Virginia's Mossy Creek - Beau Beasley
You pull your car into the tiny parking lot alongside the road and take a moment to stare at the cool, clear water slowly meandering its way downstream. Up ahead, you spot a small but familiar bridge, almost as familiar as the creek itself, having been photographed and painted so many times by anglers and artists alike. You string up your fly rod and know that you'll be rewarded with only a few takes today. If you're lucky, you might land one big trout all day. You take this knowledge in stride, however, because you know you're headed out to fish the most difficult, most famous trout stream in the Old Dominion: Mossy Creek in Augusta County, Virginia.
New fence crossing were recently put in with the help of several local TU Chapters and Dominion - Photo by Beau Beasley
Mossy Creek is Virginia's best-known spring creek, and with good reason. This beautiful piece of trout water, which stretches over seven miles before it empties into the North River, is home to some of the largest brown trout in the entire Mid-Atlantic. How big, you ask? Try five to seven pounds. In fact the trout are so big that the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) won't stock Mossy with anything less than seven inches long because anything smaller only serves as a snack for the brutish brown trout that call this river home.
Mossy has good vegetation growth, which is probably where it got ts name - Photo by Beau Beasley
Big trout are only half the story of Mossy Creek, however. During the 1970s Urbie Nash of the Shenandoah Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited and VDGIF biologist Larry Mohn approached Mossy's landowning locals with a proposal for a unique three-way cooperative agreement: Streamside landowners would allow anglers access to their private property, Trout Unlimited would work to improve the habitat of Mossy Creek-which by that time had been completely devastated by roving cattle-and the state would stock the stream. What followed was the state's most successful joint effort to promote public trout fishing, the restoration of a stream that would otherwise have been lost, and a model of what can happen when folks work together.
In late September 2005 Urbie Nash's TU Chapter and Larry Mohn showed up in support of Mossy Creek again, this time at the request of a young man who had not yet been born when the conservationists had made their first bid to save the stream. Seth Sprouse had fished Mossy for years and watched the old fence crossings installed by the creek's first supporters fall into disrepair. When it came time to plan his Eagle Scout Badge project, Sprouse knew exactly what he must do. He contacted a member of the Shenandoah Valley TU chapter who in turn contacted Dominion Virginia Power. On September 21, 2005, Sprouse, Shenandoah Valley TU members, the VDGIF, and more than three dozen Dominion Virginia Power employees showed up to replace the dilapidated fence crossings with new crossings-paid for by the power company-to make fishing easier and safer for older anglers.
Larry Mohn sums up what makes Mossy special: "There is no other creek in the state that has the flow and quality of water that Mossy has and still remains open to the public."
You'll need a special permit from the landowners and VDGIF to fish the public-access section of Mossy Creek. Just send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
VDGIF, Verona Office,
P.O. Box 996, Verona, VA 24482
The permit, good for a year, is free.
Beau Beasley is the author of Fly Fishing Virginia: A No Nonsense Guide to Top Waters and the Vice President of Communications for the Virginia Council of Trout
