If you’re thinking about combining a hike, taking in some fall foliage and of course maybe dapping a dry fly on a stream in Shenandoah National Park, be sure to check out the National Park Service’s fall colors report (updated weekly) and their leaf color cam (updated throughout the day). The image you see on the cam looks like a panorama from Skyline Drive. The image on the right is mine, from the Appalachian Trail almost a year ago.
Fishing News
153 posts
Time for the fall trout stocking program in Virginia to begin again. And it already has.
Note the South River, near Waynesboro, Virginia. I spoke to one of the owners of the relatively new South River Fly Shop at the Rapidan Trout Unlimited chapter‘s fly fishing show this past February (see also the fly shop’s fishing conditions report). He had a lot to say about the South River’s comeback and I had meant to get down there this year to fish but have not. Yet. According to the fly shop’s fishing conditions report, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries “stocked the 4.5 mile Special Regulations Area in Lyndhurst yesterday (September 26th). 10,000 brown trout were stocked, with sizes mostly from 6-8″, but some fish approaching 12″ were included.” This may be one of the items below from the VDGIF’s fish stocking report, but for a different date, interestingly.
- Augusta Co.
- South River (Ridgeview Park) (10/05)
- South River (Delayed Harvest) (10/05)
- Bath Co.
- Jackson River (Rte. 623) (10/01)
- Jackson River (Hidden Valley) (10/03)
- Craig Co.
- Potts Creek (10/01)
- Floyd Co.
- Burkes Fork (10/05)
- Giles Co.
- Wolf Creek (10/04)
- Henry Co.
- Smith River (Lower) (10/03)
- Madison Co.
- Robinson River (10/05)
- Nelson Co.
- Tye River (10/03)
- Roanoke Co.
- Roanoke River (Salem) (10/05)
- Rockingham Co.
- South River (Grottoes) (10/05)
- Russell Co.
- Big Cedar Creek (10/04)
- Scott Co.
- Bark Camp Lake (10/04)
Not sure what’s so tough about some Nordic arctic char getting down to some lovin’ but the video is fascinating (direct link to vimeo). This is probably the closest cousin to our beloved brook trout. In fact, they look so similar to brook trout (char that they too are) it’s easy to be fooled.
The age old ritual continues.
Caught me off guard — Maryland just began its fall trout stocking program last week. It’s that time of year. The brook trout will soon be spawning but you can still get your trout fishing fix in the stocked streams throughout the east coast.
| Howard | Little Patuxent River (2 Fish/Day) | Sep 29 | GO > |
| Howard | Middle Patuxent River, Delayed Harvest Area | Sep 29 | GO > |
| Howard/Baltimore | Patapsco River at Daniels (2 Fish/Day) | Sep 22 | GO > |
| Howard | Little Patuxent River (2 Fish/Day) | Sep 22 | GO > |
Nice photos at the Fly Fisherman blog about a recent brook trout fishing trip to the Minipi River in Labrador, Canada. Nothing like understatement — “Obviously, these are not your average-sized brook trout.”
Yep.
Menhaden Defenders has a campaign to stop the over-harvesting of this important species of fish. How important? The most important fish in the sea — remember that book? Stocks of menhaden have declined alarmingly in the past 25 years. They are harvested for uses such as Omega-3 oil supplements and oil based paint. Atlantic menhaden also happen to be a primary forage fish for a number of species of game fish such as stripers (or rockfish for you Mid-Atlantic residents) and bluefish.
Go here to take action to stop overfishing of menhaden. You can use the text they offer or paste the slightly corrected version below into their online form:
Dear ASMFC Commissioner,
I am deeply concerned that the Atlantic menhaden stock is at an all time low that that the latest stock assessment found that overfishing is occurring. Atlantic menhaden are vital to the Mid-Atlantic marine ecosystem, and this fishery should be managed with the utmost care. Therefore, I respectfully request that you:
1) Establish the first ever coast-wide cap on the menhaden fishery for the 2012 season. This quota should be based on an target of 30% of the Maximum Spawning Potential—i.e. 30% of the mature fish in an “unfished” stock must be left in the water—with a corresponding overfishing threshold of 15% MSP
2) Require appropriate monitoring and enforcement measures to avoid fishing over that cap
3) Move quickly to manage the species on an ecosystems basis, accounting for the critical forage role that menhaden play.Thank you for considering my views.
Though I’ve never had the occasion to use it (and hope I never will), I carry a Sawyer Extractor snake bite kit in my backpack whenever I’m hiking around fishing for brook trout. I am told this works to extract some quantity of venom depending on where the bite is on your body. For example, on your hands or feet it is supposed to work better than if the bite is on your calf.
However, the effectiveness of the Sawyer Extractor is somewhat debatable, and apparently one of the kit’s proponents has backtracked in the past few years on his endorsement of the product. As with almost everything on the internet, it’s hard to know what the truth is. Nevertheless…
Whether you do or do not apply a quick suction to a venomous snake bite when you are in the backcountry, the most important thing is still to get to a hospital. The only sure way to treat such a wound is to get a shot of antivenin. A little extraction, if it actually works as advertised, may buy you a small window of time to hike out of the situation and get to a hospital.
This is a cool story about finding golden trout in Colorado from Orvis News. It’s not the puritanical native fish expedition, since golden trout are native to California and not Colorado, but the spirit of heading into the wild to search for uncertain populations of wild fish is similar to how I regard angling for brook trout on the east coast. This guy found a lode of golden trout. Good on him.
This gets me jazzed. I am really looking forward to pre-spawn brook trout fishing in the next couple months.
I missed this a couple weeks ago — a great shot of a small native brook trout in Vermont from Orvis News.
Brook trout. Nothing like ’em.
Apparently, through a vulnerability on either the WordPress platform or in the theme used on this site, the Brook Trout Fishing Guide was hacked. Certain pages were redirecting to a nefarious site that attempted to download and install malware. This problem is now fixed and I apologize for anyone who may have been targeted. Insert long winded rant about malware and hackers here, your rant or mine, but the bottom line is this is part of life on the internet.
Fortunately, Google and the major browser vendors try to warn you if you attempt to hit a site that is a known distributor of malware, and many anti-virus packages for PCs hook into your browser to provide similar warnings. Hopefully you all run such software.
Now, back to life as we knew it.