Shenandoah National Park reopens fishery after six-week closure

It would have been easy to assume that the extreme heat, drought, and fire conditions raging this summer were only impacting the American west (and the National Parks therein). All up and down the Rocky Mountains we’ve seen that manifest, from raging fires destroying much of Canada’s Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies, Stage 2 fire restrictions in the usually moist Olympic National Park, and even fishing restrictions put in place in Yellowstone National Park’s prized Madison, Gibbon, and Firehole Rivers.

The Rockies haven’t been the only mountain range singed by the heat and dryness, however. At Shenandoah National Park in the heart of the Appalachian’s Blue Ridge Mountains, extremely dry conditions impacted stream flows to the point of exhaustion in late June, prompting park officials to put complete fishing restrictions in place park-wide on June 27th.

The low flows put taxing conditions on native brook trout populations, among the other fish within park waters, thereby forcing the hand of local rangers to help preserve their population by not subjecting them to the rigors of being fished.

It took about six weeks, but the weather in western Virginia has mercifully relented. As the National Park Service noted in their August 12th press release, the Shenandoah area has received between 4 and 8 inches of rain since August 8th, helping to both cool the area and vitally replenish the waterways of the park. Said waterways include the creeks that eventually form the likes of the Rapidan River, Doyles River, Lynch River, Roach River, Moormans River, Rose River, Conway River, Hughes River, Thornton River, Robinson River, and Shenandoah River, among others, and they’re now back open to regular fishing policies.

With Shenandoah serving as both a mid-continental divide and as the location of that many headwaters, it’s a welcome sign that Mother Nature finally backfilled the area. Further drought in that particular region – an area that typically gets some 60 inches of rain per year – would’ve had ripple effects further downstream, as the Shenandoah eventually serves as a major tributary of the Potomac River while the eastern watershed rivers flow into the larger James and Rivanna Rivers.

With over 500 miles of trails, Shenandoah is one of the gems for both hiking and multi-day backpacking within the Appalachians, and bringing some light tackle and flies to fish the lush streams there is something of an annual rite of passage for many. After six weeks of restrictions, it seems the late summer and fall fishing season will still be in play for those anglers seeking solitude and some hard-fightin’ brookies in the Virginia hills.