G-Man Fishing

Not many people know about the fine fishing in Reston. With the exception of Lake Fairfax, the lakes in Reston are not mentioned on the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and therefore don’t get the same amount of fishing pressure as Burke Lake for instance. Until recently, I never even dared waste time on trying my luck at these lakes. Then, I found this Reston fish survey study online. Here are some pics from the fish survey. Pretty crazy that they sampled an eel! Check that thing out!The first lake I decided to check out is Lake Audubon.This lake is surrounded by condos and townhouses and much of the shoreline is private property. However, there is a path that surrounds part of the lake that is walkable and open enough for casting. It begins at the boat launch and winds around past the dam at Lake Thoreau. Please respect the parked boats and the private docks when working the shoreline. I’m sure the residents would appreciate it. The shoreline is fairly clean and garbage free so lets keep this lake serene. To be honest, I’d love to live on this lake and have a private dock someday.One visit to Audubon turned up nothing but some kid had claimed to have caught a 6 pounder that day. The second visit was more productive. I used a road runner jig dressed up with a nightcrawler under a slip bobber. I worked a point and hooked up with an 8″ largemouth. I then worked a docked boat and hooked another one and then lost him. A little frustrated, I worked the other side of the boat and after some patience in drifting the slip bobber to the perfect spot just beside the parked boat I got another hit. This time I waited 2 seconds before setting the hook and then reeled in a 10 ” largemouth. Ok, you’re thinking 8″ and 10″ bass are piddly little babies. But according to the fish survey, this lake is out of balance. Too many little guys and too few big’ns. That kind of imbalance causes the population to stay stunted as there’s too little food in order to grow em big. The referenced survey suggests anglers harvest the smaller ones in order to rectify the imbalance. So I did my part and harvested my two fish!

It was the first day above 50 degrees in quite some time. Went to Burke Lake in the late morning and the lake was busy with foot traffic. I fished around the channel to the boat launch but it seemed the water was still really low. Over there, you really need to cast pretty far to get it past the shallows. I decided to go over near the dam and worked a jig along the bottom but no bites. Water was clear and the wind was blowing the water towards the dam. I switched spots and fished right on the rocks of the dam and switched to a 5″ Rapala minnow jerk bait. On the third cast, I hooked something that felt like a piece of movable timber. Just plain felt like dead weight! At first I thought I got hung up on the rocks but that normally feels like pure tension. This felt like those snags where you hang up on a piece of timber and you can still move it slowly but steadily. When it got closer to the surface, I saw the flash of a pretty good sized fish! Still though, no head shaking at all. I reeled it closer to the rocks and it dove down and gave a good pull. When I got it to shore it jumped around until I was able lip him out of the water. The result? A nice largemouth bass. Probably around 16-17″ and pushing 3 lbs. After a few snaps and some admiring by the bystanders, I released my lazy winter bass back into the water and watched it swim back to the depths. What a fun way to start the season eh?