Fish Blue Ridge

Southwest Virginia’s Mountain Empire is a landscape dominated by steep mountain ridges and countless trout streams and ancient rivers. However, it also offers great stillwater fishing in a handful of Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (VDWR)-owned lakes. Rural Retreat Lake, a 90-acre lake in Wythe County near the town of Rural Retreat, is one such.

Often referred to by such glamorous titles as “The Mountain Empire,” the Virginia highlands region features some of the state’s most rugged and breathtaking scenery. Big Wilson Creek, flowing off the eastern slope of Mount Rogers towards the New River in the valley below, is the primary artery–a mountain trout angler’s paradise.

Just a few miles from I-81 and the bustling town of Marion, boxed in by rugged mountain ridges, sits one of the Old Dominion’s oldest and favorite state parks–Hungry Mother State Park. The Park’s glimmering heart is Hungry Mother Lake, one of Virginia’s most beautiful and diverse stillwater fisheries

In the southeastern corner of Washington County, from the shadow of Whitetop Mountain, Virginia’s second highest peak, runs one of the Old Dominion’s greatest wild trout streams–Whitetop Laurel Creek

In the eastern corner of Smyth County, in the small farming community of Sugar Grove, several small mountain trout streams and bubbling springs converge on the valley floor to form the South Fork of the Holston River–arguably Virginia’s greatest wild trout resource