Or, Virginia is for Salvelinus fontinalis Lovers.

Day 2 of the brook trout fishing escapade – see Day 1 report: Sin, Salvation and Stacks (and Something Fishy).

I typically don’t sleep so well when I’m not sleeping in my own bed, but at the end of Day 1, in  a motel in Roanoke, VA, I slept very well. And I was thankful I wasn’t camping. Camping in the east…I didn’t notice a lot of travel trailers and RVs as we traveled Appalachia. Here in the west it seems like every other vehicle is a pickup truck, every fourth vehicle is an SUV and 30% of either vehicle is pulling a camp trailer. And then there are the behemoth motorhomes careening down the freeway.

I came to the conclusion that it’s just too uncomfortable for many people to camp in humidity like there is in the east. Sure, lots of people camp, but maybe just not in the numbers they do around here, where not only the air is drier, but half the land is federal and camping is as easy as driving a dozen miles and pulling off nearly anywhere in the national forest. My personal experience tells me it’s probably the humidity though: a few years ago my family spent 28 days straight camping east of the Mississippi. No motels. No air-conditioning. It was miserable.

Tuesday morning came and we rousted ourselves from bed to get moving on. This was the day I was most worried about in the planning stages. We were looking for the northern Appalachian brook trout that day and we wanted to fish the Rapidan River to do it. The Rapidan has great historicity when it comes to fly fishing and it’s supposed to have  a good population of brook trout.

However, when I started doing some research about fishing the Rapidan for brookies, most of what I read mentioned that accessibility might be an issue—3 to 4 miles of vigorous hiking just to get to the stretches with the fish, then the actual fishing mileage, followed by a 3 mile hike back to the vehicle, uphill. I emailed a couple of folks and got pretty much the same response. Apparently the most popular method is to take Skyline Drive along the ridge of the Shenandoahs, park above Hoover Camp, then hike down below Hoover Camp and fish back up.

We wanted to avoid a lot of hiking (see Day 1 for more on that) and had plans to meet Justin in Charlottesville at 4:00 for some evening smallmouth fishing. We wouldn’t arrive at the Rapidan until about 11:00. 8 miles of hiking and fishing was out of the question.

I looked at Google Maps and really checked out the Hoover Camp area closely. I saw a road from Skyline Dr., past the camp, then continuing downriver. It hooked into some public roads just west of Criglersville. I figured the road to and past the camp were probably forest service access roads, and not accessible to the public. But since it connected down below to public roads, I thought it was worth looking at more carefully. I did some searches and found that coming from Criglersville we could follow a road up to a fire gate about a mile below Camp Hoover. Four wheel drive suggested. Sounded like the perfect spot.

We arrived in Charlotesville about 10:00 and looked for a fly shop, Albemarle Angler, Justin told me about. We talked to Tom(?) at the shop and he was extremely helpful. We wanted a couple of warm water flies for the evening and he hooked us up. We also wanted info about my access road idea. So I asked if he knew a good way to get to the Rapidan to fish for brookies. He outlined the very route we mapped out! Things weren’t looking so gray after all.

Except in the sky. As we pulled out of Cosby Creek Campground the day before, we were pounded with some of the hardest rain we westerners had ever experienced. We pulled to the side of the freeway because we couldn’t see the road. The skies had dogged us the remainder of the evening. As we pulled away from the fly shop, looking to the northwest, toward the Shenandoah Mountains, we could see clouds hovering.

We passed through the quaint towns of Madison and Banco. Traveling through such countryside, it was hard not to think of how Virginia is steeped in history, a history we memorialize so often because of tragedy. After driving through Tennessee and southern Virginia the day before, it was nice to have more open fields around the roads instead of just tree upon tree upon tree. It gave a nice pastoral setting to our morning. But the dark clouds looming ever nearer put a bit of a damper on how much we could enjoy it.

We only missed one turn, and backtracked a couple of miles before getting the right road. It seems that someone, after spending a couple of hours making really nice, detailed maps for the whole trip, left the maps on his desk as he was packing everything else. At least he didn’t forget any fishing gear this time. The road crossed the Rapidan and turned into a dirt road.

We rented a 4×4 for just this route. As we quickly moved along the road we realized that a high-clearance vehicle would have been just as good. Heck, my brother-in-law Danny would have been able to easily made that road in his Toyota Corolla (he’s taken that many miles over some incredibly rocky/dirty/chuckholey terrain). But, it was nice to know we had the extra capabilities if needed.

We moved from public road into the Shenandoah National Park as the clouds started to spit and spatter at us. After a couple of miles we left the Park and were on National Forest land for a few more miles. We saw one vehicle parked along that section, presumably an angler. The rain came down in earnest as we approached the fire gate at the beginning of Shenandoah Park property again. There was enough room for a couple of vehicles to park, but we were the only ones.

I was willing to wait out the rain for 10 or 20 minutes, but Dan said , “Let’s go!” Our plan was to wet wade, but it was cool enough and wet enough that we donned the waders, slipped into light rain jackets and went.

We were told at the fly shop that the water was down, and “hopefully you’ll be able to find the fish.” At the point where we entered the water, the Rapidan is a pretty little creek. We could see that a good volume of water could possibly move through the bed, but right then, it looked perfect for us, with mostly pocket water and a few plunge pools here and there—we could have easily been at home on a local creek.

