just returned from the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia, fishing with an old friend from graduate school [Lee Dewald]. I caught about 96 fish in six days, mostly trout. Small brookies from creeks a quarter the size of the Little Sur at the Scout Camp;
fall fish from everywhere; one smallmouth; four rock bass [red eye]; two decent brown trout plus a dozen plus rainbows from nine to twenty inches [almost all over 13 inches] from Dunlap Creek at Escatawba Farms;
and a thirty fish day on the WalkDownHill River: thirteen rainbows, all over 13 inches, three brook trout, 12,13 and 14 inches, and a bunch of 9 inch fall fish, rock bass and the smallmouth.
Also got one bluegill and three rock bass on the South River, trying to stir up some smallmouth.
My buddy, who teaches at VMI, did better than I did on the creeks and the South River, I did better on the WalkDownHill and Dunlap Creek. We tried Beaver Creek twice, but it was the color of a coffee milkshake both days, as was the North River the one day we looked at it before heading for a creek. Prizes of the trip were a twenty inch rainbow plus the fifteen and sixteen inch browns from Dunlap Creek, and a really fat eighteen inch rainbow from WalkDownHill River, after a bunch of fifteeners.
Sulfur duns produced well, as did a sulfur emerger I based on the callibaetis spotlight emerger, a size 18 Adams parachute saved me a couple of times on the little creeks, as did a 18 or 20 BWO parachute. GFT was used mostly as a strike indicator, but I got a few fish on it. I need to tie some more of those. For nymphs, I mostly used a fly I found somewhere that looks like a Flashback Hares Ear, with explicit legs, vice picked out dubbing, and the whole top of the body and thorax flashback. When the fish started getting wise to that, I showed them a #14 Red Headed Step Child - a Hogan Brown fly - great nymph, and the East Coast fish had likely never seen it - it's a Trinity and Lower Sac fly. The RHSC got the 18" bow on the WalkDownHill. I also got a few fish on a sulfur colored nymph, tied Pheasant tail style. Never did try the Hare and Coppers that I tied up for the trip, but they look a lot like the sulfur.
That's it for now. Stripers and Bluefish on Cape Cod are the next possibility. That starts Monday.
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