A Sunday Afternoon Well Spent

Today I had plenty of time to fish so I checked a stream off of my list that required a pretty long hike in. Round trip, I think I put in around 7 miles on foot. This stream is located within the Mountain Lake Wilderness area. This is the largest designated wilderness area in Virginia, encompassing 12,375 acres of forest in Virginia in Giles and Craig counties, and another 2,721 acres across the border of West Virginia in Monroe County.

The trail I took paralleled the Appalachian Trail for about a quarter-mile before veering off to the left and over a ridge thick with mountain laurel. My map said that this trail was unmarked, however it had yellow blazes that seemed somewhat fresh. As I made my way further down the trail, the yellow blazes were a life saver. The trail itself seemed like no more than a wildlife trail, becoming rougher as I went along. I found myself having to stop and re-trace a few steps just to make sure I was on the right track.

I flushed out a grouse that had been nesting in a dried up stream bed, I'd hear that fluttering sound a few more times throughout the day- evidently its great grouse habitat! The trail eventually dropped me down on an old forest service road, also marked with yellow; that was much easier to navigate from that point on. This road had a muddy wetland feel to it, with little puddles full of frogs... more on the frogs later.

The sky had been cloudy for the most part on the hike in, but as soon as I reached the stream, the sun was shining down on the riffles of the stream and there were hundreds of insects hovering over it, absolutely gorgeous. As you could have guessed, dry flies were the way to go.

The water was crystal clear and the stream was filled with cascades over fallen trees, followed by slower runs with lots of fish activity. Schools of dace could be seen racing through these runs, I saw both blacknose dace and mountain redbelly dace. One of these runs produced my first brook trout, it was definitely a fighter, an orange-bellied male in the 6-7 inch range.

My second fish was about the same size, emerging from the white water of a shaded pool.  I fished a few more runs and decided to call it a day when I found myself casting a line devoid of a fly... so smooth, I guess my monofilament wore out from a long day of fishing. It was about 5pm and I decided the 3 mile hike back wouldn't be too much fun in the dark. Rising out of the stream channel, I spooked some turkeys! I counted seven but there could have been more. Not too much further along I saw two does drinking from the stream.

When backtracking through the marshy old forest service road, I came upon something I'd never seen before. Frogs breeding, I guess you could say I got a biology lesson today. Apparently the males outnumbered the females in this puddle because they were in a moving mass, fighting for position to get to the female; which was about twice the size as these feisty little males. They let me approach them and take a picture from about four feet away. Contrary to to common frog behavior, they didn't flee or even swim away from me - clearly they had other things on their minds! I'm studying fish in school, not amphibians, but trust me amphibians are some weird creatures. haha. It's unbelievable how many of these frogs were in that one puddle...

A few miles and a few horny toads later (haha), I was back to my truck. This had been one of my best back country trout fishing trips to date. The amount of wildlife I encountered was incredible. Going to pretty places to catch some pretty fish, you can't beat that. It was one of those days that made me thank God I was from the mountains of Virginia, and its quite easy to talk to him in the peace and quiet of the wilderness.