Fishing Report: Beaver Creek Reservoir

I spent the evening today fishing my local favorite lake, Beaver Creek Reservoir, with Arun and his son, Anand. I had been promising them that senkos and jitterbugs were the way to go when fishing for bass so I was certainly a little nervous that they wouldn't deliver like they usually do. Thankfully, the bass were biting. Pretty much immediately, Arun hauled in a nice sized bass caught on a senko before it jumped off at the last second. We then hit somewhat of a dry spell until sunset at which point the fishing really turned on.

Anand and I headed over to the dam to try our luck there (on a side note, there were others there yesterday fishing all around us, but I didn't see anyone else pulling in bass like we were... gotta be the senkos.) Anand's third cast out got him a sweet largemouth which we returned safely back into the lake. Interestingly enough, while I was helping him unhook the fish, a bass took to my senko as well so I soon thereafter pulled one in as well.

Anand with his good sized largemouth

It started getting darker so I pulled out my black jitterbug to show Arun and Anand how deadly they can be. If my memory serves me right, I think we pulled in three nice bass and had a couple near misses in a span of only thirty minutes. If we had had more jitterbugs to use, who knows how many we could have pulled in.

Yet again, Beaver Creek Reservoir delivered a great fishing experience. There were more people there than I've ever seen before, but it didn't seem to hurt the fishing one bit!

Great place, great company, great fishing.

Beaver Creek Reservoir Revisited

Nick caught a delicious bass

Here's a quick update on some of the official VMFF trips over the past few weekends.  We've seen some new faces out at Beaver Creek Reservoir lately, all of them members of SMD12 (that's fancy talk for UVa Med School's class of 2012).  We've been catching the usual bass and TONS of bluegill, but we've missed the crappie lately.  In fact, I haven't seen a crappie at the reservoir since March when Kyle and I had our fish fry.  Hopefully we didn't eat all of them...

Anyway, on to uplifting fish stories.  I took Jon, a fishing virgin from New Jersey, along with Lee and Benji to the reservoir a few weeks ago.  It was a blasting hot day, but we did manage to land some pretty fish.  Benji, Lee, and Jon all picked up fly fishing very quickly, but it was Jon who became hero of the day by catching the first fish of his life.  Unfortunately, I think I scared him by telling him about the spines on a bluegill's dorsal fin, so it took Lee a couple tries to convince him to just go for it and grab the thing.   

Having learned my lesson in the afternoon heat the week before, Cameron, Kyle, Angie, and I went back to the lake early this past Saturday morning.  We could not have asked for a more perfect day.  The weather stayed a bit cooler and the fish responded by chowing down on Kyle's favorite spider/water bug immitation, and silver rapalas. The fish weren't even the most interesting part of the day.  Angie managed to attract some attention from a reporter from The Hook, a weekly Charlottesville publication.  He just started taking pictures of her while she fly fished from a boat dock, and only later introduced himself to ask for her name for the story he was writing.  Creepy much?  Actually, it turns out that he does work for The Hook and wrote a story about Western Albemarle High School's new boat house for their crew team.  You can see the story here (be sure to check out the slide show link for Angie's 15 minutes of fame).

Aside from paparazzi excitement, Kyle and Cameron figured they would try on their Jeff Corwin shoes and went on the hunt for some water snakes.  After multiple near misses, they succeeded in capturing one and getting some cool pictures with it.  

Beaver Creek Reservoir Trip

Yesterday, I went fishing with Cam and his friend Lena at the Beaver Creek Reservoir (Check out our google map for directions).  Not only did I get to explore a new fishing spot, I made a new friend in the law school (hopefully this will help with the inevitable malpractice suits), and I got to try out Cam's fancy Hobie Cat mirage drive kayak.  This boat is awesome.  It allows you to fish while driving the boat using foot pedals and a rudder whose controls are within easy reach.  I need to get one of these... and maybe a car with a roof rack for it too...

Beaver Creek Reservoir is a pretty popular spot near cville for picnics, boating and spin casting.  We decided to try out some fly fishing and actually met with greater success than the power-baiter we saw there (fly fishing WIN!).  White woolly buggers did the trick.  Woollies are a classic wet fly used for trout, bass, and panfish that imitate all sorts of sub-surface food.  They are best suited for lakes and deep streams, and they can be fished many different ways.  You can do simple fast/slow retrieves, short jerks, allow the fly to sink and then retrieve, or try fast retrieves followed by periods of rest.

As for numbers, you could call yesterday a slow day, but we definitely did not leave empty handed.  I caught a nice panfish down deep in the middle of the lake while Cam hooked one in the shallows near the shore by some great underwater structure.  Overall, the lake is beautiful and full of fish, so definitely check this place out.  You may want to try it during the week when you should find less company.

 

Cameron and I also had the pleasure of showing Lena how to fly fish at the lake.  She is an experienced spin caster, and she found her rhythm very quickly with the fly rod.  She even admitted to liking fly fishing more than spin casting (another fly fishing WIN!).  Hopefully we'll see more of Lena out on the water; look out fish...