Matt in NOVA

As a new guy here, after reading this thread I just want to say that I plan to never, ever post the weight of a fish I've caught. Pics, maybe -- if I ever catch anything. But I'm just gonna let y'all guess at the weights. ;D

I'm a little late to this party, and loading/unloading gear is about the only thing I'd be good for. But I'm in the neighborhood -- fifteen minutes to Fountainhead from my house, less to the Lake Ridge launch -- so by all means drop me a line! The same goes for you other NOVA folks, too, as long as you don't mind the fact that I'm pretty clueless about bass fishing.

Thanks, Derek. Yeah, I've been messing around with worms and brush hogs -- Texas, Carolina, drop shot, wacky worms rigged weedless with my daughter's orthodontic rubber bands. I still manage to lose them regularly :, but it doesn't sting as much as losing lures. I've been trying different retrieves, but since I'm not catching anything I don't get any real feedback on what works and what doesn't. I have a strong suspicion that a big part of it is that I'm just not fishing the right places. :-/

Hi folks. My name is Matt, I'm 39, I live in Woodbridge, Virginia, and I don't know $%(! about fishing! But I'm trying to learn. Backing up a little, as a kid in Indiana I used to go fishing fairly often, but it was basically for panfish and the occasional, accidental smallmouth on live bait under a bobber. (And one 21" northern pike that might as well have been a great white, as far as I was concerned.) There wasn't much skill involved. I lost lures to snags very quickly and never caught anything on them, so I quit trying and basically stuck with live bait. Then I got a little older and got interested in other things. From my late teens until a couple years ago, I'd probably fished less than a dozen times total. Now I have kids of my own and have taken them out a few times in the past couple years. They enjoy it -- especially when we catch fish! -- and we've had a little luck on panfish and catfish in the Occoquan Reservoir and Lake Burke. (I mention them by name because I know there are some other Northern Virginia folks here.) But it's hit-or-miss, and for their sake and mine I'd like to get better at finding the fish and figuring out how to catch 'em. So where do bass come in? Well, a couple weekends ago my six year-old and I were fishing from the bank on the Occoquan and catching nothing but tiny bluegill. I opened the tackle box and noticed a rattle trap there that I'd bought in a fit of optimism a while back. I thought, "eh, what the heck -- our luck can't get any worse." So I tied it on and cast it down the bank, across the front of some grass poking out of the water, and retrieved it. Nothing. On my second cast it took about two cranks before a largemouth nailed the lure! It's a good thing the fish hit it hard, because I honestly didn't expect anything and probably would've missed it if it hadn't basically set the hook itself. That was the first largemouth (larger than a few inches) that I ever caught, and I'm pretty sure it was the first fish I ever caught on any kind of artificial bait! Anyway, once I landed him -- not a big fish at all by bass standards, but a whole lot more impressive than palm-sized bluegill** -- I thought, "gee, that was a lot of fun! I'd really like to do that again!" Of course I lost that lure to a snag about two casts later. But I've been out to try again at least a half-dozen times in the past two weeks (I've even snuck out late at night a couple times, when I should've been sleeping), and all I've managed to do is lose more lures. The only bites I've gotten were mosquito bites. I've been doing some reading to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but so far it hasn't made any difference. A couple nights ago, as I was nearing the end of another frustrating evening, it dawned on me that I don't even know enough to get much out of what I'm reading. Look for structure? Check! How do I find it? Simple stuff like that. Basically, I don't know #%(! about fishing. So that's why I'm here. **Funny story: when I landed that bass and showed it to my little boy, he put down his cane pole, pointed at my rod, and said, "I want that one!" Smart kid! ;D