Starting in early Feb My friend and I had hit lake Murray 3 times on Thursdays and DVL once on a Friday.

We caught a bunch of fish but I could not catch a good one to save my life. We fished swimbaits and Jigs.

Here is a decent fish Louie caught at Murray on my trout swimbait.

Then I went to my favorite lake(Jennings) on Saterday the 20th to fish a new prototype bait. I caught 1 little one about a pound(I have no idea what the little guy was thinking) and I caught 1 good one. A nice healthy 9 lber. Finaly a decent fish!

So being motivated to fish again I decided to sneak out last night the 22nd to lake Cantellya to do some night time swimbaiting. I was throwing my old school FT swimbait that has been discontinued for years. I ended up catching 5 fish on it, with the biggest one just under 5lbs and the others were all around 2lbs. Sorry for the pic quality, I used my cell phone to take the pics. Louie caught 1 and then broke off his bait on the next one.

Then the bite died off so I broke out the ultra light and threw out a crawler. Look at the size of this Gill! Cool huh?

There were a bunch of gills stacked up in this one spot so naturally I figured they might be attracting some bigger bass so I put on a slow sink hard gill and swam it threw the school of big gills. On my third cast I was rewarded. I broke out the real camera for this one.

10lbs ½ oz.

My year started off realy slow but I am starting to find my groove. Hopefully I can stick some more.

I would call that a great start to the year!

Boy if thats not motivation to try out a few of those swimbaits I don't know what is.  Great fish right there.  That 9lber is one fat fish.

Those are some fine fish!

;D ;D ;D

I would call that a great start to the year!

X2

Actually I would be quite happy if those were the only fish I caught all year long.   ;D

Very nice fish Matt

Dinks ;D

Nice catching Matt.

goodness man, well done. Those pics will be hard to beat the rest of the year. Not sure how many Virginians will post something close to that. Well done

well done matt.

Thanks fellas. I figure I have to catch them now because I want to get some big salty bass this year.

Great fish ! Heck, even that Bluegill is a slab ! Is that one of those Coppernose types ?

Stay on em' man. Great start

Fish

Ha I knew you would notice the gill. I am not sure if its a copper nose. I didnt think to look that closely.

I am not sure of the right way to tell but the CN gills that I have seen have had a white edge to their tail along with the copper nose.