“A 2.3 mile section of the South Fork Powell River in the Town of Big Stone Gap and a 0.75 mile section of the Middle Fork Holston River in Chilhowie have been added to this very popular program. Included in the program are those waters that are posted as “Stocked Trout Waters” and are stocked with catchable-sized trout from October through May each year. Designated stocked trout waters are listed by the Director of the Department in the annual Trout Stocking Plan published in the “2011 Freshwater Fishing in Virginia” regulations pamphlet on pages 20 – 21.
This modification to the trout stocking plan will be effective with the formal posting of regulations on the new streams. “We are very excited about this great opportunity for anglers in Wise and Smyth Counties,” stated Bill Kittrell, Regional Aquatic Manager in the Department’s Marion Regional Office. “It has taken a considerable amount of work on the part of both the Town officials as well as Department staff to bring this about,” Kittrell explained. Officials from both the Town of Big Stone Gap and the Town of Chilhowie have presented the Department with formal resolutions supporting the concept. “In both cases, the Towns own large tracts of land adjacent to the streams, and access for the public is excellent,” Kittrell continued. These waters will only be considered designated stocked trout waters from October 1 through June 15, and a trout license will be required to fish in addition to the regular fishing license. A trout license is not required from June 16 through September 30. Trout angling hours on designated stocked trout waters are from 5:00 a.m. until one hour after sunset.”
I often drive past Happy Creek in Front Royal on my way to fish in Shenandoah National Park. Right in the middle of town, looks like it would be a great place to take a kid fishing. I would guess this is most definitely put-and-take, and take all. Let’s see, it was stocked on May 10… might be too late.
The North River, the Stony Creeks, South River, South Branch of the Potomac, and the Holston — a lot of the classic Virginia trout streams were just stocked, and in many cases, multiple times in the past few weeks. Should be good fishing for a couple more months at least…
Amherst Co.
Pedlar River (Lower) (05/02)
Pedlar River (Upper) (05/03)
Augusta Co.
Braley Pond (05/05)
Hearthstone Lake (05/05)
North River (Gorge) (05/02)
North River (Natural Chimneys) (05/02)
Bath Co.
Bullpasture River (05/06)
Pads Creek (05/02)
Bland Co.
Wolf Creek (05/05)
Botetourt Co.
Middle Creek (05/02)
North Creek (05/02)
Roaring Run (05/03)
Floyd Co.
Burkes Fork (05/02)
Laurel Fork (05/05)
Little Indian Creek (05/05)
Frederick Co.
Clearbrook Lake (05/03)
Hogue Creek (05/03)
Winchester Lake (05/03)
Grayson Co.
Elk Creek (05/04)
Fox Creek (05/04)
Helton Creek (05/04)
Middle Fox Creek (05/04)
Greene Co.
South River (05/04)
Swift Run (05/04)
Henry Co.
Smith River (Dam) (05/03)
Highland Co.
Bullpasture River (05/06)
South Branch Potomac River (05/03)
Montgomery Co.
Toms Creek (05/04)
Rockingham Co.
Dry River (05/03)
North Fork Shenandoah River (05/04)
Scott Co.
Big Stony Creek (05/03)
Little Stony Creek (05/03)
Straight Fork (Lower) (05/03)
Shenandoah Co.
Mill Creek (05/05)
Stony Creek (05/05)
Tomahawk Pond (05/04)
Smyth Co.
Middle Fork Holston River (Upper) (05/05)
South Fork Holston River (Lower) (04/29) (LATE)
Staunton (City of)
Lake Tams (05/06) Closed until after the Kid’s Day event on Saturday, May 7.
The Gunpowder River in Maryland. Ah, yes. That was the plan one day last week. I was really looking forward to it since I’ve never fished there and have heard nothing but good things about the Gunpowder. The trip was being organized by the guys at the LL Bean store in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, perfect for a Gunpowder newbie like me. So the night before, I tied some nymphs, packed my stuff and put a 5 weight sink tip line on the old Pflueger Medalist reel I got off eBay, just in case the water was a little high after all the rain we had last week. That reel was a good buy for $20. I had to take it apart and give it a little rehab — a good cleaning, lube and adjustment — but now it looks fine and the spool spins without rubbing the frame. In my haste to fix the reel up I didn’t realize there were two tiny springs in there — one for the pawl and one for the cam release. So when it didn’t go back together so well I realized pieces were missing. Thankfully I found both tiny springs under my chair. After an hour of scratching my head and trying everything I could think of I finally figured it out. The next test of wit and equipment will be when I call on this thing and its slightly slick drag mechanism to stop an actual fish of some size. But the old reel deserves a shot, or maybe another shot — maybe it’s seen and done this and more with its previous owner. If it proved itself then and still got kicked to the eBay auction curb, it’s deserving for sure.
