Jake Jordan's Fishing Adventures

September 15th, 2008

Greetings from Captain Jake:

With Hurricane Hanna heading towards eastern North Carolina on Friday, September fifth I decided to close up and head west. I called my friend Danny Cline who lives in Charleston WV to see how the Bass fishing was doing on the New River?

Danny said that I should come over and he would arrange a float trip for fly fishing on Sunday with New River Trophy Outfitters. I drove to Beckley, West Virginia, checked into a hotel, watched ECU beat the crap out of WVU in football. After the game was over I had dinner at a great lake front restaurant with Bill Stover (Fished for Tarpon with me 11 years ago) along with Danny and Lisa Cline. The food was great while the company was world class.

New River West Virginia

At 6:15 am Bill, Danny, and I left with the shuttle driver to meet up with our guides Mark Carter and Sammy Pugh at the launch ramp at Sandstone Falls WV. Danny and I loaded our equipment on Mark's raft, while Bill fished with Sammy today, we then started down river at 7:00 AM. Five minutes from the ramp I cast my TFO Axiom 6 weight fly rod, using a Rio floating line and a Ross CLA Reel, with a 9 foot 8 pound tippet leader and a chartreuse and white Clouser fly. Second strip and BAM I am hooked to a jumping Small Mouth Bass. Danny was using top water flies (small poppers) and he caught the next Bass while I took his picture.

Danny releasing nice New River, Small Mouth Bass

The New River is one of the oldest rivers in America, it is beautiful, with lots of Bass, Red Eye (Pan Fish), and I was surprised to see dozens of large Carp swimming around on the grass beds while sometimes mudding like Bonefish. The float which Mark and Sammy took us on was from Sandstone Falls to Glade Creek which means that we floated most of the trip in a canyon where there is no access except by raft. During the whole day we only saw one other boat which was near the bottom of our drift.

I love it when a plan comes together!

By noon I had released twenty Bass along with a few Red Eye while Danny had caught almost as many on top water flies. After a great river side lunch prepared by our guides I switched to top water flies and began catching fish right away, We finished our drift at the Glade Creek access at about six PM and got home to the hotel by seven thirty. Danny and I caught close to sixty Large Mouth Bass, a couple of dozen Redeye, and Danny caught several Kentucky Spotted Bass. Bill caught Several dozen fish fishing with Sammy and when we were done we all had big smiles on our face.

Red Eye are cool looking pan fish

I plan to go back and do this again, I am going to study up on my Carp flies and techniques and target them at least for part of the trip. The Small Mouth Bass are awesome fighters, we caught several fish in the 16 1/2 inch range which jump and fight like much bigger fish. Both Sammy Pugh and Mark Carter from New River Trophy Outfitters ( www.newrivertrophyoutfitters.com ) are excellent guides and fun to spend the day with on a fishing trip, I strongly recommend them. Thanks Danny and Bill for putting this trip together is was a wonderful fishing adventure. Stay tuned for more fishing reports, I'll see some of you in Denver at the Fly Fishing Retailers Show this Sunday and Monday.

Regards:
Jake

Who is that guy?