Fishing Report: Rapidan River

Looks like we're going to have some pretty high rivers here for the next week thanks to that monsoon that can through central Virginia yesterday.  The water levels in the upper portions of the Rapidan over the weekend definitely spiked, fortunately, however, it looks like we didn't quite hit flood levels.  Not sure how long we'll have to wait until we have conditions as good as they were last week. 

Speaking of last week, fishing was freaking fantastic.  Scott, the proverbial master of small stream fly fishing, was able to take some time off from studying for his Step 1 to grace Rich and me with his presence.  Of course, with the forecast calling for a sunny day and 80 degree weather last Sunday, we had to hit up the Rapidan. 

We headed up to the section around Rapidan Camp to ensure we wouldn't have any company.  Right from the start we could see brookies feeding on dry flies.  Not just a few either.  We split up and put on our respective favorites for the park, Scott with an elk hair caddis, Richie with something that probably was of the royal adams family (i'm guessing, correct me if i'm wrong), and me with a parachute adams.  They all seemed to work great.  Three hours later, we all were worn out and were plenty satisfied with the more than 50 fish we each caught.  Seriously, it was probably the best day on the Rapidan I've had in several years.  We got on the water right when two mayfly hatches, which looked like blue wing olives and something larger and brown like a quill gordon or march brown, were occurring.  I switched to a BWO spinner and definitely started getting more strikes.  These brookies were going absolutely nuts.  I think I only hit up about eight pools in three hours but was able to put out at least ten brook trout, all in the 8-10 inch range, from each.  By the end of our day (only around 4:00pm), the females were depositing their eggs and a decent number of spinners were on the water.  At that point, the brookies started feeding even more aggressively.  My last pool had about eight large trout in it who were all competing for the flies coming down the buffet line.  It was amazing seeing them go airborne and slamming into each other as they fought for the fly.  I had never seen such aggressiveness on the Rapidan.  I managed to get a videoclip of one of them going airborne:

From rapidan river 4.10.11

Hopefully, once these high water levels settle out, we'll be able to hit up the park again for some more brookies.  Let us know if you've had similar success!

Back on the Water/Fishing Report: Conway River, Rapidan River (lower section), and Staunton River

VAMFF took an unexpected break from updating the site there for while.  Trust me when I say it wasn't intended.  Third year of medical school turned out to be just as busy as we were told it would be.  Throw in some issues with leaky waders, a broken rod tip, and a non-functioning reel, and it made it even more difficult to be on the water.  It was as if the fishing gods wanted us to stop fishing for a while and actually tie surgeon's knots where they were originally intended to be.

All that being said, third year is quickly winding down, temperatures are rising, and hatches are happening so we have don't have any excuses not to fish.  On Feb 27th, Rich and I took our first trip of 2011 up to the mountain streams to scout out some new locations.



First stop was the Conway at the section below the confluence with Devil's Ditch.  Our initial impressions were that the river was beautiful, it had great pools, and it is far enough in on the fire roads that many weekend warriors will probably pass it up in favor of areas that have quicker access.  That being said, we may have gotten there too early in the morning for a brisk February day because we literally did not see a fish the entire morning.  Nothing hit on top or on bottom, not even a near miss or a flash.  The only other fisherman we saw out there that day had similar luck.  But given how nice the river is, this will definitely have to be a repeat location later on in the spring.

Conway River (Middle Section)

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Determined to not be blanked on our first day back fishing, we then headed to the lower section of the Rapidan near Graves Mill.  There we saw fish.  At first we saw some chubs in a beaver pond and we definitely felt the urge to throw a line in to ensure we at least caught something.  But we fought the urge and got to the confluence of the Staunton and the Rapidan and started there.

On the Rapidan, the water levels were great and we could see some brookies slowly exploring the deeper sections.  Eventually, around 2-3pm,  a small hatch of black caddis started to emerge and with the temperature getting into the low 60s, we started seeing fish rising.  Finally.  We ended up only catching a few before they stopped rising but it was enough to make the trip worthwhile.

Staunton River

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We did fish up the Staunton for a little while as well.  In fact, the Staunton was actually where I learned how to fly fish courtesy of Scott Rusteikas.  Plenty of fish but really, unless you have a 2-3 wt and don't mind sidearm casts and getting caught in trees, you may want to look elsewhere.

I apologize for the lapse in writing.  Hopefully we can pick things back up where we left off!

ps. Expect to see some renovations to the site in the coming months.

Fishing Report: Beaver Creek/Skidmore Fork (11/24) , Upper Rapidan (11/25), and Moormans North Fork (11/29)

It's been far too long since we've added anything to the blog, so this is a make-up post. We were fortunate enough to have the whole week off for Thanksgiving and I was able to get on the water quite a bit. Here are some reports from the four rivers I fished.

