Had about 4 hours on Sunday to go fishing. I decided that I needed to
take advantage of it and headed straight to Shenandoah National Park. I
chose to fish White Oak Canyon because the description in Harry Murray’s
book, described it as being easy access to parking and with the limited
amount of time I had, I didn’t want to spend it hiking.
So I made it there around 6:00pm. I was hoping to get re an hour of
fishing for the native brookies in before the darkness ran me out.
As expected, the stream was made up of a bunch of series of small
waterfalls. It was a beautiful scene. I saw multiple hatches including
some kind of yellow stonefly looking thing, a mayfly, and a black
stonefly. They seemed to be interested in a small elkhair caddis which
worked very well. I also used a yellow elk hair caddis as I was hoping
the color would be a good enough imitation. It worked great. I caught
8 beautiful Brook trout in the typical small size. I missed probably 15
others that got off the hook or hit the fly and spit it out.
I could have stayed all night and actually semiseriously considered it.
But, I had to go to New York the next morning to take my daughter to an
Avril Lavigne show.
I didn’t think that a rushed fishing trip like that could be fun, but it
was wonderful. I came back full of life and energy, counting the days
when I could sneak back up into the Park.