The river was about 70 feet from where we parked, and before I even got to the water, Dan had a fish on. A rainbow. Dang! In addition to the rain, things got just a bit bleaker at that moment. But it was short-lived.

The rain began to ease and Dan was in to another fish. A brookie! In fact, from that point onward we caught nothing but brook trout. A good dozen or so brought to hand with an equal number off the hook or missed. And the weather cleared nicely, warming up quite a bit. We fished a good three quarters of a mile upstream. By the time we made it back to the vehicle, we were soaked with sweat, but we were happy with the fishing results—it was a lot easier done than some said it would be.

We rolled back to Charlottesville about 3:00. We were to meet with Justin at 4:00. I met Justin online through Goodreads’ Fly Fish Literati group. We then started up Rise Forms: Fly Fishing’s Literary Voice, our new angling magazine (first issue due this fall). Since we had a bit of time, and we were hungry, we stopped at Five Guys Burgers. Neither of us had been to one (although they do have a couple here in Utah), and since Virginia was basically their home territory, we decided to give it a try (also highly recommended by Dan’s brother, Chris). It was a huge burger. It was good eating.

We dropped by our motel, checked in, and unloaded a few things to make a little mre room for Justin, since we were driving him to our smallmouth appointment. We then zipped downtown to meet up with Justin. The old part of town is just on the outskirts of the University of Virginia (started by Thomas Jefferson), and seems to have a great atmosphere—someplace I’d really like to spend some time getting to know. But we didn’t have time right then. We pulled on to Water Street, headed toward 2nd Street, and it was pretty easy to spot Justin: the guy with a fly rod case standing on the street corner of a downtown always sticks out. We made introductions, then headed toward the Rivanna River.

I’ve never been smallmouth fishing before, and I was probably looking forward to that fishing as much as the brook trout fishing. The Rivanna River is a large river (relatively speaking—large for someone who lives in the desert) flowing through Charlottesville. As the river came into view, it seemed to be just what I imagined a warm-water fishery would look like.

We stopped at a parking area along the river where Justin has had success before. Not another angler in sight. In fact, Justin said that he rarely has seen people fishing there. We geared up and I realized I’d left my reel at the motel in a bag I took into the room. Three anglers, two rods. Dan, being the ever-gracious fishing companion, agreed to baseball it with me (three strikes and you’re out, next guy uses the rod and fishes).

Dan was up first. He fished the bottom of a nice chute with some decent flows through it and some still water depths on either side. Justin worked the slack water above the chute. There was no surface action, but we had on some poppers, trying to get the fish to rise. Justin was the first one with a fish on. A bluegill.

My first experience with bluegill was about 12 years earlier at a campground in Iowa. Or Oklahoma. Or…someplace…I don’t know. It was on the earlier-mentioned trip to the east coast. We stayed at a campground that had a little pond in it. My seven year old son and my two nieces (eight and eleven) went down to the pond. They came back a short time later, very excited. They said there were fish in the pond rising to anything, like pieces of grass thrown in. Or spit. They asked if they could have some bread. They took it back and fed the fish. Then they got the idea to tie some string on a stick, and put a doughball on the end of the string. They began lifting bluegill several feet out of the water before the fish would let go and plop back. It was a riot to watch.

Justin released his bluegill while I worked the slightly faster water on the far shore above the chute. But nothing reacted to my popper. So we moved upstream several hundred yards where there was a long ledge of rocks from one side of the river to the other. I had a strike, but missed it, so it was Dan’s turn with the rod again. Dan and Justin both worked the ledge pretty hard, but came up blank.

We again moved upstream a couple of hundred yards. There was a deep pool, and the water pinched in a little, with a little island toward the far bank. I began working the water above the island and in relatively short time I reeled in a 11″ smallmouth bass—mission accomplished!

Dan fished for a while, but didn’t seem to have his heart in it and turned the rod back over to me a short time later. I worked all around the island pretty hard, then started moving below the island 20 feet or so. I had another strike. This time it was a bluegill. For some reason they remind me of the triggerfish I caught in the ocean behind my house when I lived on Guam. Triggerfish are much more colorful, but I think it’s the blue around the mouth that triggers the memory for me.

I offered the rod back to Dan, but he declined. I continued fishing the area below the island and had a couple more hits. I finally connected with a little silvery creek chub.

It was time to call it good for the day as far as fishing went, and to head over to Justin’s house for some dessert. Well, it turned out to be dinner and dessert.

Justin has a great family with three active children under the age of six (Justin, correct me if I’m wrong on the age thing). While Nicole, Justin’s wife, put the finishing touches on dinner, the kids kept us occupied. In the previous 60 hours we had traveled 2200 miles and had less than 10 hours of sleep. Our trip had started to take on the surreal quality you get after being on an extended trip (we hadn’t been gone long, but lack of sleep and the previous day’s trip through Gatlinburg was adding to the weirdness). It was nice to sit back and relax with Justin’s family, to bring a little normalcy to our trip. That might seem odd, but Dan and I are both family men, and we’re used to having kids around.

So we had a great food and stimulating conversation. It was an excellent end to an excellent day.

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