Many anglers save their vacation for fly fishing in October because they believe this is “big fish” time. Many of the bass leave their feeding stations along the banks and head for the deep pools and pockets. Hog suckers and madtoms rank high on important foods for large bass.
Except for the water behind the dams there are few areas on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River that are over six feet deep. However these 6-foot deep cuts attract the bass in October and you catch many bass in these areas using a Murray’s Madtom/Sculpin size 4 or a Murray’s Magnum Hog Sucker size 4. I use a sink tip line or a medium sinking head line to swim my flies slowly along the stream bottom in the pools up to 6-feet deep.
In order to fish the deep water behind the dams, I use a fast sinking head fly line which sinks about 7ips. A jigging action with the Madtom or HogSucker using this fast sinking head line will help you catch the bass.
Fly Fishing for Stocked Trout
The VA DWR will start stocking the delayed harvest trout streams and larger trout streams this month. A very effective technique for these rainbow trout is to fish a Mr. Rapidan Streamer size 10 with a size 12 Mr. Rapidan Soft Hackle (olive) nymph as a dropper below it. Fish these with a slow line hand stripping action right below the riffles and then slowly wade downstream. Make each cast across stream and swim it slowly back across stream. Make successive casts five feet further downstream as you wade all the way to the end of each pool.
To see the latest streams stocked, visit the VA DWR website.
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