G-Man Fishing

Ok, there you have it. I’ve given up the name and location of my neighborhood pond. But the thing is, Google doesn’t show any relevant results and its hard to find on any map. I do now know that anglers come on a regular basis. I know this because I ran into a couple of guys launching a canoe. They said that the pond is full of largemouth bass but most are in the 12 inch size range. I’ve confirmed that statement this past weekend as I’ve caught two around that size; one of which was about 13 inches or so. Been working the lily pads with a plastic lizard on my 6 ft light action rod. It doesn’t cast very far but thats okay since the lily pads are all around the shoreline. I’m starting to like fishing soft plastics now. I used to not have the patience or skill to work them but I’m learning fast. One great thing is that I don’t get hung up all the time. I can work the thickest cover and not have to cut loose. Another great thing is that I’ve found that if I miss my hook set, I can cast back to the same spot and the same bass will still go after the same bait. That gives me more than one try to hook the same bass. I used to confuse the bumps you feel from your bait hitting the cover to actual bites. But now I can distinguish the fish by feeling the tension and weight of the fish. Sometimes the fish will run off with the bait and I can actually feel it swimming away. A little pause before setting the hook increases the chances of a hookup since the the pause gives the fish some time to inhale the bait fully into its mouth. The soft plastic feel allows the fish to hang on longer than usual thereby helping my chances further. One of these days I’ll get the canoe out into the middle of the pond. That will allow me to work other parts of the shoreline that aren’t accessible by foot. Should be a fun time regardless of how large or small the fish are since on a light action rod everything feels like a monster!

Visiting the parents in New Jersey this weekend so I thought I’d check out some local fishing action. I originally thought this pond was called “Plainsboro Pond” but I guess its officially called “Mill Pond.” The pond is a long and narrow pond and with a slight breeze it seems more of a river than a pond. The banks are full of lily pads and other vegetation. Good stuff if you are looking for fish. The trail that follows the bank has many openings that allow for casting. I used a plastic lizard and worked it into the lily pads. Got many bites and landed a 10 inch largemouth bass and a small crappie. Both were pretty small but this pond has promise. There’s definitely plenty of habitat for fish. I was even able to spot spawning fish sitting on top of their nests through the thicket of lily pads. There’s plenty of wildlife around too. We spotted a red winged black bird and got a nice photo of it. I’ll be coming back here some more to check out the action. Some of the locals claim that there are big fish in there so I’ll just have to try it some more to see for myself.

Made a few trips to Lake Fairfax this past week. It was my first visits to this lake. During the colder months, it is stocked with trout and anglers are required to pay a daily fee to fish as well as have a Virginia fishing license. Season passes are available for frequent visitors. Its no coincidence that my first trip here coincides with the end of the trout season at Lake Fairfax since I’ve never had enough success at trout fishing to justify paying a daily fee. The lake has a very nice fishing pier that arcs over part of the shoreline. There’s also large boat dock that is used for paddle boats during the summer season. My first thought was that its great to have some structure around such as the pilings of the pier and the boat docks for the fish to concentrate. I decided to work the Berkeley jerk shad around the rocks along the shoreline by casting from the pier. Had a bite within a couple of minutes and after a few casts, I was able to reel in a 12 inch largemouth bass. I started to think that this lake could be an awesome fishing lake and wondered why I never tried it out before. Then I checked out the bass and it had a few lesions on it. A closer examination of the water and I was able to spot a small oil slick underneath the pier. The water itself wasn’t very clear but thats more of a result of the recent rains. A couple more visits to this lake turned up no significant bites or catches. I was able to see trout schooling near the rocks however. Most were rather small except a couple of big brown trouts. As it swam closer to me I was able to make out two fish around 13-15 inches or so. The problem is that one of them had some weird growth along its side near its gills. Sort of like a round brown spongy thing sticking out about an inch or so. So, overall, my impression of this lake kind of went downhill. I have heard of people catching big bass here though so I’m not ready to totally give up on it just yet. There were many other anglers fishing there so I don’t think the lake is a complete loser.  Many of them brought their white bucket and four to five rods which indicates to me that they are there to harvest as many fish as possible. So I’ll have to give it another try before I can make any more judgements. Anybody else have any luck here?

A buddy of mine and I went to the Occoquan Reservoir for a morning of fishing. Launched at Fountainhead Regional park. Within the first 5 minutes, I caught a nice 15″ bass in the fallen timber. Used a Berkeley Powerbait Jerk Shad in a Texas rig with no weight. Ok, that was a great start! Then we worked some coves and didn’t get much action. My buddy did get a decent channel catfish. Probably about 1 lb or so. Interesting that it was caught on a jig and not the usual stinky baits or live bait. A few hours went by without anything else except a small bass. Then we decided to change it up and look for crappie. We used the fish finder to locate a school of fish near some timber in 30 ft of water. They were suspending pretty deep. Probably around 20-24 feet or so. I drifted my slip bobber with roadrunner jig which was tipped with a medium sized live minnow. Waited patiently for some bites but nothing happening for a while. I tried different depths until that bobber went down. Reeled in a monster of a Crappie! It weighed 2 lbs and measured 15.25″. Brought it in to the boat house and verified that yes its a citation! First ever! My polaroid is now on the “Braggin Board” at Fountainhead. Here are some more pics. Just click to enlarge.

