Grand Opening of the Public River Access Point on the Cowpasture River at Sharon Park

Twin River Outfitters Fishing Blog Post #3

July 23,  2013

This will be the third of our seasonal blogs for fishing updates on our guided rivers in the Twin River Outfitters fishing area.  Water conditions are at unprecedented levels, flow, and color for this time of year.  Being it as it may, you can look at this as a good thing or a bad thing – I prefer to look at this as a semi-good thing.  Each time that the river rises and stains it is like refreshing your computer image on your screen, everything starts over and what happened previously is forgotten, hopefully by the fish.  Normally, we would be dealing with very low flow, almost gin clear waters, very high water temperatures, and the dreaded green slime that gets all over the bottom at mid summer.  Instead, we have almost spring like water levels and color except for the temperatures.  All of this creates new opportunities for the larger fish to come to the banks out of their normal deep and dark summer hiding places to search and gorge for food, especially crayfish.  Twin Rivers Outfitters recently had the good fortune to take outdoor writer, Bruce Ingram, on a guided fishing trip this past week and the river gave up quite a few smallmouths during the day.  The bite – artificial crawdads.  We caught the vast majority of our fish on some type of crawfish imitation whether it be a tube, jig and pig, or some brown variation of a crankbait.  The one thing that Bruce and I noticed was that the “new” normal flow and stain caused the fish to be sort of “checking” the bait.  In other words, they have seen so much food source this past summer that many of the fish would be dumping the plastic bait before you would normally get a good hook set – the crankbait was a good solution for this, once something grabs it you can figure that there is a hook holding onto something somewhere.  Sooner or later water levels will get to our usual flows and then we will find ourselves dealing with fish that want to stay in the deep holes getting ready for the impending fall bite, but those are conditions for a later blog.  In the meantime, keep a semi-tight line, treat your fish and the river carefully, and don’t be afraid to fish the stain.  Contact John or Dan at Twin River Outfitters if you are interested in a personal guided fishing trip via canoe, kayaks, or raft @ canoevirginia.net/ or 540-261-7334.

Sincerely,

Richard Furman
Twin River Outfitters Fishing Guide

New Cowpasture River Access Point at Sharron Park Now Open

A new boat landing on the Cowpasture River is officially opening today July 17, 2013 at 4PM.  It is located at Sharron Park about 8 miles upstream of the James River Lick Run access point. 

This new boat landing opens up an scenic section of Cowpasture River with mostly moving water with a few easy straight forward rapids with great views of the surrounding mountains. Near Iron Gate, the Cowpasture meets the Jackson River to form the James River, which flows through neighboring Botetourt and Rockbridge counties on its way to the Chesapeake Bay.

The Cow pasture river is normally runnable in the Spring but can be runnable latter in the season depending on rain events.  The new boat landing was constructed adjacent to the Sharron Community park which features a picnic pavilion, parking lot, and a trail to the ramp access down to the river.

The park and boat landing owned and managed by the Alleghany County Parks & Recreation Department.   Check out this YouTube video to see clips of the access point and some river shots.

 

 

For more info see:  http://alleghanyhighlandsblueway.com