah National Park.  After that baptism by fire, I have been able to hold my own with the brookies and smallmouth in Virginia, the redfish in the coastal brackish waters of Louisiana, and the big water and big sky browns of Montana.  My fairly long fishing career has been off-and-on, however, so I still have plenty to learn and I am not too proud to ask Cameron (or anyone for that matter) for a hand.  Through this blog and the VMFF, I hope that we can provide a resource to compare notes, answer questions, and learn more ourselves about the art of fly fishing.

On that note, I'll share a little bit of my experience with the waters near Charlottesville.  Yesterday, Cameron and I fished the Moorman River, an easily accessible nearby trout stream.  It is only about a 25 minute drive from Charlottesville to the reservoir at Sugar Hollow and the "headwaters" of the Moorman, if you can call a concrete dam headwaters.  The Moorman is stocked throughout the year with rainbow trout, and you need a pass (available at Albemarle Angler) to fish there.  So far, the experience has been fairly positive.  

At the moment there are hundreds of fish mostly concentrated in the deeper pools.  They seem a little sluggish and maybe even disoriented right now, probably because they were just stocked last week.  We were most successful with egg patterns (yes, we did stoop that low) and copper/gold kreelex.  Correction, Cameron had luck with eggs and kreelex, I only caught one fish (you can see it above) on a kreelex.  

These rainbows learn pretty quickly what is food and what is not.  Eggs caught fish initially, but the fish soon ceased to even look as our eggs drifted down right in front of their noses.  Once we switched to kreelex we caught a few more fish and generated a lot more strikes.  We had the best luck on slow retrievals with small jerks on the line to give the fly some life.  The only real downside to fishing the Moorman is that you will find plenty of other fishers there on weekends, so try to make it out mid week if possible.  Oh yeah, and the $45 fee for the pass to fish there hurts the wallet of a med student on loans, but hey, if you live in Cville it makes sense to have access to such a close, fun fishery.