So… I was ready to roll. The Gunpowder and its wild brown trout were to be assaulted by my enthusiasm, vintage reel and didymo-free wading boots. Unbeknownst to me that night before while I was the fly tying reel-fixing trip-packing maniac, the weather reports started coming in predicting hell was to break loose in the morning. I got an email saying it was off due to dangerous lightning and high winds. Good plans for my day off, completely scuttled. I am thankful, though, that it did not end up worse. This was part of the storm system that destroyed Tuscaloosa, Alabama and took hundreds of lives, including eight in Virginia. It ended up being a dangerous storm and it was a wise decision to stay put.
What do you do when a well-planned day on the river comes apart? Well, the sky cleared up nicely and I had the time blocked off so figured I should go fishing anyway. The Shenandoah River was pretty high and muddy from all that rain, so I decided to catch some brook trout in Shenandoah National Park in a stream I had not yet fished. There was one I’d been eying on the map not too far away that looked promising — Overall Run.
And it stunk.
Fishless Pool, Overall Run
I’ve never heard of anybody fishing Overall Run, but that didn’t matter. There are plenty of streams you never hear about people fishing, even in a national park. It looked like a good long stretch of water inside the park, starting above 2000 feet elevation, with the park’s highest waterfall, 93 feet high. Had to be good, right? Well, I feel kind of stupid now. Had I read before I left that Overall Run Falls dries up in the summer, I would have realized that this stream probably warms too much, runs too low and does not support brook trout. That would explain things. I could have read about the seasonal flow of Overall Run here, too. A little internet research would have saved me a trip.
It was a good hike, though, but it’s too bad about the fishing since it’s a very pretty stream — a classic SNP mountain trout stream, just without the trout. I tried the triumvirate of go-to flies — Adams, Royal Wulff and Mr. Rapidan. The water level was good. I was casting like a champ, getting drag free drifts, hitting the corners of the pools, right up against the boulders — doing everything right, the things that workevery timeI’vegone this year, and in years past. I got no strikes, got no looks, saw no fish — nothing. Maybe it’s not conclusive, but coupled with the nature of this stream, it surely is. A day like that would have raised a couple dozen fish on a stream that had any.
Lots of wildflowers to see this time of year.
Oh well. Like the last time I tried a questionable stream, Indian Run, I had to go hit the money spots for a few weeks after that to salve the wounds. Same thing now. The month of May is prime time brook trout fishing and I’ll be hitting the best streams in the park. No more of this experimental, optimistic exploratory crap. At least not for a few weeks.
It occurred to me that I don’t know much about the trout stocking program in the state. I’ve sort of assumed that most of the trout stocked are rainbow trout, with some browns. The places I’ve fished that are stocked by the state are typically rainbows as far as I know (Big Stoney Creek, Passage Creek, the Jackson River, etc.). I just did a Google search and found a couple references to Virginia stocking both rainbows and brook trout in the Robinson and Rose Rivers near Syria, Virginia (see here too).
Nick Karas, in his seminal work Brook Trout (seminal for those interested in the species, anyway) mentions how programs in Virginia to stock brookies may have impacted the populations I once thought were purely native. He writes, “Virginia’s waters have been stocked with domesticated brook trout for so many years that the integrity of the wild strain has probably been compromised. However, those brook trout populations at the highest elevations are probably little changed genetically from the original [native] stock.” And for better or worse (mostly worse), what’s left for us to catch is almost all in the higher elevations — Shenandoah National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Alleghenies, etc. In a recent Trout Unlimited interview Mr. Karas again mentions the detrimental effect of stocked brook trout on native populations. It’s been an unfortunately common story throughout the brook trout’s historic range in the east — not just state-run stocking programs but introductions of invasive species by “bucket biologists” are a huge problem in many places, maybe most famously in the Adirondacks. Throw in a little acid rain and other environmental factors and things get bad very quickly for brook trout. In the Adirondacks only 3% of the known brook trout waters remain inhabited by these fish. Three percent.
The Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture’s website is one place where you can see the gory details on the state of brook trout in the eastern U.S. Trout Unlimited’s Conservation Success Index is another. What is apparent is that stocking streams with invasive fish is just one item on a long list of things conspiring to slowly decimate native trout. From the TU CSI (with my emphasis added): “Like other salmonids in the char genus, brook trout are intolerant of water pollution and non-native fish, and are classic indicators of water quality and ecosystem integrity.” And the CSI’s stark summary of the state of the eastern brook trout:
62% of subwatersheds in the historic range are currently occupied (3,282 out of 5,278)
1.5% of subwatersheds with brook trout had a Total CSI score > 75 (out of a possible 90)
Median Range-wide Condition score = 15/25 for extant populations only (range 9-24)
Median Population Integrity score = 7/15 for extant populations only (range 6-15)
Median Habitat Integrity score = 13/25 (range 5-24)
Median Future Security score: 18/24 (range 10-24)
8% of subwatersheds priority for protection
12% of subwatersheds high priority for reintroduction
62% of subwatersheds priority for restoration
Overall, it’s not encouraging. “Non-native fish” are mentioned as threats five times on the CSI’s main page (and “exotic species” is in there at least once, too).
