With only an hour before I had to endure the nearly three-hour drive back to northern Virginia, I quickly moved across the fisherman’s access steps and walked upstream, looking at the water. My intention was to walk as far as I could to see what was there, but I was quickly distracted by the sight of brown trout rising to the top and slurping dry flies. I had an immediate change of plans!
The creek was a little narrower here than in the flat middle section, but I can’t make that a general statement since, as you can see from the map, I only penetrated a small distance into this section. After catching some small, 8-10 inch browns in the slurping pool, I continued to walk upstream, passing other anglers who had arrived for the evening fishing window.
Keeping the appropriate distance from the other guys, I hit a small pool where the stream rounded the corner and picked up a few more small rainbows. At this point, I had two BWOs tied on and it seemed like they were all hitting the smaller, size 18 pattern. Not wanting to try anything else since I was having success with these, I left them on for the rest of the day.
The water continued to be milky, and there was plenty of evidence of anglers and cows along the stream. Thankfully, there were no bait boxes (this is fly fishing only), trash or any of the other negative indicators of human activity that would cause the stream to be shut down by the landowner. My hat is off to all the landowners along Mossy for opening their property to our use. The indication of other anglers was merely beaten grass along the edge of the stream – exactly what we should be behind – only footprints.
With so little time and so much water, I know I have to return and give the western end of Mossy Creek more attention at some point in the future.
Bottom Line: Great stretch of water. The cows keep the grass close cropped making movement easy.
Google Local Coordinates: 38.352035,-79.048933
Secrets Revealed? No. This is a very public location that is documented in the following places:
Virginia VDGIF
Flyfisher’s Guide to Virginia
Virginia Trout Streams
Virginia Blue-Ribbon Streams
Fly Fishing Virginia
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Date Fished: 10/16/2012
Upstream from the bridge
Open field – easy walking – close cropped grass
Nice views
Note the spring creek type growth in the water
Where I turned around
Sunny evening… pretty spot
Unless stated otherwise, this article was authored by Steve Moore