About mid-October, during the walks that Tessie and I take, I started to notice more and more folks along the banks of Hawksbill Creek, some doing traditional flyfishing and others simply casting along with rod and reel. Then I realized that we'd entered the season where that stream is stocked - from about October 15 through June 15. The water is not really cold enough for trout for the rest of the year and so it's not stocked then.
(A schedule of stream stocking dates is maintained by the state of Virginia here:
http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/fishing/stock/)
Small fish are nearly always visible in the stream along the Hawksbill Greenway, and some of the murals illustrate the species you can find there, namely sunfish, bass and trout. On the day I took these photos, apparently the stream had just been stocked, and obviously the leaves were still up - it was early in the fall. But I saw a number of keepers in the creels.
On a walk a few weeks back Mary and I ran into our friends from Appalachian Outdoors Adventures working over the creek on a Sunday morning. They weren't having any luck this morning, but Howard broke out his phone to show us a couple of recent catches - big ones, each one easily filling the pan for two people!
I guess it's time to break out my copy of
A River Runs Through It again to have a look. And maybe to be on the lookout for a trout dinner somewhere soon!
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