Rapidan River, Virginia
Following up with last week, Steve and I decided not to fight mother nature this weekend. We paddled with the current... It was a great morning, and we got out on the river at sunrise with pans and Steve's fishing gear. There are dozens of little feeder streams, and we though we'd check some of them out, for fish and gold! These streams are all too shallow to canoe in, but prospecting and fishing right where they converge is tons of fun.
The Rapidan has some good fishing. Steve has landed some good fish in here in the past, and a fella caught a nice 2 foot pickerel today. We also ran into a couple that landed a 4+ lb bass. Very nice! 
 We walked up a couple of these feeder streams and did some test panning. The Rapidan and Rappahannock are littered with old prospects as Virginia had a nice gold rush in the early 1800's. The water on the Rapidan was warm and slow. There were a couple low places where we had to bail out of the canoe due to the lack of water.  We ran some test pans along the river and got some specks here and there. We had a good relaxing time on the river, and we put some miles on the canoe without tipping it over this time!  |
