Friday, 6/1/2007 – James River, downtown Richmond
The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site says that Ancarrow’s Landing on the James River offers great shoreline fishing for families, but the site fails to mention that it also offers the strange and unusual.
My fishing buddy Bob Edwards is a person of integrity. Former director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, as far as I know he has never been accused of falsehood – even though he’s a dedicated angler. All of which introduces an unbelievable catch that I made – and that Bob witnessed right there in the boat with me and will swear to – in the most urban and most public of fishing spots in Richmond, Virginia.
We put in at Ancarrow’s landing in downtown Richmond – the area where Christopher Newport’s boat was stopped by the Fall Line exactly 400 years ago when he explored upstream from Jamestown having arrived with our nation’s first Colonists. Ancarrow’s has a great launch ramp and lots and lots of shoreline from which anglers catch bass and catfish and bluegill and, in season, stripers and shad and white perch.
Our boat had drifted a few hundred yards downstream and we reached a spot at which we catch occasional bass and stripers, and I made a long cast with a small, deep-diving crankbait and promptly reeled in a 21-inch rainbow trout. A beautifully-colored fish with rich red gills and a frantically flapping body that successfully impaled one of the treble hooks into the end of my finger. I quickly measured and released it and marveled. (And put a bandage on my finger that wouldn’t stop bleeding.)
Now you have to realize that this is June below Mason-Dixon and I’m fishing in warm tidal water from which are pulled occasional croakers and flounder. A rainbow trout? If Bob hadn’t seen and witnessed, I wouldn’t mention it to anyone. (After the trout we caught two stripers and a smallmouth.)
The next day I telephoned Gary Martel, head of fisheries for Virginia’s Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, and he confirmed that their official records – including anecdotal tales – list no trout of any kind having ever been caught in the tidal James. Upstream a ways – in the non-tidal portion among the rapids and boulders – a trout is caught every 10 years or so after a flood, the theory being that it came downstream from upriver trout tributaries. But on the day of my rainbow catch, it had been months and months and months since the last high water.
Gary also told me that an Atlantic salmon was caught several years ago in the Appomattox – even stranger than my trout. As Janet’s father used to say, “The first guy doesn’t have a chance.”
The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site lists thousands of places to fish all over the nation and gives tons of tips and strategies and tells what species of fish are in what waters, but nowhere does it give advice on rainbow trout fishing in the tidal James or Atlantic salmon fishing in the Appomattox.
But when you visit Richmond and want some downtown, down-home fishing, visit Ancarrow’s and drop a line. Who knows what might bite?
The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site says that Ancarrow’s Landing on the James River offers great shoreline fishing for families, but the site fails to mention that it also offers the strange and unusual.
My fishing buddy Bob Edwards is a person of integrity. Former director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, as far as I know he has never been accused of falsehood – even though he’s a dedicated angler. All of which introduces an unbelievable catch that I made – and that Bob witnessed right there in the boat with me and will swear to – in the most urban and most public of fishing spots in Richmond, Virginia.
We put in at Ancarrow’s landing in downtown Richmond – the area where Christopher Newport’s boat was stopped by the Fall Line exactly 400 years ago when he explored upstream from Jamestown having arrived with our nation’s first Colonists. Ancarrow’s has a great launch ramp and lots and lots of shoreline from which anglers catch bass and catfish and bluegill and, in season, stripers and shad and white perch.
Our boat had drifted a few hundred yards downstream and we reached a spot at which we catch occasional bass and stripers, and I made a long cast with a small, deep-diving crankbait and promptly reeled in a 21-inch rainbow trout. A beautifully-colored fish with rich red gills and a frantically flapping body that successfully impaled one of the treble hooks into the end of my finger. I quickly measured and released it and marveled. (And put a bandage on my finger that wouldn’t stop bleeding.)
Now you have to realize that this is June below Mason-Dixon and I’m fishing in warm tidal water from which are pulled occasional croakers and flounder. A rainbow trout? If Bob hadn’t seen and witnessed, I wouldn’t mention it to anyone. (After the trout we caught two stripers and a smallmouth.)The next day I telephoned Gary Martel, head of fisheries for Virginia’s Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, and he confirmed that their official records – including anecdotal tales – list no trout of any kind having ever been caught in the tidal James. Upstream a ways – in the non-tidal portion among the rapids and boulders – a trout is caught every 10 years or so after a flood, the theory being that it came downstream from upriver trout tributaries. But on the day of my rainbow catch, it had been months and months and months since the last high water.
Gary also told me that an Atlantic salmon was caught several years ago in the Appomattox – even stranger than my trout. As Janet’s father used to say, “The first guy doesn’t have a chance.”
The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site lists thousands of places to fish all over the nation and gives tons of tips and strategies and tells what species of fish are in what waters, but nowhere does it give advice on rainbow trout fishing in the tidal James or Atlantic salmon fishing in the Appomattox.
But when you visit Richmond and want some downtown, down-home fishing, visit Ancarrow’s and drop a line. Who knows what might bite?
Photo: John Bryan (me) with exact-size cardboard copy of his James River Rainbow.
