I will be visiting Charlottesville next week for my daughters UVA orientation and was looking for some lesser known lakes or ponds for largemouth.    Preferably with good shore fishing as I won't have access to a boat when I visit.   

 

 I live in the haymarket area and fish hunting run, Potomac and several ponds up here.    

 

Thanks in advance for any help

 

Rob

Rob, I have personally never fished in the greater Albemarle County area but as you know, the VG&IF booklet, 2017 Freshwater Fishing in Virginia, gives a list of places to fish in central Virginia.

 

Send Wayne P. a personal message as he lives in that area of the Commonwealth.

 

Wayne P. has not been on the Forum since June and I hope he is OK.

 

Give him a shoutout while you wait for others to give you their input.

 

Congrats on your daughter getting into UVA.  Just remind her that it is easier to get into college then it is to get out of college!!!

This is probably too late for your orientation visit, but I assume you'll be back from time to time. I've been in Charlottesville for a year now and have fished most of the local lakes multiple times (i.e., Walnut Creek, Ragged Mountain, Albemarle, Rivanna Reservoir, Chris Greene, Beaver Creek, Fluvanna Ruritan). I wouldn't say any are lesser-known spots, but at the same time, none of them are fished as hard as they would be in a larger urban area. Unfortunately, some are really hard to fish from the bank. Chris Greene, Walnut Creek, and Ragged Mountain have accessible shorelines around almost their entire circumferences, so I'd recommend you try one of those if you have to fish from the bank. If you have a kayak, try Ragged Mountain, although you will have to take your gear down a fairly steep hill to launch. You'll probably catch mostly small fish at some of these places (Walnut Creek in particular is loaded with dinks), but all these places have big ones in them. My most successful bank fishing technique has come when throwing a weedless wacky worm as described extensively elsewhere in the forums by Wayne P. As Sam mentioned, Wayne P. is a great resource and he's reported catching double digit bass from some of these lakes on weedless wacky worms. I highly recommend you find his descriptions of the technique.