Dad and I woke up before the crack of dawn last Tuesday and headed out to Beaver Creek in Ottobine. He had just come off a lack-luster trip to Colorado fraught with horrible weather and sluggish trout, so we were excited to get a chance at our favorite spring creek. We had perfect weather: cool and cloudy with no wind. I expected the creek to be a torrent after all the rain we've seen recently, but to my surprise the flow was full and strong but still clear. The 'bows were actually fairly picky that day. They only took pheasant tails and completely snubbed our serendipities, red fox squirrel nymphs, and silver/gold kreelexes. I ended up getting blanked, but Dad caught three nice rainbows. I'll chalk it up to my first experience fishing with nymphs.

After a half day at Beaver, we consulted the Trow brothers at Mossy Creek Fly Fishing for any quick afternoon action we could hit. Colby sent us to Skidmore Fork, which is located on Route 33 just before the West Virginia border. We caught a couple of nice looking Brookies there in the hour we spent there using pheasant tails. I think it could be a good place to investigate further, especially because Colby told us that Skidmore Fork holds water much more consistently than neighboring Dry River.

Since I don't get the opportunity to fish multiple days a week much anymore, I had to check the Rapidan with my friend Pat the next day. Rapidan was much more affected by the rains last week than Beaver Creek and we actually had a fairly tough time wading in certain spots. Fortunately the water was still very clear and we were able to see fish darting after our nymphs from time to time. The fish were all hunkered down trying to weather the heavy flow so it took plenty of split shot to get our nymphs deep enough. We had much better luck fishing the slower pockets just off the riffles. Pheasant tails did the trick again, and we ended up catching a half dozen brookies between the two of us.

Remember how I told you that I love fishing the Moormans? Well I do, but I just might think twice before I decide to head out there again on a Sunday at 1 o'clock. The joint was completely packed this Sunday from the TJTU section up to the North Fork above Sugar Hollow Reservoir. I got absolutely no action throwing pheasant tails, red squirrel nymphs, or dry flies. I think the high water and all of the hikers playing in the river threw off my mojo a bit. It's probably a better idea to stay away on weekends except for the early morning.

Fishing Report: Rapidan Upper Section

After two weeks of exams and a quick three day roadtrip, I finally got to make it out on the water.  As we've been complaining about lately, the water levels have been low all across central Virginia.  Therefore, I wasn't expecting to make a trip out at all yesterday until I got on my computer and saw this:

Because of that wonderful spike in discharge levels, I knew there'd be a good chance I could see some flowing streams with hungry trout.  So I quickly brewed some more coffee, got on the road again, and headed up to the Rapidan.

I got there late in the afternoon but with enough light to get a solid two hours of fishing in.  Fortunately, it looked like the other fishermen were calling it quits so I had the river to myself.

Initially I fished like I always do, hitting up every nook and cranny of the Rapidan but soon found out that despite the brief change in water levels the trout, for the most part, remained in the larger pools.  So I fished quickly, hitting up all parts of the larger pools.  I fished parachute adams and snowshoe rabbit caddis size 16 but had the most success with adams.

Overall, I caught plenty of beautiful brookies all of which were pretty decently sized.  The newly flowing water caused somewhat of a feeding frenzy in which the larger trout didn't seem too concerned about going after a missed fly on the fourth or fifth attempt.  Unfortunately, however, I spooked two large brookies that were hiding at the tail end of deep pools.  Seriously, these guys were huge.  I'm talking like 12 inches.  I waited around to see if one of them would become "unspooked" but unfortunately it became clear he was way too smart for me.  So if you head out, look to the tail end of the pools for the big guys.

Looks like we'll be getting a little bit more rain Tuesday and Wednesday so hopefully fishing with be good this weekend as well!  Keep checking the USGS Water Levels.

Rapidan Camp

Last week I decided to spend two days out on the Rapidan in the upper portions just past the Rapidan Camp. The Rapidan Camp was where the senior members of Hoover's staff stayed while Hoover and his family resided in the main cabin during summer trips. Today, the Rapidan Camp is a cooperative campground while Hoover's main cabin is a tourist attraction in the park.

Back in the day, I was researching the history of Rapidan Camp and came across some awesome footage of President Hoover fishing the Rapidan. He allowed a bunch of reporters to come and videotape him. Impressingly, he was still able to catch fish. Of course, I wouldn't say his one-handed technique is the best i've ever seen.

Pretty amazing footage. This video comes courtesy of C-SPAN's Presidential Libraries. To check out more videos of him fishing and hanging out around Camp Rapidan, check out the C-SPAN site.

Now on to the fishing report. Temperatures were high. During the afternoon, the air temperatures soared to around 95 degrees. This really pushed the brookies deep. But once the heat broke in the late afternoon, fishing really picked up. Each hole started producing 4-5 brookies of average size with a couple 10 inchers feeding in the back eddys. By the end of the first day, I'd probably pulled in over 30 fish.

