The First Kiss
by Nick Walker
After pouring over my new gazetteer all night, I chose the Conway River, which is located in the Shenandoah National Park (SNP), about an hour and a half outside of Charlottesville. I would leave early on Wednesday morning, seeing as my classes were cancelled that day. Plus, everyone knows the best time to go fishing is mid-week, when most people are chained to their desks and won’t even dream of trout until Friday at 5.
Upon arriving at the gates of the SNP outside Graves Mill, I found myself and my little Volkswagen square in the path of a monster logging truck barreling down the one-lane dirt road that came out of the park. It was loaded to the gills with fresh cut, big, thick hardwood trees, and I wondered if maybe I was in the wrong place. If I started to drive up into the mountains on this little dirt road and found another truck like that one coming the other way I would have to drive backwards until I popped back out of the park. “Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to drive down this road,” I said to myself. But just after I had turned around and begun my descent back towards Graves Mill to reassess my situation, a game warden came flying up the hill in his big Dodge SUV. I stopped him and he kindly told me, “Nope, you are in the right place. Just head up that little dirt road and you’ll see the river eventually.” Then he paused, looked down at my car, and asked politely, “Do you at least have all-wheel drive on that thing?” Oh man, what was I getting myself into, I thought.
So I turned around and started driving, up and up, further and further into the heart of the Blue Ridge. I was fortunate not to encounter another logging truck. I took it nice and slow, easing my little car over the rocks and humps and stumps, until after what seemed like an hour I was suddenly driving alongside a little mountain stream. My first reaction was, “You have got to be kidding me! This is not a river! I’ll be lucky to find a trout bigger than my finger in there!” I found a little patch of dirt on the side of the road that was seemingly out of the way and tucked my car as far in as I could. I got geared up, made sure my lunch was in my vest and headed down to the river.
Let us just say I was pleasantly surprised. What had appeared to be barely more than a trickle from the road was really a beautiful, tumbling mountain stream that dashed quickly between and behind boulders, and under big fallen trees from pool to pool, as it made its way down the mountainside. I could instantly see that there were myriad places a trout could hide, and it didn’t take long before I had my first native Virginian trout in hand. It was a little brookie, not much larger than the width of my hand, but damn it was pretty. My spirits were instantly lifted.
I fished and hiked upstream all day. It was hard work, given the steep gradient. Nope, this was no can-o-worms type river. No rednecks here, no Styrofoam containers, no beer cans, no old monofilament. Only a fit man that was interested in getting some exercise would be able to enjoy this stream. Luckily, I am fit, and when in search of trout I become miraculously more fit, although I was admittedly tired as the day wore on.
One pool I came across was deep and green, and something in my heart just told me there had to be a big, old, wary trout in there somewhere. Well I cast and cast, with nothing to show for it. I was just about to move on when I had an urge to make one more cast. I thought if I could get my number 16 elk hair caddis to drift seamlessly along the edge of that one boulder and just to the right of the waterfall, I might be able to entice a hit. Like a scene out of a movie, I cast my fly perfectly, actually bouncing the caddis imitation off of the boulder, the hair and fur body coming to rest perfectly in the eddy alongside this giant rock. It wasn’t more than a couple seconds before a hearty brown came from the cut beneath and mangled my fly. The fight was on, but in a little stream like the Conway the fish has nowhere to go. Its only hope would be to take you down into the rocks. Fortunately, the brown came to rest in the water at my feet, with little struggle, and I took a picture before releasing it no worse for the wear.
What a day! I caught many more fish, some bigger, some smaller, some brook trout, some brown. And the whole day I didn’t see another sign of human life, although I could hear the skidders and backhoes cutting and crashing off in the distance. It had been some time since I had fly fished for truly wild trout, and I wasn’t sure if my skills would be too dull after casting for hatchery fish all these years. I was surprised to see that I could still put the fly exactly where I needed it to go, and that I could still hit my spots even with branches above and behind me. I could still get the right drift and somehow still knew where wild trout would be. I think a true fisherman is born with this sixth sense. It is as if he is so captivated by his prey that he can become it, thinking subconsciously that if he were a fish he would be just under that overhanging root. Almost like an athlete that is in the zone and knows he will hit the green with his drive, or sink the shot before it leaves his hand, I knew a fish would rise to my fly before I even cast. It was an amazing day of fishing.
I got undressed and packed up the car just a minute too late; a logging truck had just passed by. I got stuck behind this truck and had to stop and wait on numerous occasions as the overloaded beast huffed and puffed up the hills and around the corners. At one point the truck got stuck and the driver had to call in a backhoe to help push it out. It was all very time consuming and while I sat there, engine idling, out of cell phone and radio range, I thought how if I were in downtown Charlottesville I would be on the verge of having a stroke I would be so angry. But sitting in the car at the end of a phenomenal day of fishing, with the late afternoon light streaming through the branches and illuminating the yellow leaves that had begun to turn, I thought only of the trout I had just caught and realized that I couldn’t be happier. All the while black smoke poured from the stack of the backhoe and into my window. Yes sir, I felt like a 16 year-old kid, having just kissed the girl of his dreams for the first time, and not even a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere could pull this 26 year-old kid’s head out of the clouds.
Click here to see more photos that I took that day.
-- NW