Smith River 23 & 25 May 07

[al k]

My lovely wife and I made the 150 mile drive on Wednesday to our "get-away" cabin in Bassett VA in order to attend the Trout In the Classroom event on Thursday. Twenty plus schools were releasing the fish grown over the school year into the Smith River (More on that in a separate report).

After doing some cabin chores, i.e., pick up fallen branches and mow the lawn, I made a last minute check of the generation schedule and discovered there was a change which necessitated me moving well down stream if I wanted to fish on Wednesday afternoon. I can't emphasize enough the importance of checking the generation schedule (Call 276-629-2432) on the day you intend to fish. They always end their announcement with the caveat of "this schedule is subject to change without notice". The COE does a pretty good job of keeping it up to date. It does you little good if they make a change and you assume the schedule you heard on Friday is still good on Wednesday, but you fail to do your part by checking again Wednesday morning.

I found an area a little south of Hwy 220 and was soon into fish. This is stocked water and most of them were Rainbows. Kudos to the VDGIF hatchery system for producing and stocking some nice size fish this year.


This section also produced a few nice size Brown Trout. I never tire of snapping their picture and downloading it to see just how beautiful they come out in a photograph.


I ran down river to the Koehler area and tried my luck at the ripple which has been good to me in the past. This time lady luck was not with me. I caught enough fish to round my tally for the day out to an even dozen, but I paid for my smugness by slipping off a submerged rock and taking copious amounts of water inside my waders. Thankfully they had not generated for several days so the temperature, while refreshing, was not the normal bone chilling cold that produce those Smith River fog banks at this time of the year.


On Friday I was the first one at the Mirror Factory parking area and walked down the rail road tracks well past the Trestle Pool. It is a long hike and sliding down the bank to the water is not for the faint hearted. However because of all that, the fish do not get as much pressure in that area. My two artificial hips held up just fine and I was once again rewarded for my efforts by being into double digits before I lost sight of my start point.



With a couple of exceptions the fish were pretty small - less then 7 inches long. I ended up making a great number of Long Distance Releases (LDR) on these small fish. Some would come right out of the water when I set the hook but then fall off before I could gain control of my line. I am now using almost 100% barbless or "smashed" barb hooks and find that, particularly with small fish, that unless you keep a tight line you have a lot of LDR. LDR's do not count in my book - Some folks claim they don't count at all, but I do. The ones that get counted are the ones that get touched by my hand or my Ketchum Release. The only exception are ones that get off while I have them right in front of me and I'm fooling around trying to get them in position for a picture.

No matter where the "fish brought to hand" count ends up, it is always great to spend some time on my "home water".

The Smith River has a reputation for being a tough river to fish. It is also going through some difficult times right now with issues of Ditymo that has carpeted most of the bottom and low numbers of decent size Brown Trout. Despite all of this, it is still good trout water. The VDGIF does a good job with the Rainbow Trout stocking program and there are enough Brown Trout to make things interesting. It is the closest trout water to many from Virginia and to most from North Carolina. Pay your dues and you will be rewarded.