Hughes River

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

Bluegill and Bamboo

This past week was an exciting one for me. A couple of years ago I bought some bamboo rod blanks at a rod building show with every intention of putting together my very own bamboo rod. After a couple of years, I realized that I had no intention of really getting into rod building so I sent the blanks off to my friend Mike at Cane and Silk to get the rod put together. Well as I said, this week was exciting because I got the rod back and it sure was worth the wait. There will be a post later on just on the rod with some nice pictures but here is my first experience with bamboo.

A chilly mid 50's morning

Such a good feel in the hand

The first victim

Cause I'm special!

An unexpected Black Crappie

 

Hunter with a trophy stick fish

Getting the hang of it

Most productive water of the morning

Cloudy and cool

Ending on a good note.

Beer Tie April 2017

Well compared to last month, I would say that April's Beer Tie event was a great success! A total of 7 people showed up and plenty of flies were tied and beer drank. I think that if I can keep getting the word out every month, this event can gain some traction!

A damsel nymph that I have been working on for a while, super easy to tie (I tied about 10 that night)

Beer Tie March 2017

So yesterday evening the third beer tie event was held at the Red Dragon Brewery in downtown Fredericksburg. I can call it an event because it is open to the public to ask questions, watch, and even tie some flies if they are interested, however, due to lack of advertising this month was even less attended than Februarys event. I am hard set on making sure this get-together continues though because what is better than an evening of tying flies and good beer? My long time friend and fly fishing mentor, Pete, and I were the only two people tying that night but there were one or two people who commented on what we were doing and a few more interested looks from curious brewery patrons. For the night my main focus was restocking my Woolly Buggers, a fly that any fly fisherman knows is essential to any fly box. Pete was tying up some size 20 micro BH Pheasant Tails and some CDC and Elk dries which was quite a task given the available light. Lots of smoked porter was drank and the bugger box has some new residents so all in all, I would say a successful night! For anyone in the area who is interested in the beer tie event, they are held at the Red Dragon Brewery the last Thursday of the month starting around 6:30!

That is one scraggly tail!

For those that wonder, That is a size 32 fly inside of a 14 hook.

Another perspective 

A Fly... a Moss Fly.

So here is a video of a fly that I have been tossing around in the squirrel cage sitting on my shoulders for the past couple of weeks. As you know from some of my early blog posts, I have been focusing my fly fishing on grass carp for a couple of years now. They have been the most frustrating fish I have ever pursued but the satisfaction of hooking into one is immense. Here is a fly that I hope they will like. Based on my bathroom sink testing, once this fly is water logged, it sinks quite fast. Being yarn however, a little bit of your favorite fly floatant will have this thing floating like a cork if you desire.



I really like the idea of simple flies and this is the epitome of that, If you don't count the thread it only has one material, yarn. The hook I use is a 2x long and 2x heavy size 8 by Allen (S402) and the thread is 6/0 uni-thread, in this case, olive dun. I like using uni-thread for this type of material because I feel that it bites into the yarn better with fewer wraps. I have tried a couple of ways to tie this fly and this produces the best looking fly and also happens to be the easiest method.



So here is it... The Moss Fly

Beer Tie January 2017

Well as for most all fisherman, I have had a slow January. Between the cold, windy weather and a newborn around the house, my priorities have mostly stayed indoors. Luckily though the folks down at River Rock Outfitters and Red Dragon Brewery have put together a monthly beer tie right in Downtown Fredericksburg, VA. I have always been interested in these events that the Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders have put on but I just can't make it up to northern VA... or I don't really want to deal with the traffic! My priorities for the night were shad flies with the hopes of getting out and catching some this spring, after all I have thousands of these fish swimming up river right in front of my house every year (just hard to find them with a kayak when the river is 4 miles wide). I focused mostly on the Shad Buster pattern I picked up from Rob Snowhite's youtube channel. It is a nice and easy pattern which is ideal for shad seeing as you lose a lot of flies. All in all the evening went very well, I got to see some old friends that I haven't seen in years as well as meet some new fisherman. I am looking forward to many more of these events and hope to grow the fly fishing/fly tying community down here on the Northern Neck! As of now, the event is scheduled for the last Thursday of every month!

If you have any questions you can contact River Rock Outfitters at http://riverrockoutfitter.com/contact-us/

New Addition to the Family

Well it may be a week late but late is better than never. Last Wednesday, December 14th my wife and I welcomed our first born son, Gabriel Monroe to the world. I think he will make a great addition to the fly fishing community.