Rose River

[Paul Sarigianis]

Hi guys,

I am planning on taking my dad and son to the Rose River tomorrow and was wondering if you have any advice, since it will be our first time. Our plan is to park at the trailhead and walk up the fire road about a mile and find some pools, hopefully with a few brookies. Are there any restrictions I need to be aware of? Thanks for your help.

Paul

[N Elgas]

That sounds like a good plan,  there is a cut off the fire trail that about 1/2 mile up which is a good starting point to find them.    

[Paul Sarigianis]

Hi all,

I’m taking the family to stay at Rose River farms cabins for the weekend but did not pay the fee to fish on its section of the river. I was wondering if you’d recommend exploring the Robinson where it meets the Rose, or any other rivers (Hughes?) within 30min or so. Any advice you experts have is greatly appreciated. We are all fairly new to flyfishing but excited to keep trying. Thanks very much. 

Respectfully,

Paul

On Jun 3, 2019, at 11:26 AM, N Elgas <caca...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[brad dreisbach]

you should be close to rapidan. excellent native brook trout fishing.

https://dwr.virginia.gov/wma/rapidan/

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[brad dreisbach]

should have mentioned, the rapidan road is rough…you will need a vehicle with ground clearance to get up there.

[Danny Barrett]

Deff the Rapidan. IMO best river in that area, always make a point to fish it when im back seeing parents. But its where some of my first trout were and first flies i tied myself worked. might be bias. i always carry 2 rods in there. 1 weight with a bigger dry like size 12 and a 20s simple emerger. 3 or 4 weight with an indicator and a greenie weenie (or prince) and a zebra midge. for me its about covering ground. 4-5 casts each rod in a run and i'm moving on. those fish arent very smart but will spook easily. if i hook 1 in a pool, i move on.

as mentioned the road is rough. i get my subi in there but it has a metal skid plate and i know i have scrapes on it.

Thanks,

Dan 

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[brad dreisbach]

also where i caught my first trout. have been fishing it quite a bit this spring and have caught probably 100 trout there(40ish last weekend).

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[Doug Graebner]

Nice-that's a good sized brookie! I got a bit too into brookie fishing this spring, but mostly in the southern end of the park b/c it's closer to where I go to school in Charlottesville.

[Doug Graebner]

PSA: the brook trout season is IMO probably over unless you go waaaay the fuck into the mountains or to the one brookie stream in MD that I strongly suspect is basically a mountain limestoner, but for future reference the park streams have some fairly big fish if you know where to look and are willing to be a bit more careful about hatches.

[Andrew Sarcinello]

Doug, thanks for that PSA. Folks underestimate how early in the summer brookies start feeling thermal stress in our region and become harder to catch (at that point, it's better to just enjoy the hike).

NCC-TU collected water temp data last summer on Catoctin Mountain brookie streams in MD and from that we have a good feel for what time each stream becomes unsafe for C&R fishing. We hope to publish these results on our website soon but in most Catoctin streams that have good numbers of brook trout, the temps hold out through the end of June (or at least they did last year - this year may be different). The streams with lesser populations warmed sooner.

My fishing observations say brook trout fishing becomes poor above 65F and should be avoided altogether at 68F or above.

[Doug Graebner]

yea, my general rule of thumb this season has been "if it doesn't feel icy when you put your hand in, and if the trout are sluggish and the big fish are weirdly aggressive, it's time to call it a season". It may be that the SNP streams behave weirdly compared to the Catoctin streams-on the one hand they're bigger and have more miles of habitat on most of them (the Moormans has something like 5 miles of protected habitat I would estimate), on the other they're further south.

*I suspect that some streams in the Savage basin and western MD are fed by spring systems so they might be an exception here.

[Doug Graebner]

Side q: has anyone tried to figure out if  Fishing Creek's brook trout migrate between the reservoir and the creek? I've wondered about that for ages since we know that brookies exhibit migratory behavior in parts of the Great Lakes.

[Todd Ringler]

*I suspect that some streams in the Savage basin and western MD are fed by spring systems so they might be an exception here.

Yes. Frostburg gets one third of its water supply from 25 springs located in the headwaters of Savage River. This is equal to about 1.0 cfs, which is a pretty big withdrawal considering that the September median for Savage River is only 5 cfs just downstream of Poplar Lick. These springs are just west of I68 near the summit of Big Savage. Must be more than just these 25 springs.

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[Doug Graebner]

yea, and I did some googling ages ago and there are a LOT of caves in that area, which is pretty consistent with lots of spring systems and karst-y topography.  I wonder if that's part of why it's the most stable brookie population in MD? If the system as a whole behaves like a ginormous spring creek  because of these springs, that would limit a lot of the temperature and water level fluctuation that makes most of MD's trout populations so fragile.

[Andrew Sarcinello]

I suspect there is some limited migration happening only because I don't see any reason why they wouldn't use the reservoir. With that said, I've never gone looking for any larger brookies there that would appear to be lake fish. The lowest part of the stream right above the reservoir is restricted to access anyway so they'd have to run up a little farther...which wouldn't be too hard for them but they could also just hang out in the restricted area.

[Andrew Sarcinello]

The upper Savage mainstem gets quite warm in the summer in some areas. MD DNR did a study of brook trout migration in the watershed and found that brook trout vacate large sections of the main stem during the summer months and water temperatures reached well above 70 degrees in those areas. Places where you can catch 10-12" brookies in April don't have any brookies in the summer. If I am remembering the study correctly, some of those fish moved as far as 12 miles.

Before the C&R brook trout regs were instated on the Upper Savage, a lot of those larger migratory fish were being harvested along with the stocked rainbows. The brook trout population was being suppressed not just in the main stem but the tribs as well. Every year since those regs began has set a new record for brook trout biomass at many of the annual sampling sites. It shows the importance of those larger adults in the system and making sure they have clear access to tributaries.

I visited it in late summer a few years ago and the main stem near Poplar Lick was barely flowing, I didn't see any brookies there. Tributaries such as Bear Pen Run were just a series of puddles although they had plenty of trout darting around. Way up in the headwaters the main stem looked better and I saw a lot of brook trout. It could/probably does have a lot of spring influence in the far headwaters but I don't think it is enough to keep the entire watershed flowing strong and cool through the summer.

On that trip I didn't land any brookies in the Savage watershed but fishing was good in two other streams: a small creek that is actually a bottom release tailwater flowing through a gap in a ridge, and another stream that has cold mine discharge. All this to say that year round brook trout fishing in MD is the exception, even the most popular places have a down period of a few months where temps and flows aren't favorable for C&R fishing.

[Doug Graebner]

This is about right I think-and in VA it's the same story except maybe in the Rapidan. I'd be really curious if any go into the reservoir.

[Doug Graebner]

yea, I can't think of any obvious lake fish on the Moormans (similar dynamic, dumps into a reservoir) and the lower reaches of that stream get very, very warm. But I'm fairly sure there might be a few.