Cool water and hot trout: Fishing a Virginia Blue Ridge gem!

BASSETT, Va. (WFXR) — The fly drifted gently about ten feet downstream.

Gulp!

The fly vanished, swallowed by something just under the surface.

Soon, a chunky brown trout came to the net.

“Eleven and a half (inches),” said Wise as he placed the fish on a bump board to measure it. “For the Smith River, better than average, right there.”

The fish was quickly released back into the water.

That scene was repeated over and over through the day, with a mix of brown trout and rainbow trout caught and released.

I had heard about the fabulous trout fishing on Virginia’s Smith River, now I was finally getting the chance to experience it with a guide from the New River Fly Fishing guide service.

A Smith River brown trout (Photo: George Noleff)

The Smith, which runs from Virginia into North Carolina, has a cold water section that extends 31 miles from below Philpott Dam, through the town of Bassett, the City of Martinsville, all the way to the Mitchell Road Bridge in Henry County. The perfect mix of water temperature, stream flow, and structure make the Smith a trout paradise.

The cold water outflow from the bottom of the Philpott Dam keeps the river’s temperature in the perfect range for trout all year long.

“The water is coming, on average, 48 to 50 degrees, out of Philpott,” said Wise. “It maintains that 48 to 50 degrees a long time.”

The Smith holds a self-sustaining, wild population of brown trout. There are also rainbows and brook trout stocked in some sections of the river. While those rainbows and brookies are there to supplement the fishing opportunity, it is the brown trout that are the stars of the show. Some stretches of the Smith hold more than three thousand fish per mile.

Alex Wise of New River Fly Fishing makes a cast on the Smith River near Bassett, Virginia (Photo: George Noleff)

The Smith can be waded or floated. There are several put-ins and take-outs from just below the dam at Philpott all they way through Martinsville.

While any number of techniques can work, because insects and their larvae make up so much of the diet of Smith River trout, fly fishing — dry or wet — is a very effective way of catching them. There was a huge sulphur fly hatch the day we were on the water.

“We’re really trying to emulate a lot of these bugs, these sulphurs that we’re seeing now,” said Wise as he tied on a sulphur imitation. “They’re kind of yellowish in color, sometimes a little more orange, but most of the time they’re a pale yellow.”

It was just a matter of seconds before Wise put that fly to use, swinging it into the current where it floated downstream to a trout eager to inhale it.

Wise explained the process: “They’re supposed to imitate bugs coming to the surface, as well as bugs coming back down to lay eggs. They’re kind of floating on that surface of the water. We try to keep them moving as the same speed of the current”

Keeping the fly moving at that current speed is important. Natural presentations are more effective. Trout are wary, and if it does not look like food, a trout may ignore it.

A collection of flies to be used on Virginia’s Smith River (Photo: George Noleff)

“Once the fish see the bug moving in an unnatural way, they’ll turn off and won’t rise again,” added Wise. “We want to land the fly upstream of them, and let the fly come down in the most natural way possible.”

The water temperature is also key to insect hatch production. While the air temperature the June day we were fishing was into the 90s, the water temperatures were holding in the low 50s. That created something called an inversion which drove the aquatic insect hatches.

“They love that inversion because it gets those macroinvertebrates and mayflies going,” Wise said as he pointed to insects coming off the water.

George Noleff holds a rainbow trout caught in Virginia’s Smith River (Photo: George Noleff)

For Wise, the fishery is a dream come true; a place where he can practice his fly fishing craft and lead people to the fish he loves, wild brown trout.

“They’re born in here, grown up in here, big paddle tail, all those pretty fire red spots, just beautiful,” Wise said, holding one of those browns in his hand and marveling at it like it was a painting come to life.

And then with a splash, he let it go for someone else to hold in wonder at another time.

Alex Wise on a Smith River float (Photo: George Noleff)

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