The Trip of a Lifetime; Part One of Two


Fishing for native trout can be quite a challenge. Add a foot of snow, steep riverbanks and icy rocks and it can be an exhausting challenge! In January of 1998 I was to be faced with that exact situation.

It was 4:00 a.m. and my brother-in-law, Ron, was to pick me up at 4:30. We left my house at 4:35 on our way to pick up a friend, David. It was snowing like there was no tomorrow. On this morning we were to fish a portion of the, "Tye River" that crossed private land belonging to David’ uncle. This part of the Tye, ran through some of the steepest, roughest terrain in the, Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Around 6:00 a.m. we pulled into Mr. Proffit’ (David’ uncle) place. The river was about one hundred yards from the house. It was still snowing to beat the band. We readied our fly rods and headed out. This part of the Tye was no more than 25 ft. wide at it’s widest. We would be working up river, leap froging, as was our usual when we all fished a river like this, this way we each always had a fresh hole to fish.

Now, I love trout fishing in the snow, but it was beating down and every step, if not taken with the utmost of care could send you in to the rushing, very cold water. To the less hardy, these circumstances would be intolerable, but not for us as, even though we were all in late thirties we were like children who had been given a snow day from school and we were having a blast!

After about an hour and half of fishing, I had four brook trout, the largest being about 10-in. long -not bad for a native brookie in these mountains. Ron had five trout and David, four. We decided to take a breather, have a soda and sandwich we carried in our daypacks. After about a half-hour of stories about each of our methods of luring our catches and the ensuing challenge the little brookies had offered... we were off again.

We were at the hole where David had arrived just prior to stopping for our break, so, Ron was to take the next and I would move one above him. I left Ron and headed on only to be faced with a waterfall too steep to climb in this snow and ice. I back tracked almost back down to where Ron was. I made my way up to the top of the ridge; -which was no easy task in itself- around the waterfall and back down to the river.

The copyright of the article The Trip of a Lifetime; Part One of Two in Fly Fishing is owned by Lee Ennis. Permission to republish The Trip of a Lifetime; Part One of Two in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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