Mossy Creek Fly Fishing Forecast 5/25/2026

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:04]Hey everybody, Brian Tro coming to you from Mossy Creek Fly Fishing with your fly fishing forecast. Uh it's Memorial Day. Hope uh hope some of you are enjoying your holiday weekend. Um we've got a lot to talk about. A lot has changed since our last fishing forecast.

[00:00:22]I'm parked here in front of the window at the fly shop because it's raining.

[00:00:26]It's been raining almost every day since the middle of last week. Um, parts of the Shadow Valley have picked up 4 in.

[00:00:35]Parts of the Shadow Valley have picked up well over a half a foot of rain. Um, it's come in waves. It's been We've had nice slow mists. We've had soaking rains. We've had downpours.

[00:00:48]Um, like forest gump, even rain that comes back up in your face, you know.

[00:00:53]So, it's uh everything that we've been hoping for for the last um month or two as we got drier and drier. Uh and the rain is not done. So, it looks like this is Monday afternoon. Um we're going to get rain tonight, rain all day Tuesday, rain all day Wednesday, maybe letting up by Thursday. Okay. So, we were just starting to kind of get a fix on uh you know, what's fishable, what's not fishable, what's too high. Um and it just started pouring again and it poured overnight. So the reality is is uh most of our major streams, our bigger rivers and drainages, the North Fork, the South Fork of the Shannondoa, they're like blown up and also they're really turbid. So if you're just watching the grass, you'll see that they're well they went from way below average to way above average. Um but the other story is how dirty all the bigger streams are. Um, I I I mentioned this several times on this before, but you know, the longer things sit, the dirtier they get. So, like here in the valley, if you get four weeks of no rain, all the pollen, all the dust that that's generated from the wind and the trees and everything, all the dirt and grime and everything, it just accumulates. and and when you get that very first big wash of rain, um especially if it's really moving, the water's really moving, it takes it all into the streams into the creek. So, we came up pretty fast and pretty high, but we came up really dirty, too. And that turbidity takes time to settle out. So, um it'll be a while before we know exactly when the clarity will get back to where we need to be fishing, um for the smallmouth and for the musky and all that stuff. Um, you know, the good news is is the spawn's been over for quite a while, and this isn't like a massively high amount of water. It's just, um, we went from really low, uh, to to high pretty quick. Um, anyway, so, not much to report on the smallmouth fishing or the musky fishing because we are pretty much off the rivers right now. And depending on how much we get in the next couple days, we'll be off them for quite some time. Um, in the business, we call this a reset. All right. It's resetting our fishing. It's resetting the conditions. Um, and yes, it will create headaches and delays in the in the uh in the present, but we're going to be adding to our season for sure. Um, especially for the brook trout. Uh, you know, the brook trout streams are very much dependent on water flow. Last year, we got like, you know, tons of rain in May and June, and that extended our fishing for brook trout well into July.

[00:03:35]Water temperatures stayed cool. Fish had cover, fish had food, fish had oxygen, they had everything he needed, and it was really good. So, um, we were so low, we were worried that, you know, Memorial Day weekend was going to kind of be towards the end of, uh, being able to fish for them. But no, this is this is a lot of water. So, speaking of a lot of water up in those mountain streams, you know, I've had some folks come in this week and say, "Hey, I was on this creek or that, and it wasn't it wasn't dirty, but they were big." Well, they they really shouldn't be dirty. you see the higher up you go into the mountains here when you get to these freestone streams they don't really carry silt and sediments up at high elevations right so um that's that's what you pick up more of down here in the valley floor so most of those mountain brook trout streams should not be really really off color or dirty or turbid can get a little bit of tent to them but they shouldn't be super dirty um but they can get too big just too big to get near too big to find calm water on. Too big to drift a fly, especially a dryfly. Uh so yeah, it's a little bit of a bummer. We've got all these great drakes and stuff hatching right now. And the fish, um they're not going to be able to key on on those until those streams come down a little bit. So um you have to do a little bit of work to kind of figure out who got what rain. You can go on the USGS sites, not the USGS, the National Weather Service sites. Those have rain monitors all over the place. Uh there is a huge difference between a location that got 4 in and a location that got 7 in. Um one's going to be absolutely out of its banks and the other one's going to be big and maybe fishable a day or two days or 3 days earlier than the other. So we're going to try and help you all out with that as we head into next weekend.

