Virginia

The George Washington National Forest is a fragmented collection of woodland areas in the western part of Virginia that stretch into West Virginia and Kentucky. There are lots of great trails and camping spots, and of course I am of the mind that those exist in order to access the freestone streams holding brook trout. So in mid-May I scoured Google Earth looking for some likely spots to fish not too far from home in the GWNF. This one in particular was not a stream I would go out of my way to fish again, but I’ve been here twice now and have seen and caught some decent brookies…

I hiked to the first pool and thought maybe I should try it. But it was right next to the trail, maybe a ten minute walk from where I parked. I figured there was just no way anyone had left a fish in there, and no way one had managed to elude even the few fly fisherman who pass by. And to have grown to a decent size, any fish that had managed to survive would have had to do it for a couple years, then either leap up a few small falls or bash its way down from the bigger rocky cliff just upstream in order to sit in this spot and survive. It didn’t seem likely. Thought I should just skip it.

Then… revelation. What the hell, why pass by any pool that looks like it may be good enough to hold a fish? I have passed by so many similarly marginal-looking spots before. Maybe I have been denied some record for the number of trout I’ve caught by skipping past these exposed pools. Probably missed some citation-sized leviathans, too. Right?

So I gave it a go. I do what I usually do in these small stream prospecting situations; tie on a size 14 Royal Wulff. Or was it a size 12? Doesn’t matter. Slathered it with some floatant, greased up the leader and sharpened the hook. Lowering the rod and myself, I crawled to the pool, trying to find shade and keeping my shadow far away from the water when I couldn’t. Even more likely that this spot had been fished out owed to the perfect lie of it. This stair-step run bent northeast just enough so that the midday sun couldn’t quite draw my silhouette on the water. Surely someone had depleted it.

First cast to the glassy tail of the small basin of water with just the leader out of the guides. The fly sat, then began its drift so slowly downstream, sitting upright like a newly hatched bug. Nothing. Second cast to the bubbling current in the middle, along the edge closest to me. Nothing. I kept working the fly a little further out and upstream each time I threw it, and raised the rod tip to keep the entire leader off the water and the fly drifting freely. About a half dozen casts in and I hooked him. Beautiful seven inch brook trout.

And that was it. Every other spot, especially the hard to reach little gorges and snaky looking banks… Nothing.

Go figure.

If Johnny Cash or the Grateful Dead had sung about Big Run, well, maybe it wouldn’t have gone like that. But for lyrical amusement, it’s all I got for this stream in Shenandoah National Park, and the water level was just fine in late April.

First, need to rewind a few months…

In January, I had gone to a talk at the Somerset Fly Fishing Show by Colby Trow from the Mossy Creek Fly Shop in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The room had originally been scheduled for a guy from Iceland, who was going to talk about salmon fishing. However, he had to cancel and so Colby stepped in sort of last minute to do his Shenandoah Valley fishing talk. I was one of five people in attendance. It’s funny how the valley seems to evade people’s radar. When you think about it even a little, this area has tons of great fishing, from small mountain trout streams to well-known spring creeks to warm water fishing on the Shenandoah and James. Anyway, Colby covered several spots in the park and Big Run was one of them. Tales of fisheries biologists shocking fifteen-inch brook trout from one particular pool there put it on my list.

So the second to last weekend in April had me heading south to Lexington to watch my son play in an off-season college soccer tournament. I figured that was close enough to turn part of the weekend into a brook trout expedition to a new spot. I stopped at the Mossy Creek Fly Shop on the way, bought some flies and tippet and spoke to Colby. He pointed out where to park to hike down to Big Run, and remarked that not many people stop by the shop with reports from there, probably due to all the other good spots nearby.

That’s fine. Leave all the brook trout to me.

I thanked Colby and drove south to Lexington. After the day’s games, I headed back north and spent the night in Harrisonburg, which was a good place to 1) get a meal with a good beer and 2) jump to SNP in the morning.

Turns out the beer was more than good. Through the Google I got the top umpteen hits for “beer Harrisonburg VA.” When traveling, I’ve discovered that searching for good beer is the way to find not just good beer but also good food. Anyway, I landed at the Capital Ale House, which was great. Had a big chimichurri steak salad and a couple big beers — a local Brothers Brewing Admiral Imperial IPA, then a slightly less local Lickinghole Creek Vanilla Virginia Black Bear. Big salad, big beers… ready for Big Run.

Next day, I drove up to Skyline and headed south from Rt. 33. Parked at the Doyle’s River lot and headed downhill. I probably hiked way past where I needed to to start fishing but I wanted to explore the place. This was the first time I’ve ever been this far south in SNP. Since I live north of the park, my normal haunts are in the northern and middle sections. My PATC map of the park’s south district still looks crisp and shiny.

I found lots of fish, and they smashed bushy dry flies. For some reason I had terrible luck with a Mr. Rapidan as well as the parachute version, and a parachute Adams. The fly that worked was a big Royal Wulff, size 12. No big surprise, big fly… Big Run.

It was all coming together.

The hike downhill was long but easy. Therefore, the hike back out was going to be a bitch, so I decided to just keep fishing. I figured it was better to avoid hiking out as long as I could. Of course, that made no sense, but catching fish for way longer than I normally would was fine with me. That ended up making what would have been a slog back to the car much more pleasant.

So is Big Run worth it? I’d say yes. Not only is it a beautiful stream, but the numbers and sizes of fish I landed made it worthwhile. It’s not dramatically better than other streams I’ve fished in the park, but it’s one of the better streams there for sure. If you go, keep in mind that the only public access to this stream is from Skyline Drive or the trails in the park, so cutting out some effort by accessing it from below is not doable. But like many of the good streams in the park, that’s not unusual.

And I follow you Big Run when you called.