Garden State Trout

Since my wife and kid are away for a few weeks, I took the opportunity to go way up in the Shenandoah mountains to stream I have been reading about. It's a little over 2 hours from DC, but the last five miles are a non maintained fire road which was a lot of fun to drive. I could have fished lower where there are supposed to be brookies up to 17 inches, but I decided to go way up to a less pressured area. Even though I was in the headwaters, it was a good sized stream, slightly bigger than DC or VCB. Flows were really good thanks to all the recent rain and there were lots of pools, riffles, and glides. I got on the water at about 9 am and the fish were feed on nymphs from the beginning despite the cold air and water temps. Fish were everywhere but mostly in the in 5-7 inch category, although I lost some in the 10 inch range. I was hoping for some bigger trout and I am sure they are in there, but it was a great adventure for sure and I lost track of how many fish I caught. I was experimenting with several nymph rigs tandem with indicator, tandem without, and stimulator dry with nymph dropper-the last one caught the most fish by a larger margin. I need to keep practicing without an indicator as the strikes were very subtle and I had a hard time detecting them, especially in fast moving water. For me nymphing is not the most fun, but it is the most effective.

Beautiful pics! Thanks for sharing

Nice report and agree beautiful pics!

It was really nice to have a whole day adventure out there-That makes four whole day fishing adventures in the past 2 months! one to Maryland, two to Hughes river in the Shenandoah, and one to Rapidan in Shenandoah. This past monday a buddy from work asked to go fishing. He had done some fishing as a kid in Michigan but was interested in reconnecting with the outdoors/fishing. I really appreciated his commitment-I picked him up at 6 am and we didnt get back to DC until 7 pm after a full day in Shenandoah on the Hughes river. I fished a 7'6" fly rod and I lent him my 6'6" ultra light spinning rod. I set him with a trout magnet and coached him how to read and approach water. Flows were decent, but not as strong as the week before and the water was crystal clear. We spooked a lot of trout but we managed a half dozen each-they were his first wild trout ever so I was pleased that he stuck with it and made a real effort all day. It was 65-70 degrees and lovely all day, although that has changed now. In one big deep pool we experimented with tying a hares ear dropper off of the trout magnet-he caught 3 brookies that way-two on the nymph and one on the Trout magnet-its always fun to teach someone else and learn new techniques! I think with the mid winter weather now here, its was my last full day till late winter/early spring.

Another one to add to the bucket list! Looks beautiful. Wild brookies up to 17''?? Say no more!