-Cranberry Wilderness
-Elk River Hike & Fish

Cranberry Wilderness

A 14.9 Mile Hike in the heart of the Cranberry Wilderness in the Wild & Wonderful West Virginia. The Hike started at the North-South Trail 688 off WV Route 150 where there was a small parking lot on the east side of the road. After a couple hundred meters, I headed south on the North Fork Cranberry Trail 272 for about 7 miles where the trail ended at the Peter E. Zurbuch water neutralization station. There is also a campground nearby at the turnaround point as well as 3 hasty campgrounds between the start and turnaround point of this hike.

This hike kicked off my training for the Cateran Yomp, a 54-mile hike in the Scottish Highlands. It was a cold February day in which it poured for 8 hours the night before. The trail was puddled, and the trickling creeks were flowing like roaring rivers. After about an hour into the hike, the snow started coming and blanketed the pines, spruces and rhododendrons. The whole hike back was snow covered, but the GoPro didn’t like the below freezing temps.

I pulled out the fly rod at the turnaround point, which was the intersection of the North Fork Cranberry and the main stem of the Cranberry River. The river was flowing too fast, and the fish were likely hunkered down due to the significant flows from the heavy rains. It’s definitely a river I need to head back to and wet some flies.

The 47,815 acre Cranberry Wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest is part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. It is located in Pocahontas and Webster Counties, West Virginia. The area includes the entire drainage of the Middle Fork of the Williams and the North Fork of the Cranberry Rivers. Elevations range from 2,400 to over 4,600 feet.

Elk River Hike & Fish

It was time to head into the Mountain State of West Virginia and wet me flies into the cold mountain waters of West Virginia. It was my first visit to the state to fish and I chose one of the best known trout waters – the Elk River. The Elk River is a tributary of the Kanawha River, 172 miles long, in central West Virginia in the United States. Via the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River (wikipedia.org). There is over 172 miles to fish the Elk River but I was only able to cover about 2 of them using an old railroad trail that was heavily overgrown.

I found many rising fish, but the river’s flow was slow, making the pools very difficult to trick a trout into surfacing for my artificial fly. I was able to land a solid Brown Trout using a Stimulator/Blow Torch TH nymph combo, who was hanging out at the head of the pool in the turbulent waters. It was a wonderful day of fishing, despite only catching one fish.