The next morning, due to poor sleeping conditions (it was too hot for a sleeping bag) I woke up and started fishing around 6 a.m. I now intend on getting out to the river that early on my future trips as the fishing was on fire. The upper portions of the river above Rapidan Camp held many more fish than the lower sections in my opinion. The fish were all about 7-9 inches but I didn't see any of the lunkers (a relative term) like the ones you can find in the lower sections. They were all actively feeding on top and quickly took to my improved parachute adams (I started using a two-toned parapost on my parachute adams to help make then even more visible).

The particular highlight of the morning was one pool where I remained sitting on a boulder at the back end of the pool and from there I pulled in 5 9" brookies quickly from each of the feeding lanes that were present.

Great trip overall. I highly recommend you camp in the upper regions in order to get an early start on the fishing.

Of course, for now, the Rapidan is highly unfishable. All of this rain we've been getting (and will continue to get the rest of this week) have pushed the water levels dangerously high for fishing. Check out this USGS map of Virginia:

As you can see (the purple, blue, and light blue represent high, 90th percentile, and over 75th percentile respectively) the water levels in much of the state are extremely high. The Rapidan is running around 350 CFS, which is way over the 80th percentile.

So it's time to hold off on the fishing for a while. Perhaps studying pathology and pharmacology would be more worthwhile.

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.

Central Virginia Water Levels Rising

With the consistent rain/wet conditions over the past week, water levels have started to climb throughout Virginia. A majority of the streams and rivers that are monitored by the USGS are now reporting streamflow conditions within the 25th - 74th percentile. With the rain this evening and next weekend, hopefully conditions will improve even more for rivers such as the Rapidan, which is still experiencing daily discharges below the 20th percentile. But as you can see from this USGS graph, the rain has helped increase the discharge from around 200 cubic feet per second to over 300 (well short of the 78 year average of about 500).

Still, look forward to this weekend as water levels will be up and central Virginia will be experiencing some wonderful 60 degree sunny days. Expect some hatches to start occurring, especially in the afternoons.

Ian Rutter over at R and R Fly Fishing has been reporting quill gordon hatches up in the Smoky Mountains. Hopefully this weekend we'll be fortunate enough to get some good hatches of our own.

Tuesday afternoon I hit up the Moorman River for a quick hour and a half and caught three extremely healthy 'bows in the lowest pool on a size 18 parachute adams. Once I caught all three, the trout quit sipping flies off the water's surface so I headed home early.

Before I left, however, I found three lines with worms on hooks sitting in the middle pool. I obviously removed them from the water and cut away the atrocities. Help keep poaching to a minimum out there! If you see anything like these unattended lines or individuals out there with anything short of a flyrod, be sure to do something about it/say something. If these people want to fish, they can pay the 45 dollars it costs to fish the section or they can walk 500 feet to the Sugar Hollow Reservoir to throw in there for some trout, bluegill, and crappie. Honestly, I find it so sad that there are people who don't respect the regulations out there. If someone is so short on money that they can't afford to fish out there legally or needs the trout for food, how about some of the funds raised from the passes goes to paying one of these individuals to patrole the area for violators. They can then go buy some trout from the local kroger with their pay.

First VAMFF Trip to Rapidan River in '09

Sunday, Rich, Kyle, and I hit up the Rapidan for our first day up in the Shenandoah National Park of the season.  Thanks to the three days of warm weather and the slightly increased water levels, the conditions were perfect.  Central Virginia has been going through quite a drought lately.  If you check out the USGS data from the area, you'll see that the mean daily discharge is for a river like the Rapidan is at least 600 cfs, but lately we've been seeing discharges of about 200 cfs.  Regardless, the warm weather led to several hatches occurring while we were out on the river.

From what I could tell, I tried to take pictures of the flies to post on here, it looked like we had some black caddis and blue wing olive flies hatching Sunday.  Here's some great footage of this fly in all of its forms (I apologize for the absolutely terrible narration):

For more information about the caddis, be sure to check out Rich's post, The (mighty) Caddis, from a little while ago.  As for the BWOs, I only saw a few so it was by no means a heavy hatch.  Still we seemed to all have more luck throwing out BWO patterns, quill gordons, and Mr. Rapidan parachute adams than we did with elk hair caddis flies.  

Rich fishing a slow moving pool

I won't start spouting off numbers here, but we caught plenty of fish to make the day perfect (it would have been a great day even without the fish as any day out on the river is better than a day in the library studying).  Here's a couple more shots taken with my iphone of the trip.  I really need to get a good camera for these trips...

Largest brookie of the day, pretty long but not too fat, obviously was hungry

Kyle's first brookie ever from the Rapidan (who cares if it's small, he got it literally on his second cast out.  Either that's some great beginner's luck or the guy's got skills)

Check out the beautiful spots on this guy!

Again, this was still a really early trip into the Park.  I expect the fishing to heat up even more by mid-April.  If any other VAMFF members want to hit it up in the near future, let Rich and I know, as we'll gladly take y'all up there again.