The Eat More Brook Trout blog was fishing on the Rapidan River just a couple weeks ago. Sounds like a great time, dry fly fishing in the afternoon with Tenkara rods. I’ve fished the Rapidan once, the first time I caught a brook trout. It certainly is a beautiful place. On that April trip I did not make it to President Hoover’s camp, having called it a day just downstream from there after losing count of how many trout I caught, but reading this post reminded me there is a lot to see in Shenandoah National Park, and that river and the camp should be high on any fly fisherman’s list of places to go.
This time of year, when the temperature has warmed up a bit, afternoons bring good dry fly action on the streams in Shenandoah National Park. My first brookie of the season was exactly a month ago, on a certain unnamed stream in the park, and on a day when the temps hit seventy degrees the afternoon definitely turned the fish on to dry flies. I still can’t bring myself to nymph for them. It just seems wrong even if I miss out on some action because of it. There is nothing like floating a Royal Wulff or an Adams over small pockets of water and having little native fish just slam them. Right now the Quill Gordons should be starting to hatch so the fish should be looking up.
If you’ve never fished the Rapidan and certainly if you’ve never fished Shenandoah National Park, consider signing up for Murray’s Fly Shop Mountain Trout Fly Fishing School. It’s two days of guided fishing and instruction on the Rapidan River, and you’ll learn exactly how to fish these small mountain streams.
