SMYTH CO., Va. – The South Fork of the Holston River. Flowing fast and clear in Smyth County.
“It makes the top 100 list of any fly-fishing book you’ll ever read for a reason. It’s one of the top streams in North America,” Richard Formato said.
And he would know.
He owns property along the river and fishes the Holston regularly. He also fishes many other rivers in North America.
Our Outing
And as we rig up for a day of fly fishing, there’s that old thing about if it sounds too good to be true… And this is looking like one of those days. It’s late spring, the weather is warm and the water is beautiful.
“I am feeling optimistic,” Formato said as he tied a fly onto the end of his line.
The scenery is as good as the weather – adding to the notion that trout only live in beautiful places.
Not only would Formato, now also a guide for New River Fly Fishing, share his favorite fishing spot with my friend Gary Butcher and me, but he would be instructing us on how to use a technique called Euro nymphing - essentially fishing a small underwater fly that imitates the nymphs crawling all over the bottom of the rocks.
“It’s just an immature bug. It’s a bug that lives on the bottom of a trout stream and 95 percent of a trout’s diet is a little small bug that lives underneath the rocks,” Formato said.
The hard part is making the fakes act like real bugs. If they don’t float naturally in the current, the trout won’t bite.
But Formato has figured it out. He drifts the fly with just the right touch.
Resulting in fish after fish.
What is Euro nymphing?
The technique looks amazingly simple. You cast your line only about 15-20 feet. Then hold a longer-than-usual fly rod of ten feet or more out over the current and guide the bug through the rapids, by keeping the rod downstream of the bug.
When we got it right it resulted in lots of fish.
“It’s very different,” Butcher said. “It’s kind of like you’re leading the nymph down the river, learned a lot today.”
The more we refined our technique – holding the rod parallel to the water as opposed to pointing it toward the sky, and learning to guide the bug into fishy-looking places, the more successful we were.
But on this river, the South Fork of the Holston, with the wildflowers blooming on the banks and river flowing fast and cold at our feet, it would have been a success just to be there.
The willingness of the trout was just an added bonus.
“It’s being out in nature and being in the water and with friends. Seeing your surroundings. The spring flowers are out, the fish are out the birds are singing. It’s utopia,” Butcher said.