My cousin John and I decided to check out the Hughes River in Shenandoah National Park. I wasn't sure what to expect seeing as we were accessing the river from the Old Rag Mountain parking area which has room for 200 cars and on a nice weekend, every spot gets used. Luckily we were there on a Thursday and even though the weather was great, we only saw one other angler. That however doesn't change the fact that the water is really pressured in comparison to most other streams in the area. The fishing started off slow for both of us, only bringing one each to hand and missing a bunch of strikes before lunch. After a stream-side snack I decided to hike up to where a tributary merged with the main branch of the Hughes in hopes of finding some smaller water with some more compliant fish. After a few missed strikes, I hooked into a decent brookie, then decided to see what the un-named trib had to offer. The answer was not much but it was still a neat little trickle to explore. My total fish count for the day was three brought to hand and countless missed hooksets, this is also one of the only brookie streams where I have seen so many refusals (I guess they see a lot of caddis imitations).
Missed quite a few right there :/
Talk about a pose...
Custom Costa iPhone polarized filter
Naughty humans
Big one for the day
Always a great time for a nap
X-Caddis turned Y
I do not envy the people who build things like this.
March brown mayfly in May
Korkers AlumaTrax after about 4 miles of asphalt, rocky trail, and wading.
Todays selection, I don't know why I even bother with nymphs.
Celebratory bumper sitting.
All in all a good day but if you are planning on fishing the Hughes, just know that from the Old Rag parking lot, you do have to pay the NPS entrance fee. It was raised this year so an annual pass is now $50! And if you can avoid the weekend, your chances of finding some solitude should be greatly increased. This is definitely a "the further you hike the better the fishing" kind of stream and I only made it about 1.5 miles from the trailhead.
Tight lines and happy trails
-Bill
