Paul Naj

BF, It is a Native Watercraft Ultimate 12. I love the boat. It's easy to get on and off my roof, fishes nicely, I can easily stand in it and get a great vantage point to structure and it has great mojo. :-) Paul

Ron, Way to recover from a tough morning. Sorry about the rod. Too bad we weren't able to get together in the afternoon but I sure needed the rest. P

Welcome to the board! Nice job on the smallies. Good luck this weekend and take some pics. Be sure to check out the SMB forum on this site as well.

Sam, thanks for the response, your assessment is right on as usual. I agree that patterns change and it's a bad assumption to think that you have them "wired". I've been fishing long enough to know that and while I can be a bit stubborn I'm usually good at improvising on the water and it's part of the reason that I rarely get skunked. I think the disappointing thing to me is that I wasn't able to stick to the basics that have become instinctual for me over the many years of fishing. I could have changed lures more, tried different retrieves and tried more spots when the hits weren't coming but it was hard to make that call because even the day before there weren't a ton of hits. The bigger disappointment was the dull hook and frayed line. I am usually very diligent at checking and rechecking all functional parts of my tackle and neither of those should have happened. As I said, I had 3 solid pick-ups and with the average of the fish I've been getting, could have equated to 10 to 13 pounds of fish. I'm going to chalk those up to sleep deprivation and get back on my game next time out. The good news is that even with the poor results I had a great time on the water. If you've ever tried to hit a baseball pitched by a pro or semi-pro pitcher, played a round of golf with a PGA pro etc, you gain a whole new perspective on what a high level they are performing at. The same holds true for these guys that consistently produce on the BASS tour on lakes and rivers that they don't fish often, if ever. That is just a whole other level and it's days like yesterday that give me an appreciation for their talent. It also makes yesterday easier to swallow realizing that even they have bad days. I can't wait to get out again!

OK, that's Beaverdam Creek Reservoir. The advice given above is for there and good advice. Lake Burke has two launch ramps, one owned by Fairfax County and charges a fee, the other is run by the VDGIF and is free. Occoquan reservoir is not far from there as well. Lot's of good info to be found here > http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/

Eddie, Are you talking about Beaverdam in Gloucester County or Loudoun County?

I had another amazing day yesterday. I did even better than last week boating 7 fish to a high of 5 Lb 3 oz. I had so much fun that I took the day off today to see if I could make it 3 in a row. So certainly if you're getting good fish 2 trips in a row on the exact same pattern you should be able to reproduce it again since virtually all the conditions are the same, right? Not so much. I didn't sleep well last night, physically tired from 2 early mornings in a row and just not on my game today. I think the fish took a break today as well. I ended up with only my second skunk of the season. I had 3 solid pickups, missed 2 because of a dull hook and buried the hook in the 3rd only to have my leader break. I had a handful of other short hits, something they haven't done the past two times out. Overall I had fewer hits for the day. I ran into Rodef and JCrzy4Bass launching their canoe this morning. When they saw me out there they were excited that they would get to see some of what has worked for me so well and hoped to get in on it as well. When we parted they had similar results. I'm not sure if they did anything after that. I'll chalk today up as one of those reminders of why this sport never gets dull and drives us to beat ourselves up to continue to get better. Or was that yesterday?...

Hey Nitro, it's only Saturday.

The fish were on a secondary point in 15 to 20 feet of water. It looks like I may get another shot out there next week if my schedule stays clear. I can't wait to see if this past week was a fluke or if I can reproduce the pattern. If I can even come close to that success I may need to take a few days off. :-)

Thanks guys. Not only was it fun but it was personally satisfyng to be able to catch that quality of fish with a method that I have historically been weak on. Andrew, sorry that shot was too juicy to pass up. :-) Yes, Plan B moved a short time ago but he was kind enough to spend some time on the phone with me last night. Even though I didn't catch on the exact spots we discussed it really helped my confidence going in and I knew what to look for.

... for size not quantity. Although I landed only 4 fish they weighed 2lb 10oz, 3lb 10oz, 4lb 14oz and 5lb 4oz. I also lost one bigger than the smallest one I caught. I was going to try and get out on the Upper Potomac again today for some smallmouth action but I couldn't find anyone to go so I decided to chase some LMB and try to exercise my demons of not being able to catch fish in deep water. With a little coaching from Brian (Plan B on the Pacemaker site), I set out with a game plan. In trying to find one of the pieces of structure we discussed I ran across a nice secondary point to the north of my original target. I started marking the point with the intention of leaving it to find my original target and coming back to this one later. Before I could leave the area I started marking bait and some awesome structure with fish on it so I decided to fish it. On my second cast I hooked up with a decent fish but lost it at the boat when it jumped. My guess was that it was just over 3#. I stayed in the area and had a slow pick but was happy to stay for the quality fish. After my 3rd fish, the 5lb 4oz, I tried a bunch of other areas and did nothing. I made one more pass at this point and got the 4lb, 14oz fish. I spent about another hour or so finding some interesting structure but only had 2 more hits and no hook ups. Mental notes were made for the future and I was back in by noon. Thanks for your help Brian! And thanks for not being able to fish today Andrew. ;-)

I don't have a lot of free time this weekend so I'm just going to stay local and chase a few SMB. Good luck on Sunday.

