Is there such a thing as a State Record for a fallfish? Apparently. A fellow named Josh Dolin caught one of these “trash fish” on the Cowpasture River on May 6. He weighed it in at 3 ½ pounds and they say that’s a new Virginia state record.
Fallfish are nightmares to trout fishermen. They live in the same kinds of waters. Two fallfish I have caught in the past stand out in my memory.
I was flyfishing on the N. Fork Potomac in WV with my guide, Sam Knotts, when something big engulfed my streamer. The fish hit like a ton of bricks and powered downstream, quickly taking me into my backing.
I’m thinking “This is the Mother of All Brown Trout”. It
Simply refused to give up and zipped back and forth. Ultimately, I began to turn the fish, then saw the bad news – a broad silver back. It was a damned fallfish. I don’t know how big it was, but well over 20-inches. What a disappointment!
The other fallfish memory I have goes way back, either 1969 or 1970. That particular summer we had a severe drought and all the reservoirs were low, including the Sugar Hollow Reservoir fed by the Moorman’s River. There was just a slight trickle of water flowing in, but all the trout in the reservoir moved up into the flow for oxygen and slightly cooler water. We used 2-pound test on ultra-light spinning outfits with no weight and just a bit of corn on a small hook and caught a number of trout. On one trip, though, something almost ripped the rod out of my hand. I had the drag set loosely because we were using tiny line, so I just held on as the fish peeled off maybe 50 yards of line. If this is a trout, I really had something. But it wasn’t. It was a gigantic fallfish. It wouldn’t begin to fit in the net when we pulled it close, so we drug it up on dry ground. I had house cats at the time and figured this fish would feed them for many meals, so I took it home to cook it. I had one of those standard size Styrofoam coolers and I had to double the fish over in order to squeeze it into the cooler. I believe that fish would have gone well over 5 pounds, but it was just a fallfish. What difference would it make?
The cats, by the way, enjoyed many meals from my unintended catch.