Rock Castle Creek: Great bugs, where were the trout?

I just took my first trip to Rock Castle Creek in Patrick County, Virginia today. My friend and I chose to head down that way on a beautiful 55degF January day to see the wild trout of this stream. Unfortunately, the trout had other plans, as the best we turned up was a spotting I made of a somewhat lethargic 7 incher that, upon spotting me, ambled from a slack hole to the shelter of a nearby rock. Throughout the afternoon, though, I spent nearly as much time fishing as I did turning over rocks in the stream looking for other fauna. I was impressed with each rock I picked up to see a plethora of creatures scurrying to get to the other side. There was an entire spectrum of sizes of mayfly nymphs from tiny (let's say #26) to about #12, a few caddis larvae, and plenty of stone fly nymphs. The first rock I flipped even had a freshwater shrimp (is this called a scud in this case??). I was particularly impressed to see a very large stone fly nymph under each of the reasonably large-sized rocks that I flipped. These bugs would have been a real treat for any hungry trout, at sizes of #8-#10 by my estimates.

Seeing all the great aquatic insect (and crustacean) life made me really wonder where the trout were. I can only guess that the recent two weeks of actual winter weather had really slowed down the feeding action. It was my hope that today's warm temps would have the trout up and going, but apparently the ice storm that struck last week had waited until today to melt off and leach 32degF water into the otherwise warming stream. Well, all for the better, these fish will have no hope if August brings 75degF water temps; so I guess for now, the best thing to do is to be happy with a chance trout spotting and dream of the March Browns when they hatch.

Fly tying, marabou nymph

I could post hundreds of links to more-complete fly-tying information (and eventually, I will give some of these I am sure), but for this blog, I will exhibit some of the things I do to create flies that catch the beautiful native and wild trout that inhabit SWVA waters.

First, I'm proud of the fly tying station that went up just this weekend!














Now, I would love to chronicle the flies that I tie as 'fly of the []' []=day, week, month, although I realize fully that the ambition I have now to do so will fade with time.... But for today, the 'Fly of the Day' is one I call the Marabou Nymph tied in olive in the photo below. I did not invent this pattern, but it was shown to me on the stream one day and it works. I caught and released native brook trout all day Saturday on the black version.
Marabou Nymph












Thread: 8/0 Brown
Tail: Olive marabou tips
Dubbing: Olive-died hare
Rib: Gold 'Ultra-Wire'
Legs: Clipped marabou
Hook: 12 streamer
Head: 5/32 oz. gold bead