In 2009, I had the urge to see if the North Fork of the Rivanna River had the potential to match what I experienced fishing below Charlottesville on the main stem.
Adopting a road attack strategy to leverage the VDOT easements, I drove across the North Fork at two different locations – one at VA 606 and the other at Advance Mills. The picture below tells the sad story. From the 606 bridge, the river is uniformly sandy up and down. When I followed up with a satellite reconnaissance, it did not look like the sand ended anywhere between these two locations.
Up at Advance Mills, while there is some parking on the side of the road, posted signs line the banks and restrict your ability to access the water. Not that it looked any good up there anyway – there is a dam that backs up the water to the north, restricting wading, and the sand persists downstream.
I got an email from Aaron, one of my local Charlottesville experts, who confirmed this assessment: random, small, smallies. It’s not worth it.
Getting There: Not worth it… but… if you insist. Turn north on VA 763 from US 29. It turns into VA 606. Follow it to the river.
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Date Fished: 4/7/2010
Unless stated otherwise, this article was authored by Steve Moore