Before Monday I had caught two smallmouth in the Devil’s River in South Texas.  Now I don’t know how many smallmouth I’ve caught. I’ve caught a lot of smallmouth.

I booked C.T. Campbell through Murray’s Flyshop in Edinburg, Virginia.  C.T. has his own guide service, Page Valley Fly Fishing, but I booked through Murray’s where C.T. contracts.  Most important, C.T. has a McKenzie boat. I’ve fished out of rafts before and I will fish out of rafts again, but for comfort give me a drift boat any day.

The Shenandoah is an A-list river, appearing in the first volume of Chris Santella’s Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die. Harry Murray, of Murray’s Flyshop, suggested the river to Santella, but the author seems oddly apologetic that the river is full of smallmouth not trout. As someone who fishes trout relatively rarely, that just didn’t signify.  In Virginia I already knew I wanted to fish either the James or the Shenandoah River.  I thought about the James because what river is more important in America than the James? Ok, the Mississippi, but besides that.  I thought about the Shenandoah because I’ve been humming that tune since the 1965 Jimmy Stewart movie. I thought about wading the North Fork without a guide, but went with the South Fork of the Shenandoah when C.T. had an opening.

The Shenandoah Valley looks like the Shenandoah Valley is supposed to look: a little wild, a lot lovely. It seems a gentler wildness than the American west, but certainly wild enough. C.T. has the perfect background and demeanor for a river guide.  He grew up fishing in Western Virginia. He went to college there. He spent 34 years working for the National Park Service in Shenandoah National Park.  If you mention Stonewall Jackson, C.T.  doesn’t look at you like you’re an idiot.  He tells you a story about Stonewall Jackson’s troop movements. He told us the number of black bears per square mile through the Valley.  He told us about the tree kills from the eastern ash bark beetle and the hemlock wooly adelgild. He talked birds and birds and birds with Kris. We stopped a long while to watch a bald eagle guarding its nest.

You see that big blob in the middle of that terrible photo? That’s an eagle’s nest and it’s huge.  The blurry thing with the white head above it is the eagle. Kris dragged her 600mm lens to Virginia, but she didn’t have it with her in the boat.

Kris tells me by the way that when the bald eagle was named, “bald” meant “white,” not “hairless.”

We put in at Alma and floated seven miles downriver to Whitehouse Landing. I think I got that right. C.T. told us that during Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah campaign the bridges were burned at both Alma and Whitehouse Landing, which means that that there had been bridges where we put in and took out since before 1862. There was still traffic on the bridges, but we saw nobody on the rivers until the last landing.

We talked about our kids.  We talked about Patagonia versus Simms, and how the old Simms sandals made by Keen were great. We talked about the geography of Virginia.  Kris and I fished and C.T. rowed and told us where to cast.  We caught smallmouth,  then we caught more smallmouth, then we caught some smallmouth. The largest was about a pound, but who cares? We caught a lot of smallmouth.

C.T. said it was too early for poppers, and that everything  now was white streamers. We fished white Shenk’s streamers from Murray’s on 6 weights with floating lines and 2X 9’ leaders; they started as 9’ anyway. Over time I’d tied in bits and pieces of tippet until everything except the 2X was approximate.  Later in the morning I switched to a white dragon tail I’d tied up for largemouth. The smallmouth liked it, but there were lots of short takes. We talked about whether a stinger hook would work, but I’d read it ruined the action.  I’ve ordered some mini dragon tails, but I suspect they’re the regular size with a couple of inches of the fat end cut off. I’ll tie up some and send them along to C.T.

Google Earth

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Late in the day we heard thunder. I shuttled C.T. back to his truck and Kris stayed with the boat–it was supposed to be easy duty.  While we were driving though the heavens opened.  Kris got soaked.  I got soaked in the short run from the car to where Kris stood drenched with the boat, but I forebore mentioning that terrible inconvenience to Kris. C.T. insisted he didn’t need help loading the boat in the rain and the wind and the lightning, and we gladly took him at his word, left him wrestling the boat, and fled for West Virginia. We also left a sweater and vest in his truck, which was a future pain for him, but things were in a bit of disarray. I also had to drive with wet socks and cold feet. I didn’t mention that to Kris either.

* * *

On Thursday, three days later and after West Virginia, it was still raining hard in Virginia. The mountain rivers may have been ok but we canceled our trip for Shenandoah Valley trout with Mossy Creek Outfitters.  We spent the night at Silver Lake Bed & Breakfast, near Harrisonburg, and finally got to eat breakfast at a bed and breakfast. We never do. We’re usually long gone before breakfast is served.

We drove Thursday to Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park, but I’ll save John Brown for Kansas.  The Shenandoah joins the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, and the two rivers were running high and muddy. On Saturday while I’m writing this it’s still raining, and watching the Potomac out the window of our room in the Watergate Hotel there’s no more fishing gonna happen.

* * *

I’m fascinated by Stonewall Jackson, and in the Shenandoah Valley Jackson is everywhere. There’s a statue of a mounted Stonewall installed by the State of Virginia in the prime position on the First Bull Run Battlefield, superhero muscles bulging, facing down the Union artillery.  It should be moved to the entrance of the Shenandoah.

In Winchester there is the Stonewall Jackson Headquarters Museum. The Stonewall Jackson Highway runs through Front Royal. In Harrisonburg there was the Stonewall Jackson Inn, now closed but much loved, at least on the internet. In Monterey there was a Stonewall Jackson General Store.  Lexington, where Jackson taught at the Virginia Military Institute, is all Stonewall all the time, including a Stonewall Jackson Hotel.

Jackson was a nutcase: a hypochondriac, ruthless to his own men and the Union forces, obsessed with defeating the enemy, and madly religious. If Lee fought for the South out of misplaced loyalty, and others because of belief in the rightness of the cause, Jackson fought for the Confederacy because he believed God ordained it. He was an old school Presbyterian Calvinist, if such a thing could be anything but old school.

He also could not remain awake in church: he would sleep through sermons sitting rigidly upright. I’ve tried to emulate that in my own life, both at church and the opera. He sucked on lemons constantly, believed the blood pooled on the left side of his body (requiring him to hold his left arm in the air), and he would not or could not communicate anything of his plans to his subordinates. At VMI, he wrote out his lectures and read them aloud in a dull monotone.  If interrupted, he would begin again from the beginning.  He was hated as a teacher. He wasn’t exactly popular with his subordinates as a general. There are good arguments that he had Apsberger’s syndrome.

“Chancellorsville” Portrait, taken April 26, 1863. Library of Congress.

His 1862 Shenandoah campaign was brilliant, defeating the Union forces by superior knowledge of the terrain, by ruthlessly driving his troops, and by battle aggression.  It probably didn’t hurt that he had no empathy for others.

”Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.” Stonewall Jackson memorial window, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Roanoke, Virginia.