Jackson River

The Jackson River below Gathright Dam is the closest thing Virginia has to a Western trophy tailwater, and anyone who fishes the state seriously will tell you it holds the best shot at a wild trout over 20 inches anywhere in the commonwealth. Gathright is a bottom-release dam, pulling cold, oxygenated water from 150-odd feet down in Lake Moomaw, so the river below runs in the low-to-mid 50s through the summer and stays fishable in the dead of winter — a rare thing this far south. Both the browns and rainbows reproduce naturally here; this is a genuinely wild fishery, not a put-and-take run, and the fish are pressured, leader-shy, and used to seeing flies. Trout past 20 inches turn up every season, and a handful of 24-inch-plus browns come to hand each year. It fishes like a technical tailwater, not a mountain freestone: light tippet, small flies, and long leaders, with scuds, midges, and small nymphs when nothing's on top. The Jackson is also widely considered the best river in Virginia to throw big sculpin streamers at big browns, especially pre-spawn in fall.

The hatches are led by blue-winged olives — bi-brooded, heaviest in March-April and again late September-October, and the most dependable bug on the river, best on overcast days. The late-June sulphurs are the dry-fly highlight of the year. Below roughly 280 CFS the wading is good; the flat immediately below Johnson Springs is slow, so most anglers walk down to the faster water. Heavy winter and early-spring releases are usually too big to wade, and flows generally settle into something consistent after June 1 — because the river runs on a dam schedule, a blowout here is a release event, not just rain, so read the gauge as much as the sky. Above Lake Moomaw the Jackson is a different animal entirely: a small, freestone mountain stream, with an artificials-only wild-trout reach at Hidden Valley — roughly three miles above the Muddy Run swinging bridge — that's worth the mile-plus hike in.

The one thing to understand before you fish the tailwater is the access dispute, and it is not a rumor. Several riverside landowners hold colonial "King's Grants" — royal patents issued by King George II and George III that predate Virginia's 1802 statute making waterways public. In Kraft v. Burr (1996) the Virginia Supreme Court upheld those grants and let landowners prohibit wading along a stretch below Gathright Dam. A later, well-publicized case (the Coggeshall/Crawford trespass arrests below Smith Bridge) ended in a 2014 consent order barring the anglers from the disputed water after legal costs topped $130,000 — it never produced the definitive ruling anglers hoped for. The practical upshot: the river is legally navigable and you can float the whole thing, but between certain access points — notably Smith Bridge to Indian Draft — there are posted reaches where wading and touching bottom are contested. Consult the current DWR access map, respect posted signs, and when in doubt stay in the boat.