Bill, welcome aboard. Great video!

See what happens when you lose bluetooth in your ear? Way to go Simon, beautiful fish!

Jason / Ron, good job. This fishery is just plain fun. I'm back from vacation and cant wait to get out again this week.

Take a look in the main forum gang, one of VA's best. We're lucky to have him down here. Way to go Sam. http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1215048044

Way to go Sam!

A nice one! Tough to tell from the coloration on the picture but it looks like a channel cat. This page on the DGIF site has some decent descriptions. http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/fish/ Good luck in CO. I'll help keep Beaverdam Creek honest for you.

These guys will have something soon. http://www.geomart.com/products/nautical/gmco.htm

Okrod, I recently emailed Geomart to see when the Occoquan map would be available and their publisher told them May and it's still not in so the only answer they could stick with is "soon". As far as a big fish in the yak, its very doable. Just learn to embrace the "Nantucket sleigh ride" and you'll be fine.

Thanks guys. It was a fun trip, I can't wait to do it again. I was up further by Point of Rocks but Algonkian is holding some nice fish too and is an easier spot to paddle upstream and work down. Don't forget to work the area between the ramp and the falls though. Chai, I'm with you on the tubes bud. I've fished them in lakes with moderate success but was doing squat with them in the mornings in the river. I was switching to grubs and flukes and catching a few fish but the guys I was with were getting better fish on tubes. One of the cool things about the river is that the water is really clear and in some of the shallower areas you can see how your lure works and see small fish following it. You can also see the baitfish as they sweep in the current. It took me a while but clearly my tube wasn't looking like the bait. When I stopped bouncing the tube and cast at just the right angle and did a slow, steady retrieve, I started getting hits. Sure enough the tube was looking a lot more like the bait. Also, it was important to pitch it slightly ahead of the structure so that it dropped down the back side or put it directly in some of the accelerated water around breaks. After I figured this out I stopped catching the little 6 inch dinks and got respectable, hard fighting fish.

Got out with the gang from the Pacemaker site this past weekend for a float down the Upper Potomac in search of some SMB. The day started off slow with a bunch of little 6 and 7 inch dinks but as the day progressed, so did the fish. There were plenty of feisty 10 to 13 inch fish caught and a few better ones including this 3# fish I got on the home stretch towards the launch. There was another one caught that was a half inch and few ounces short of mine. All in all it was a great day with beautiful scenery, fun fishing and great people. Can't wait to get out and do it again. Naj

You can take the Ferry across the river at White's Ferry and there's a put in there. It's about 11 miles down river to Algonkian Regional Park. It's a calm stretch of river and smallmouths throughout.

Hey Rob, have your buds been getting anything of size? Ernie from Ashburn has been on the river quite a bit lately and getting mostly little dinks down here. He's gotten some better fish N of Point of Rocks. I'm looking to do the river one morning next week.

I know this is a LMB / SMB board but I thought I'd share with my NOVA buds a night in the life of the fishing that I've spent the majority of the past 25 years chasing. Striped Bass. I got a call a week ago from a buddy in NJ that our friend from Chicago was flying in and they were heading to a small island in New England to do some striped bass fishing. I took two days off of work and drove up yesterday. I missed the 6:30 ferry but caught the last one at 8:45 and hit the island at 9:30 as my buddies were ready to hit the water. So after 7 hours in the truck, a small wait before the ferry ride and without any time to rest I geared up and off we went. The plan for the night was to hit a bunch of areas and to find as much moving water as possible since there wasn't much wave action and the moon was bright which can make the fishing tough on the beach. We planned on throwing light colored plugs and live eels. While we didn't quite find the type of water we wanted, we were able to get some bites at almost every spot we fished. At the end of the night I only landed 2 fish the largest weighing 16# 4oz. I lost two others that I had solidly hooked but got off as they put on an absolutely crazy show flailing half out of the water until they got the hook loose. My friend Brian ended up with 4 fish and Charlie got 1 with mine being the largest so far. While the 16-4 was a nice fish and certainly the biggest I've seen in a while it's not really what we came here for. The goal for the trip is to get something twice that size. I only have one more night on the island so hopefully we can get a little more water movement or some cloud cover tonight and make it count. The bottom line for me is to get together with some great friends, spend a few days in a beautiful place and pick up right where I left off doing something that I love. Enjoy the pics.