(click to enlarge)
To the left is a map showing the CSI scores for the east coast’s historic brook trout population areas. Anything blue is really good (that’s just 0.5% of the total, all in Maine), green is pretty good (5.1%, and in Virginia we have some of those areas), and the other colors show bigger impacts. Note that gray means extirpated, also known as local extinction, or according to Merriam Webster, “rooted out and destroyed completely” — that may be a good description of people “fishing out” watersheds over the centuries. The main colors that jump out at you when you look at this map are red and orange, the lowest scoring areas, which together comprise 70.2% of the total. These are the areas most affected by “[e]xtensive land use alterations, the establishment of competing non-native fish, and heavy urbanization…”
Anyway, here in Virginia I’m not always sure what to believe now. You hear about native fish in many places, and they are out there. But you can’t be certain that the streams rumored to have native fish have only that, and this is of course because of our long history of stocking domesticated and invasive fish mostly for recreation. Unless you’re a brook trout or a big fan, most would say stocking catchable invasive trout is not all a bad thing. Nevertheless, the impact on native fish is significant.
The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is a little vague on the types of fish they raise. The VDGIF hatcheries page does mention one hatchery specifically, Wytheville, that raises brook trout. However, it indicates that “trout from Wytheville are stocked in the waters from roughly Grayson County north to Bland.” All other mentions of trout on that page say only that — “trout” — without differentiating which types of trout are reared, and the stocking schedule doesn’t say anything about what species are stocked, either.
But... you're OK?
The practice of stocking domesticated brook trout seems less of an issue for the native fish, rightly or wrongly, than the practice of stocking what are really invasive species — rainbows and browns. In Shenandoah National Park I have caught rainbows well inside the park boundary on both the Hughes River and the South Fork of the Thornton River. But officially, it is the brown trout that is the villain. The National Park Service has special brown trout regulations that are kind of goofy (also clarified on the VDGIF website). Any brown trout caught must be disposed of, but there is a seven inch minimum size to harvest brown trout. So if you catch a six incher, you can’t “harvest” it but you have to kill it. OK, but at least the message is clear — do not return them to the stream. Why aren’t there similar regulations for rainbows in the park (i.e. “dispose of them when caught”), since they are also known to compete with and often out-compete brook trout? The NPS website has a page about rainbow trout in the park, and it even notes how they do in fact compete with brook trout. This really begs the question of why the NPS does not treat browns and rainbows the same way, and the bigger question of why Virginia stocks these fish at all in streams inhabited by mostly or totally native strains of brook trout. It’s all especially curious when they tout “National Park Service policy mandates that exotic species will not be allowed to displace native species if displacement can be prevented.” Seems like stocking invasive rainbow trout can surely be prevented.
I should mention here that I am not a biologist, naturalist, fisheries manager, activist or expert on this subject. The folks who do this know more than I do about managing these resources. However, a lot of the concern I read comes from exactly these people. And it just doesn’t make sense that if you want to preserve a native fishery you would stock aggressive invasive species, whatever the type, just downstream.
The NPS website specifically mentions the Rose River, Hughes and Brokenback Run as having browns, and big ones. “Large adult brown trout over 18 inches long with weights in excess of two pounds have been captured within the park in traditional, wild brook trout habitat.” I don’t like the thought of these fish displacing our native species, but catching an 18 inch brown trout on a small stream in the park sounds like a hoot. Then you have to take it home for dinner. I can think of worse things in the name of conservation. There’s that not-all-bad attitude, even with me.
So is it all terrible news? Well, it sort of is. The overall trend is decidedly downward for these fish. There are pockets of effort to reintroduce brook trout populations (see Trout Unlimited’s Shenandoah Headwaters Home Rivers Initiative, for example) but overcoming centuries of damage while human population increases, development continues and climate change is occurring makes it tough to see how things will ever improve for brook trout. We can restore streams and preserve habitat, but what’s gone is probably not coming back and most of the rest is slowly getting ruined. Stocked trout, while providing fun recreation for many of us, is just one factor but may be a lot worse for our native fish than anyone wants to admit.
More fish stocked for your laid back angling pleasure and copied below.
