Fishing continues to be nothing short of spectacular.
The James and Shenandoah are fishing great. If you have ever wanted to try/learn how to catch smallmouth bass on a fly rod, this is a great time of year to learn. Or, if you’re really up for a challenge we are happy to put you on some of the best musky waters in the state. The top water action is really starting to pickup as well. Water levels and color have been perfect for the past couple weeks.
The 10 day weather forecast is calling for rain just about every day. With these high temperatures hopefully they will just be afternoon showers that will keep the water levels at a good fishable flow and not blow them out. If you fished this past weekend and felt like things were fishing tough don’t worry. That full moon made the smallies is some areas shut down. Did you fish for smallies over the weekend? How did you do? What are your thoughts on the full moon and smallie behavior?
The good news about all the forecasted rain is the mountain brookie steams will continue to fish well. Dries and terrestrials should keep you busy catching fish. We have closed our private trout waters for the summer. We will reopen them in September. For larger trout streams this time of year, I would recommend the Hidden Valley section of the Jackson or the South river in Waynesboro.
Believe it or not in the 15 years I’ve live in Virginia, I’d never fished the New River. I have heard so much about it, I thought it was time to call up a bunch of friends and go check it out. What a beautiful river. Again, the full moon made the smallies really slow down but, had the musky very excitable. There were a few nice smallmouth put in the net but, the big story was the number of musky that moved. In two days we moved around 20 fish not even really trying to target them. It was a smallmouth trip not a musky trip. That will not be the case next trip to the New.