Big Virginia Trout

[everythingthatswims]

My brother and I fished a river in Southwestern Virginia today and we had a blast. Today was probably our best "big fish" day, we landed 4 over 18", one of them breaking the 20" mark. The big ones were all holdover fish I am pretty sure, we catch a lot of wild fish in this area but when they get that big it's hard to know. Very good looking fish either way. In addition to the big fish we caught many small wild trout and a few decent sized stocked trout in the 13-16" range. The stretch of river we fished is several miles below the stocked portion, so it doesn't receive much pressure from what we can tell, and has very nice fish!

This rainbow taped out at 19"

This brown must have been older than dirt, you could have fit a baseball in his mouth and he had one heck of a kype!

Had to break out the Conquest 50 for a little fun too!

[Darren.]

Fantastic outing. Nice trout!

[MDRookie]

That's awesome! I just started trout fishing a few months ago and look forward to catching trout like that.. hopefully! Nice job :-)

[roadwarrior]

Nice fish, great pics!

 

[A-Jay]

Super Nice Trout ~ 

What a great was to end the year  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..

Congrats

A-Jay

 

[Subaqua Adinterim]

Beautiful. What were you using? Interested in knowing some more details.

 

In NY they usually clip one of the small fins on a stocked trout, in that way we can generally tell stocked vs. native.

[MDRookie]

3 hours ago, cutbait said:

Beautiful. What were you using? Interested in knowing some more details.

 

In NY they usually clip one of the small fins on a stocked trout, in that way we can generally tell stocked vs. native.

 

I'd be interested in this as well... and line and rod used...

[everythingthatswims]

8 hours ago, cutbait said:

Beautiful. What were you using? Interested in knowing some more details.

 

In NY they usually clip one of the small fins on a stocked trout, in that way we can generally tell stocked vs. native.

 

4 hours ago, MDRookie said:

 

I'd be interested in this as well... and line and rod used...

 

With the Calcutta 50 (had it on a medium composite cranking rod because I could sort of make it load up) I was drifting eggs with some split shot, very simple and casting was difficult but I made it work, I only did this for a few fish before I went back to the spinning rod, I mainly did it for fun and to see if it was possible.

 

The bigger fish were caught on 3" gulp minnows on a 1/8oz jighead, I caught several small trout doing this as well. I basically just keep the bait within a foot of the bottom and hop it every time the slack in my line tightens up as it drifts. In the cold water they would only hit on a cast quartering downstream that would swing the bait in front of them and keep it in front of them long enough for them to chase it down. In the fall or spring I like to make my casts perpendicular to the flow of the stream, but this isn't very effective in strong current with winter water temps.

 

Everything I did was on 6lb trilene mono. I usually use 6lb red label fluoro, and the mono was a big hindrance but it was what I had at the time so I made the best of it. Sensitivity, diameter, visibility, and the low stretch for hook sets makes fluorocarbon far superior for trout. Light braid 4-6lb with a leader is also very effective because you can easily see your line and again low stretch for hook sets and excellent sensitivity.

 

In VA, they say they clip adipose fins, but this isn't always the case as I have found, and I am not sure if all hatcheries in VA do this. The adipose on the fish in the photo with the Calcutta is definitely clipped, but that is obviously a stocked fish just from appearance.