After 2 months of non-stop deer hunting it was time to put down my gun and bow so I could grab my favorite weapon to go into battle with, my trusty fly rod. Sixty days is way too long to be out of the kayak seat, and I was anxious to put in as many hours as possible on my childhood waters of the Jackson River in Alleghany County, Virginia. These are the waters that I spent endless days on in my youth learning how to catch crayfish, fling fur for trout, and make a ton of other memories that will last a lifetime. I don’t make it back to this mountain playground quite as much as I used to, but when I do I rarely go without visiting my old friend the Jackson.

Before I go on about my trip let me educate you with a little history of this tailwater trout fishery. The Jackson has a tumultuous past that has played out in court over the last few decades. It all started in 1955 when a landowner sued a man for fishing in the river where he owned the land on both sides. In the finale to this case the courts suggested that it is possible that ownership of the streambed could correlate to ownership of fishing rights on that section. Round two came in 1996 when several landowners sued a fishing guide claiming they owned the river bottom and had exclusive fishing rights to their sections of the river because of the original land grant that was over 250 years old and was granted by the King of England. In the end the judges decided in the landowners favor and said the King’s grant did convey exclusive fishing rights to the landowners. After this decision was made the state of Virginia ceased all stocking efforts and let mother nature have total control over the fishery once again. The trout flourished and life was good on the Jackson until 2010 when a deviant landowner and businessman by the name of Frank Sponaugle and some residents of his riverside development joined forces and sued 3 fisherman to establish their exclusive rights to fish. As with all of the other cases the courts ruled in the landowners favor and another few miles of pristine river was deemed off limits to fishing. If you want more information I would encourage you to visit Virginia River Defense Fund’s website at http://www.virginiariversdefensefund.org/.

Fast forward to four years later and I nervously launch my Jackson big rig from the public access point at Petticoat Junction not knowing if I will lose my life savings because I picked the wrong fishing hole like so many before me. I guess this time I got lucky or at least my summons has not arrived yet.



Petticoat Junction to Covington is the last 4.5 mile section of river before the river runs through a paper mill and access is restricted for safety reasons. It is also the end of the trout fishery because the hazardous discharge from the mill warms the water too much for trout to survive. I have been eager to kayak this stretch of river because it is where I spent the most time during my childhood summers, and it has been over 15 years since I have laid eyes on some of my favorite fishing holes. The float did not disappoint and the memories that resurfaced took me back to when I was 12 years old casting my first fly rod in some of the exact same holes I was fishing.



The weather was a bit nippy on this mid December Saturday with highs topping out barely above 40 degrees. I had to wait till 11 before the frost finally freed its grip on my kayak and I was ready to launch. The water was as low as it gets on this river due to the demand of the paper mill and was flowing at a measly 160 cfs. It was a boney trip with plenty of spots that would require a short walk but otherwise navigable in the barge I was paddling.

The morning started out beautiful and it felt good to be paddling again. I started the day off flinging a rubber leg hares ear with my 6 weight Orvis hydros fly rod in the deep pools and runs that dotted the first section. I had 2 strikes and in one of the deep holes along the bottom of a cliff I hooked into a nice fall fish that shook the hook out right as I got it near the net. For those of you not familiar with a fall fish it is a sucker fish that is native to Virginia streams and can grow in excess of 20 inches. They don’t put up the best fight and can be some ugly little suckers, but they are still fun to catch. Later in the day as I was going through a deep hole I noticed hundreds of fall fish schooled up swimming upriver under my kayak as I spooked them in their wintering holes. It was definitely a sight to see and looked like the flowing carpet from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I fished the next few holes from my kayak without any strikes and decided it was time to get out and try some wade fishing in a nice run. I changed up my flies and added a san juan worm with a smaller hares ear as a dropper. I cast to the top of the run and within 6 feet of my drift a trout hit as fast as lightning, but I was too slow and could not set the hook. Next cast and a few feet further back I managed to land a young 10” rainbow. As I was unhooking the fish I noticed a man and his daughter walking down beside the river and I thought my day in court is upon me. Luckily for me this man was only there to check his traps that he had set out right beside the run I was fishing. We talked about his haul of beaver and otters for this year and years past and also some of the work he does for a local man that runs a fly fishing outfitter on a nearby creek. This made me think about the outcomes if I had waded in that side of the stream while my mind was preoccupied with my prey. Before I was only worried about slick rocks since all of the snakes were in their den for the winter, but now I keep my eye out for a piece of wire tied to a tree with a gator jaw on one end waiting to crack my ankle.

At this point I was getting to the spots that I had fished in my youth and can still recount every riffle, run, and bend in the river. The river itself had not changed one bit but the old ramshackle river camps and wooded banks had been replaced with houses. I fished all of my old runs that had enough water flowing and not a single bite. Finally I got to the hole where I first cast a fly rod 20 years ago. It is a run on river left that starts off fast and slows as the water gets deeper with a nice tree overhanging the river. On my first cast into the hole my thingamabobber darts away from me and I set the hook on cue this time. It was a nicer rainbow around 13” and I got it in the net and headed to my yak for a few pictures. As I grabbed my camera out of a pocket on my PFD it slipped and splash, there will be no more pictures on this day. I shook off the loss of my shitty sacrifice camera and got back to my mission…more trout. Back to the hole I went and on the very next cast the fish gods smiled down again with a 15” brown trout and my last fish for the day. I fished the next run with my san juan and even drifted a few streamers through but no takers.

I fished a few more holes but as the day wore on and the sun started to drop I figured I better start covering the last mile and a half to make it back before the gate closed at the takeout. As I paddled the last few miles the wildlife kept my mind off fishing. As I hit a nice flat wooded section I spooked some turkeys and about 8 of them flew down river and landed in a tree. As I paddled up on them again they flew down river and into a tree. We played this game one more time before they finally hit the ground running. Later on I experienced several flotillas of 30 or more geese that took off from the water with a scream and thunder that rang out through the valley. There was also a hawk that was watching from a tree and got upset that I scared all of the geese away. Any winter trip that I don’t end up getting wet is a good trip, but this trip down memory lane was one of those trips I will never forget.