[00:05:23]Kind of figure out what's gotten fishable. Um what's a little bit too dangerous. Um, but the good news is is um those streams after the rain ends will be coming down um slowly and um you'll be able to really enjoy fishing on them uh well into June. All right, so that's that's the good news. Um and uh so what is what's fishable? All right.

[00:05:48]When we get flooded like this, um obviously your ponds and your lakes become uh uh high high targets. Uh you you know, we've got a lot of lakes to our west in the George Washington National Forest. They were all built, you know, 100 years ago as flood control, but almost every single one of those streams to our west has got lakes.

[00:06:09]So you got uh Hearthstone Lake, you got Todd Lake, you got Elhorn Lake, um you got um Briari Branch Lake, Home Quarry Lake, um Switzer Reservoir, Brily Pond, you have all these. They're all open to the public. Uh almost all of them are warm water and cold water fisheries, okay? So like you could go up there and catch sunfish, you go up there and catch largemouth, but you could also catch trout in almost every single one of those, especially this time of year.

[00:06:38]Okay, so those are definitely places that you might want to target. If you're down here in the valley floor, there's not a lot of lakes because the whole valley floor here is carsted. It's all limestone, so it doesn't hold water well. You know, you go over the mountain there and fish in the Piedmont and there's lakes and ponds and private horse ponds and stuff like everywhere.

[00:06:58]Um, but over here there's not many.

[00:07:00]There's Lake Shannondoa, which is not far from town here. It's a public fishing lake that's down here on the valley floor. But if you haven't experienced those high mountain lakes to our west, um they're pretty awesome, especially if you have a canoe or a kayak and you can kind of get out and cruise them and cover some water. Um that's they they can be fished somewhat from the shore, but it's definitely better to get out and um be able to cover some water. Get down three-dimensionally. Um take a versa leader with you so that you can just sink quicker if you need to. Um but those would be some options over the next few days. The other options are just our true spring creeks. Okay. So, places like Corsy Spring below the hatchery, Mossy Creek, um Mossy Creek's been fishing pretty well. I had good reports. It's off color. Um it'll dirty up like an hour or two after a serious downpour, but it'll clean up pretty quick after that, too. But, um the dirty water is your friend out there, unless of course it's like we have all these different, you know, ways to describe water clarity. If you're if you're like chocolate milk or mocha chino, like you don't want to fish if you can't see like an inch or two. Uh it's hard to fish.

[00:08:07]The fish just um can't can on your fly very much. But if you go to Mossy and there's even like eight or nine inches of viz, it can be super good. Super good. And just remember, work the fly.

[00:08:18]Put vibration in the water. They're using other senses. Um when the water is turbid and off color, they're they're feeling the vibration. Okay. Um, you can get away with super heavy leader. You know, if you're throwing big black streamers out there tomorrow, you should be fishing 0x or 1x. 2x is the lightest.

[00:08:35]Um, that way you're able to get out of that moss easily, get your fly back every time. Um, they are not leader shy when it's like this and they'll hit and they'll hit it hard. Okay? And the bait gets disoriented too. So all the little minnows and stuff when that water gets really dirty, they start to kind of move into water that they really ought not be in. Okay? Okay. And those browns will take advantage of that. So true spring creeks, Mossy Creek, Spring Run, those places, even after a humongous downpour, they really don't flood too much because they don't have a drainage. Other streams that are uh springfed, but they start in the mountains, places like uh Smith Creek and the South River and Beaver Creek and Buffalo Creek. Um, those have spring influence, but they all start up in a mountain drainage, so they they can flood. That's why they have more rock in them and more gravel.

[00:09:29]Um, so you got to kind of keep your eye.

[00:09:31]I had a couple folks that were out at Beaver this morning and they said it was it was fishable, but it was like kind of on the edge. Okay. And um, and then we got like another inch since they since they told me that. So, we'll see how it all goes. But, uh, it's all money in the bank. It's good news. This is exactly what we needed. and we've got a few more days of it. Um, so I would say probably by like Friday. Um, if you need an update, if you are hoping to go fishing next weekend and um, need an update, you can just give the shop a call um, or or email us or our favorite, just stop on in and we'll we'll do our best to get you out onto some water that is fishable. But this all bodess very very well for all of our fisheries. Um, so we'll see what we got. maybe another inch or two uh the next day or two on top of all this. So, all right. Well, uh that's pretty much it from a soggy Harrisonenberg. Uh I will see you guys all next Monday. Take care.