Fishing Journal: 4/19/07

Yesterday we got out there for our first guided day this year on the Rapidan River. You couldn’t order it better—partly cloudy, low 70’s, and the water running just high enough to keep us from being seen by every brookie in the stream. Yes, brookies can be friendly but they are not stupid.
Brook trout fishing in the Shenandoah Park is like no other. The trout are usually eager enough that I only carry the box of dries. The scenery is some of the most beautiful on the planet, the access is difficult enough to keep the pressure down but not so difficult that you don’t just stop by maybe on your way somewhere else. Yes, I am often late if the drive-by is anywhere near the stream. Now if I could only find a pair of hip boots that last longer than one season because they get torn up crawling over the car size boulders life would be just perfect—okay maybe not perfect but damn near.
Add to this scenario an unexpected client who can fish well and wants to listen (a rare combination) and you have the makings of a great day. Mike Sweeney was the client who almost wasn’t.
Mike called on Friday afternoon asking if I had any openings for the weekend.
“I know you’re probably booked,” he started, “but I thought I’d ask anyway.”
“I have two trips already this weekend, but where are you calling from, maybe I can put you on some fish.”
Mike is from the Midwest and a student at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia who was looking for a little R and R. He didn’t have his equipment with him out East but was willing to beg, borrow, or steal (okay he’s in law enforcement now, so that probably is an exaggeration) a rod and some waders just to get out for the day. I felt his pain—I have been there myself a few times--but really didn’t have an opening. I gave him some tips about the shad run on the Rappahannock River near the Marine Corps base, and wished him the best of luck.
Fours hours later and the cancellation came in. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken Mike’s number because cancellations the day before rarely happen. But as fate often has it, life comes together despite some of our best efforts to not make it so. The answering message at the number he called from sounded like a generic office machine, but somehow he got it and was on the phone with me thirty minutes later.
Well the stream was running a little high which tends to make the brookies dart a little less from each pool as you step in, but not high enough to put the water off so that dries won’t work.
“Do you think we’ll see some fish?” Mike asked.
“All on dries today.” I could see the smile grow across his face.
I took Mike to the pool where the Staunton joins the Rapidan. It is usually good for some smaller fish and friendly on the caster. The Rapidan is one of those streams that grows out of the mountain, surrounded by trees and brush that loves to grab back casts and purge your fly collection. The best rods on this stream are four-weights that load easily and are under seven feet to fire short, accurate casts while keeping those casts low and out of the trees.
In fact the first few times I fished the Rapidan I spent more time retrieving flies trying to hold a rod, pull down a branch, and untangle a fly while not falling in the stream that actual fishing. All this was done with very limited success spending much time wet and frustrated, but man are those fish were beautiful.
I could tell Mike was impressed with the stream. The look on his face gave it away, but there was also the usual look of despair after we hike passed pool after promising pool.
“Where will we start?”
“There’s a pool up ahead that will work well,” I answered. He probably didn’t see the smile since I was hiking in front, but I have heard the question often enough to know what he was thinking—this guide must be crazy passing up all this good water.
Sometimes you can’t write it any better. I tied Mike on a parachute Adams, one of the best search patterns to use on this stream, and let him cast away.
“Put it right outside the current stream on the right. There is usually a fish there.”
“Wow, they’re fast he said,” missing the first hit.
“You’ll get the hang of it.”
He did and it went on from there.
Mike caught some fish, missed some others and generally had a great morning in a partly overcast sky with a scattering of rising sulfurs and caddis. As I said, I couldn’t write it any better.
We took a break for lunch which I got all the usual questions.
“What do you really do for a living?” and “Why don’t you fish, I could learn a lot from just watching?”
I gave the answers, almost sound rehearsed now and told him I might take a rod with me in the afternoon, but we’d be fishing the Staunton which is so overgrown it makes the Rapidan look open and friendly. The bow and arrow cast and lying on your stomach over a boulder dappling a fly at the water’s edge is what we’d be doing, so I told him we’ll see how it goes.
When we waded down to the stream, Mike turned to me, “You are going to lose a lot of flies.”
“I might, but you’ll have fun doing it.”
It was pocket water at its best. Scrambling over deadfalls and rocks, short casts, and snagging trees. But the fish here were bigger and friendlier not because the stream is bigger; actually it is much smaller that the Rapidan, but the access is terrible. It is funny in life those things that are most worth it are hardest to come by.
After hooking another tree, Mike said, “Okay, now I want to see you try.”
“Are you sure?” As a guide it is always a risk of catching a fish, in which the client thinks, “That should have been mine.”
I crawled up on the boulder and peered over the edge. The brookie was eating dries, drifting back with the current and shooting forward after sipping each one. I let the line out behind a roll cast into the pool not letting the fly get more than four feet off the water. The fly landed and the brookie took. I hopped from the boulder and stopped the fish from going over the rapids landing him in the tail of the pool.
“You looked like you’ve done that before.”
“Yeah, a few times.” Never mind all the days I had spent with my fly in the trees. Some days it just doesn’t write any better.
We both fished a little more. I ended up slipping on a rock climbing down from a pool in which Mike had just landed six fish and missed a bunch more strikes. I threw the rod just like I was supposed to but the butt section landed on a rock and the graphite split. It was an Orvis rod so it would be replaced for free which goes to say that sometimes it makes a difference on the price you pay for a fly rod, but I am glad I didn’t have my little bamboo with me at the time.
On the way out, I convinced Mike to stop at one more pool before he went home. I was a pool I had fished the week before with my son during some higher water and there was a back eddy that held a bigger fish which I was able to hook but not land.
The pool was much lower now, but it still held promise. Mike cast into the middle of the tail end of the run and landed an eleven inch brookie, his biggest of the day. He would land two more about the same size when he asked me, “Do you think there is a fish up there?”
Between us and “up there” were two deadfalls pointing at each other one lower and one higher and a boulder the size of a VW Beetle that set up the water perfect for a good sized fish. The cast would have to be side-arm, under one tree and over another and land around the rock with enough slack to get a few feet of drag-free drift.
“You make the cast,” Mike said.
“No that we’ll be your fish there.”
“No,” he demanded, “I can’t make that cast. I’ll hang up and any fish will be gone.”
“Okay, but I can’t guarantee I can make it either.”
“Go ahead.”
I did, and I did. Thirteen inches of fish later, the biggest they usually get in this stream, and we were both smiling. Sometimes you can’t write it better. Thanks Mike.