Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Virginia TU Ralley

This past weekend I was invited to attend the Trout Unlimited South Eastern Rally at Hungry Mother State park in Virginia. I traveled with our new incoming chapter president who happens to be a fishing buddy. Friday night we checked-in and enjoyed some hot dogs and hamburgers. I enjoyed meeting people from TU chapters from all over the South East.

Saturday morning we attended seminars of varying subjects relating to TU. I especially enjoyed the TIC (Trout In the Classroom) seminar. It is a program where teachers can obtain all the materials and instructions necessary to raise live trout from eggs in the classroom. After the trout mature they have a field trip to a river and release them into the wild under the supervision of a state fisheries biologists. The program has been very successful and our chapter is trying to get it started in SC.

After the seminars, Jimmy and I went fishing on the White Top River. There were many simultaneous hatches. We saw large green drakes (pictured below), blue wing olives, march browns and light cahills.

We saw lots of fish rising, but the problem was trying to figure out which flies the fish were feeding on. After several attempts to match the hatch with no luck, we started catching fish on a royal coachman stimulator pattern.
I caught this beautiful wild rainbow near dusk. The picture does not do it justice. The colors were really vivid and bright.

We were late getting back to the cabin and missed the barbecue dinner. So we picked up a pizza on the way. We were both exhausted after a long day and looking forward to the next day of fishing on Sunday... see next blog entry


3 comments:

  1. Happy tires!
    It is the fly fishing!
    By the way, have you checked their stomach what they actually fed on?

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  2. I did not check their stomach contents. I even had a stomach pump but did not think to use it.
    By the way...I am moving to Nebraska for a new job next week. I do not think the fishing is very good in Nebraska, but I can drive to Colorado or Wyoming for a weekend trip.

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  3. Thank you so much for putting pictures of the rod you won at the TU rally on your blog. I hope you like it and catch alot of fish too!
    -Jon Hulcher

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