Hmmm. When was the last time I caught 3 quality bass at Burke Lake in the same day? Never! Until today that is. Two 13″ and one 16″. The bass are still spawning and nesting in the shallows. I used an imitation soft plastic shad in a Texas rig without any weight. Just tossed it out. Worked it into the spawning bed. A few twitches and then she gulps it. A good hook set and I’m reeling her in. Okay, sounds easy but it is not. First, not all the bass were willing to bite. It took many many tries before I was able to find a taker. Second, my hook set technique is still not quite there yet. A couple of times, I just pulled the bait right out of its mouth. Another time, I set too hard and the bait broke off. There was one time I got her but I accidentally had my drag on too loose and so she shook free. One of the bass was actually caught on a live nightcrawler and not the soft plastic bait. I was working one nest and could not get her interested. I decided to mix it up and hooked a live nightcrawler on the same Texas rig. I tossed it into the bed and it started to attract all the bluegill. But…the good thing about the crawler in the bed is that the bass chases all of the bluegill away. She then just looks down and sees food and then took it! Check out the pics.

Everybody has a confidence bait. That is, that one lure that you can rely on when nothing else is working. The suspending Rapala jerkbait has become my confidence bait. Everybody should have a bait that you know catches fish so you can go to it in a crunch. I love the suspending hard jerkbait since it can be worked slow or fast. It can be run steady or in a jigging motion. I can also control its depth pretty well by keeping the rod tip either high or low. I use this bait as a search bait since I can cover a lot of water. If I want to focus in on an area I can still do that by pinpointing a spot and then work the bait slowly and precisely. The one drawback is that it isn’t weedless and therefore you can end up in some bad hang-ups. I’ve been able to more or less reduce the number of hang-ups by paying more attention to the depth its running. When I get it into the shallows, I keep the rod tip higher to prevent it from getting stuck on bottom structure.

Using the jerkbait with fireline helps me feel the action of the bait given the lack of any stretch in the line. I can feel any bumps against rocks or stumps and helps me locate structure. I can also react to bites quickly since the strikes are transmitted to the rod immediately using fireline. I also like the versatility of the suspending jerkbait since I’ve caught largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, all kinds of panfish, and walleye using it. Everybody should find their own confidence bait. I’ll always experiment with different baits but I understand each may have its own learning curve and my fishing time is limited. So let me know what your confidence bait is and why. I’d love to get some ideas on new techniques to try.

Twenty minutes of fishing. Two bass out of Audubon and one runt of a bass out of Thoreau. One of the bass at Audubon was about 13-14″ and the other one was of the typical 9-10″ size that I’ve seen pretty frequently. Basically, I walked a little bit of the shoreline of Audubon and then drove over to Lake Thoreau and fished off of the little pier next to Thoreau pool. The bass at Audubon were in rocky shallows. I could even see the shapes of other bass in the shallows too. The one bass at Thoreau was virtually under the pier. Not bad for just 20 minutes of fishing about 5 minutes from home. 

The conditions changed since my last outing to Burke Lake. First off, it rained. Not only did the pressure drop but the rain changed the clarity of the water. Although I was still able to see bass cruising around the shallows, I certainly didn’t see as many. I still did have a hard time getting a strike. I hiked around part of the lake and even walked some of the wooded trails to get to the shallower coves. The problem with shore fishing is that its difficult to sneak up on fish in the shallows. By the time I was able to stomp through the brush and get within a good casting position, the bass just darted to deeper water. As the sun was going down, I decided to work the channel by the boat launch. I figured that half the battle is knowing where the fish are and I definitely knew there were fish around there. The other half of the battle is presenting the bait to trigger a strike. I tried each fishing pier and at one of them I saw a bass chase my Rapala suspending jerkbait all the way to shore before backing off. So I’m thinking that she’s interested but now I need to keep showing her the bait and maybe I’ll get a strike. Given that it was getting dark, I could no longer pinpoint her location. I just needed to cover the whole area. Five or six casts later, I got an aggressive strike and then brought her in! A nice 16″ largemouth! Later I talked to the park ranger and found that the pattern I chose to fish is an effective one for spawning Burke Lake bass. He agreed that it is difficult to get the bass to strike but he said to try shad-like baits and work them towards the spawning beds. The bass will attack it if it gets too close to her nest. There you have it. The tip of the day!

Its the first week of April and up until now the weather hasn’t truly gotten warm. I went to Burke Lake this morning to see if the warmer temps might turn on the fishing. Wow! The moment I stepped up to the shore I could see big bass after big bass cruising the shallows. Its obviously spawning season for the bass since some were sitting on weed beds in 6 inches of water just a few feet off of the shoreline. Massive schools of shad were cruising the shallows too. Amazing that the shad could swim right by these monster bass without them even paying any attention. I’m guessing that most of the big ones were at lease 20 inches plus and some much larger than that. I desperately tried to find the right combination of presentations to get a strike. I’ve never really done sight fishing before but my understanding is that you spot a bass and then toss a lure in front of its face and see if you can get a strike. So…tried a senko, Berkeley powerbait crawfish, and a Rapala suspending jerkbait. None of them were much success for most of the morning. I even was able to come close to touching the fish with the bait without it even being interested. I worked the shoreline and incredibly got one to strike the Rapala jerkbait. Really nice fight and measured up at around 19 inches. A few minutes later I got another one much larger but fell off. I’m guessing that one was at least 4 pounds. No joke! Check out the one I landed. That one’s not bad at all! I released her back so she can go back to spawning. To keep Burke Lake filled with bass, you should do the same. Now go out and enjoy some spring fishing!

Ok, I think I’ve come up with a pretty consistent pattern now for Lake Audubon. Three more largemouth bass on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. All came at the same ol’ spots I’ve been hitting. I did walk over to the end of the lake by the Lake Thoreau dam. But that area is rather shallow and didn’t get any significant bites except for a couple of minor nibbles. I’ll be trying the other Reston lakes soon. So stay tuned for reports on Lakes Newport, Thoreau, and Anne.