Elk River 4/18

[toddro]

We started out at the dam and worked our way downstream past the bend.  There were fingerlings everywhere which must have just been stocked.  Finally found some decent fish about 50 yards past the bend, but the water quality below the dam is horrible.  The water was barely moving, and is stagnant up against the banks (smells horrible), and the bottom is covered in a dirty brown algae that releases into the water everytime you take a step, and blooms about 10 yds. downstream of where you're standing - alerting every fish below of danger ahead, I'm sure...

We packed up and headed over to the Farris Creek Bridge and found the water to at least be moving and not stagnant.  Still alot of brown gunk on the bottom, but not quite as bad.  Fingerlings everywhere!  We headed downstream about 1/4 mile below the bridbge to find some decent-sized fish.  Alot of them feeding on the surface, so I switched over to a foam-body black ant with great result.  Later in the day, the sun came out and turned on some smaller caddis, so I switched over to a small tan caddis with an olive body and the fish loved it.  Everything else caught on an olive soft-hackle or olive woolly bugger, but I was glad to finally get a little taste of some dry fly action!

Overall, not a bad day, but the water quality is certainly less than desirable.  It's been a few years since I've been down there, so I don't know if this is an exception or the rule...

... and you still can't buy a Lynchburg Lemonade in Lynchburg   

Tight lines!

[David L. Darnell]

I just returned from a drive up my and my neighbors riverbottom, about a mile to the head of the island, my uncle is camped up there tonight, he's a man who lives simple and close to the land, has his "Nascar beer" Budweiser and a couple cans of worms, cussing the river, ever time he would reel in had a ball of moss on, so the problem is 25 miles downstream also. We need a good flash flood or a 6 or so hours of generation to clean out the stream bed.

He was laughing, about 6pm a canoe came by and the girl in the front said to her male companion "Oh, my God, look at that preastoric man", he has a simple lean to on the bank of the island. Dang shame, he picked up enough trash before dark to fill up his boat when he floats do to me in the morning to take him back up to his truck.