Written by: Harvard Smith

This beautiful little rainbow brightened up a winter day for two teenage anglers in Virginia.
Photo by Harvard Smith
Here is a picture of a small rainbow my friend Hunter Wigginton caught last month when we were fishing in western Virginia. I was dumbfounded by how beautiful this fish was, even in the dead of a very cold Virginia winter. He ate a small Woolly Bugger. My friend and I are both 16 years old.
Harvard Smith and Hunter Wigginton are high-school juniors from Richmond, Virginia.
The little one’s are sometimes the most beautiful. I think my favorite times fishing are when I have been in the Shenandoahs or over in the Savage River Watershed catching little brookies on small mountain streams. They have the best colors.
I was begging for someone to take just one pic last week of my fish. No takers available. Just nice sometimes when it is snowing a foot to remember one big trout.
Congrats on a great outing! Those little guys are true jewels of nature.
Nice Job. It’s not the size of the fish that matter’s, especially in the winter. I fished for a couple hours yesterday in Western Mass and would have loved that fish instead of getting skunked.
Nice little guy! If not catching big ones, these little guys always save the day!
Probably most of started by catching these little gems in tiny creeks, they never lose their magic.
Looks like a great one. Congrats and thanks for sharing.
And as Bill and WkndWarrior suggest, better one than none!
Pretty fish!!
I miss fishing the little Washington state mountain streams and catching these gems. With my artificial knees I am no longer able to climb over the beaver ponds and logjams that hold them. So I am limited to lakes and large rivers with sandy bottoms that I can wade safely, at least I can still safely catch steelhead and salmon on occasion.