Escatawba Farms

As a wedding gift, my good friend and fly fishing mentor, Pete Adams gave my wife and I two one day passes to Escatawba Farms in Covington, Virginia. We had planned our trip on October first but recent rains had had brought the typical 20 cfs discharge up to a hair under 1000 cfs. Needless to say, we weren't going to have a very good experience if we didn't reschedule, so the date was changed to the 29th.

We got a late start on the over 4 hour drive to our hotel in Lewisburg, WV and when we arrived around midnight we found out that an error on the hotels part left my 7 month pregnant wife and myself without a room... despite having one reserved for over 3 weeks.

The next morning we headed out to Covington to get our day started. The air temperature was around 34 that morning and the high for the day was in the upper 70's so despite the chilly start, it was going to be a beautiful day.

She wears them well!

The owner, Derrick Barr, took us for a short tour of the property and we were getting hyped for what lay ahead of us. Waders on and rods strung up we walked to the northern border of the property and went to the waters edge. I have never had much luck with long glassy pools and this one was no different.

No soft hackle love.

Stream side vegetation made casting a chore and one foot into the water sent ripples for what seemed like miles in every direction, but we were already there so we did our best to no avail. As the sun came up from behind the mountains and we made our way up to the first deep bend where we could see trout stacked up like cordwood but with the bright sun on the water they were easily spooked.

A San Juan Worm got their attention but they always turned back upstream after a short inspection. I have a hard time leaving a spot where I can see fish, even when they aren't eating and because of that, we stayed at that spot for the remainder of the morning only landing one shiner albeit on a dry.

Lunch was leftover steak and ravioli back at the shed (much nicer than it sounds) where we were able to talk with a couple of other anglers. They told us that the only thing that had worked for them so far was a small olive wooly bugger stripped in the current, not what I was expecting seeing as the week before size 20-24 zebra midges were apparently the key. Anyway, knowing that we had to leave around 3, we headed back to the creek armed with a couple of small buggers.

We worked our way upstream for an hour or so with some very light strikes and missed hook sets. finally about half an hour before we were going to pack it up, I hooked into a pretty little rainbow, about 12 inches long. A couple casts later his big brother took my fly and Laura helped me land another beautiful rainbow. With this little spurt of action, Laura started swinging her little black wooly bugger through the same run and pulled out the largest trout of the trip at about 16 inches. With that we were satisfied to head home after a tough day fishing low water with bright overhead sun.

 9' 5wt, weapon of choice

 Wife chose the TenkaraUSA Sato

The "Shiner Run" from above

Beautiful part of VA!