A couple good brook trout streams were stocked well downstream of where the brookies are, the Robinson and Hawksbill. And several streams near all those chicken farms in Rockingham county were loaded up. Water levels should be sky high, given the massive rain we had last weekend and judging by what the Shenandoah River looks like near my home as recently as this afternoon. Be careful out there if you’re planning on wading and the water looks higher than what you’re used to.
Jeremy’s Run on a Saturday. What I was thinking was stupid. Hitting not one but two popular brook trout fishing spots in Shenandoah National Park in the same week was going to make this an odd week for me, and this second trip was… what? I was heading to the day hiker superhighway on the west side of the Blue Ridge. Trying to catch fish that have seen every Orvis and LL Bean fly ever sold. Walking past miles of pools infested with pasty old fly fisherman too feeble to hike into the “real” spots to fish. This was stupid.
Screw it. I went anyway.
I had just a few hours to drive somewhere, so Jeremy’s Run was a prime spot. But when I left the house I still was half thinking I would bail and head somewhere else, knowing that this could be an inane idea on a weekend. So I drove down 340 talking to myself the whole way. Really… Jeremy’s Run? You think you’ll pull up to the trail head and have it to yourself? If you get there and see ten vehicles, what’s your plan B? Drive back home? Really.
Another pristine pool.
My preconceptions about the fishing pressure, which are based on things I’ve heard from a lot of people, has always made this place verboten for me. I did hike down Jeremy’s Run trail from Skyline this past winter, but I didn’t bring a fly rod and that hike was strictly recon. Just in case. This stream might have the easiest access of all the better streams in the park, and everyone has been to Jeremy’s Run, so yes… I pictured a line of cars and pickup trucks nose to tail on the shoulder next to the sign warning to stay on the trail (it’s on an easement over private property until it crosses the park boundary, like a lot of trails here). I imagined hiking a few miles to find real solitude. Mumbling to myself the whole way, too, and turning into a crotchety bastard with hair growing out of my ears as I went.
Turned out I was completely wrong. When I arrived at the trail head, there was not a single vehicle. Saturday morning, 11 am. Everyone knows the brook trout are eating now, right? So what was up?
Maybe all the fish were gone and no one told me.
A $14 reel on a $650 fly rod. Is that wrong?
Maybe it was the weather. Forties and overcast, with fog hanging just above the valley and flowing like a slow stream in the sky around the top of the Blue Ridge. Yep, had to be the weather. Aside from a group of hikers and one other fly fisherman, I saw no one. Surely a seventy degree day would have had this place crawling. Since there are so many other good spots in this park, I’m not going to find out what Jeremy’s Run is like on those days.
Like the Robinson River in White Oak Canyon, this is a nice stream. Good water and good fish. It’s also nicely shaded and has a lot of good runs and pools. It’s popular because of the ease of access, no doubt, but it’s also a really good spot. I have to be fair and admit all that. Nice, nice place.
So the first fish I caught was about six feet in front of me. I had worked my way up into the middle of a pool that had no cover and was maybe two feet deep. I saw a splash and thought it was just the current piling onto itself. But it happened again and I saw the fish. And a second smaller fish. How could they not see me? So I cast upstream with the same Rusty Parachute with which I had ended the day at White Oak Canyon earlier in the week and lifted the rod tip to keep the leader off the water. Let it drift. And BAM! I got the first one. And then I got the other. Sweet.
Fiddleheads. And I left the steamer at home.
The water was about forty four degrees, maybe forty five. I really need a better thermometer. The one I have just has ticks between every marked twenty degree interval. But low to mid forties it had to be. So I caught several more, all decent sized, and I missed a few, as always.
Just awesome. How can you not love brook trout?
I brought the Winston WT 7 foot 3 weight I got on eBay a few weeks ago and I really like this rod. I’ve used it now on three brookie trips. Today was the first time I used it with a 3 weight line (the correct line), a double taper from Hook and Hackle. I had been using a four weight line and it casts that well so long as you keep it within thirty feet or so. Beyond that and it starts to get soft though it still throws it. The WT is definitely a medium action rod and casts a three weight fly line so sweetly. But none of this really matters much for this kind of fishing because I’m usually casting just the leader. Today I had the leader a little too long. I started with probably ten feet and 5X on the end of it. But with a size 16 dry fly and a couple changes it ended up being perfect. With the proper leader, this rod delivers it however you want provided the wind is light. Delicate drops, power or even roll casts, no fly line involved, are no problem. You just don’t want to rush the cast. Let it load and push your thumb through it. Pleasant. I’ll try to devote a post to a short review of this thing. Not that it’s some new piece of equipment, but it is a rod that seems to be overlooked these days given everyone’s obsession with ultra fast action rods. For small stream fishing, though, this kind of rod might be ideal.
So Jeremy’s Run, sorry I’ve ignored you for so long. It might be a while before I return, but at least now I know. You’re worth the trip. Unless the weather is good.
