Rivanna Largemouth 9/2011

Greg and I spooked out the Rivanna below the dam on the north end of Charlottesville this week. We found a mediocre bite until about 530 when the largemouth really turned on. This is one of the few spots on the Rivanna where we regularly catch largemouth bass as opposed to smallies. We mainly used silver and gold standard floating Rapalas, but I'm sure if we had been fly fishing we would have had great success with kreelex or any wooley bugger pattern. We should have another couple weeks of great bass fishing left this season before the bite cools off with the weather. Get out there and take advantage of it!

What do you do when you have no time to fish?

Answer: Watch movies of other people fishing.

Unfortunately we don't have much anything to report.  Water levels are still low here in Charlottesville and the temperatures haven't dropped enough to make fishing in the park worth it, leaving us with nothing to do other than study.  It's times like these that make me wonder if fishing guides sit around in the winter complaining and wishing they were training to become doctors instead.  For some reason, I doubt they do.

So instead of a fishing report this week, here's some of the videos that have helped me through the past week of playing catchup in pharmacology:

By far the best short flick on fly fishing out there on the web, Todd Moen's video, Alpine Bass.  I stumbled upon it in Catch Magazine Issue #6.  Enjoy.


Found this video of great foam fly action on the Simms website:


And finally, this video, "7 Minutes of Mayhem", shows off some amazing baby tarpon action off of the yucatan peninsula.  Using a blunted hook, the fisherman hooks and unhooks (purposefully) numerous tarpon.  Sick nasty.

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.

Fly Tying Instructions: Glitterbug Bass Popper

I got tired of buying bass poppers at the store for $4-5 only to have them get destroyed or lost within 24 hours... and by that I mean, I bought 2 of them and thought, "hey these can't be that hard to make". Since then, I've been making my own and my wallet thanks me.

I've found that online there are not many detailed descriptions of how to make your own bass poppers so I've put this together to hopefully help you figure out exactly how to go about making your own.

The Glitterbug (name courtesy of Rich), is a basic styrofoam bodied bass popper. To make it more durable than a painted popper, I've decided to epoxy the whole thing. This has allowed me to use the same popper over the course of several days of fishing while withstanding tons of abuse. So not only are they cheaper than store bought ones, they're also extremely tough.

The materials you'll need:

- closed cell white styrofoam (I got a 1 inch thick disk of it from Michael's for real cheap)

- any color glitter you want

- hackle colored to match the color of glitter used, I've been using hen hackle

- rubber legs (I prefer using white legs for all of my poppers but feel free to mix it up)

- hooks: I prefer using Eagle Claw plain shanks in size 4 (they're a lot cheaper than orvis hooks, but work just as well)

- 5 minute epoxy: I use Z-poxy

- pad of post-it notes

- bendable razor blades: I looked all over for these. I finally found them at Walmart in the shaving section. The brand I got was called Personna Double Edge

- toothpicks (to stir and apply the epoxy)

- heavy wire (I've been using old guitar strings) or large sewing needles

Instructions:

First cut out a piece of styrofoam that's rounded on top and flat on the bottom. I do this by taking the razor, bending it, and cutting out a piece off of a flat side of the styrofoam. I've found the best way to get it to be cut evenly and smoothly is to line up the razor where you want the cut and then pressing down on it with something else (I use my pad of post-it notes).

I then taper the front of the head and the back so that it looks like below:

Next I carefully push the head of the hook through the foam near the bottom. So that it ends up looking like so...

Next step is to epoxy the face and belly of the popper. To do this, put an equal amount of the z-

poxy hardener and resin on the post-it note pad and mix them together. For this part, I don't like to put any coloring because I'd like to think that it makes it look more like a frog without it. While doing this I make sure to put plenty of epoxy on the hook shank and shimmy the head forward. This ensures that, once the epoxy hardens, the head will remain stationary. I put enough on to successfully cover the belly and the face and then let the epoxy dry while keeping it moving (I don't have a rotating fly drier quite yet... I'll probably make one out of a microwave motor in the near future.) While this is drying, I'll usually start making others so that when it comes to epoxying the rest of the head, I'll have several ready.

Next step, I pour out more z-poxy onto a post-it note pad and mix it well before adding a decent amount of glitter. (Note: if you add too much it gets very clumped up and your fly will look like some kind of lumpy mutant. Play it safe and add a little at first, mix it in and see if you think the epoxy can hold more glitter.)

Then put this over the body of the popper making sure that it meets up with the edges of the clear epoxy from the belly and face. This takes a couple tries to get good at while making sure that the end result isn't uneven or ends up with too much epoxy.

Once it starts to dry up, you'll have to move quickly to put the legs in before the epoxy gets too hard to work with. Basically, once I can touch the epoxy and it doesn't stick to my fingers I can start putting the legs in. To do this I take a large needle or a tough wire (like an old guitar string and make a sharp bend in it). I then push this needle/bent wire through the side of the popper and out the other side. At this point it'll look like this:

Now all you need to do is thread a leg through the body as seen below:

Next, just repeat the same procedure to put in another set of legs (unless you're making a smaller one, in which case, only one set of legs should be enough).

Once the legs are in the right position, I'll usually put some head cement where they enter the epoxy to make sure they don't slip out. Trim the legs and then start a thread behind the head and bring it back down the curve of the hook a little ways. I like to build up a little bit of a ball of thread at the farthest back point because I think it helps to splay the hackle out better.

Take two tips of hackle (or only one if you're making smaller poppers) and tie them in on one side of the hook making sure the bend in them is away from the hook. Repeat the same thing on the other side of the hook with two more.

Finally, take one more hackle and tie in a decently long piece with the bend of the feather pointing towards the back of the hook. Like so:

Wrap the hackle forward with several turns and then tie off and trim the hackle down so that it is just a little longer than the space between the hook shank and point. Whip finish to tie off the thread and then just clean things up! Here's the final product:

I hope you find this helpful. It you have any questions or need clarification, feel free to contact us.

As for how to fish these, just throw then out near the stream shoreline where the water is from 1-3 feet deep preferably under some kind of tree cover. After about a 5 seconds, if you haven't had a bite yet, pull in about a solid foot of line giving the popper some action, making some sound and vibrations that will be sure to grab the attention of hungry bass.

Fishing Report: Rivanna at Darden Towe & Riverview Park

I hope you all have been out fishing like Cameron and I have. It is beautiful out, there is plenty of water, and the fish are biting... in some places more than others. I went out on Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours to Riverview Park in Charlottesville to wade the Rivanna. I actually got a good amount of action for the apparent lack of structure on the bottom of the river. Conventional wisdom is still correct with undercuts in the bank and any fallen trees being the best places to present your fly. I ended up pulling in some largemouth, bluegill and smallies that day. Harry Murray's Carolina Blue Poppers worked great, and silver/gold kreelex also did the trick. Unfortunately, I haven't bought a waterproof bag for my camera yet, so no pictures of smallmouth fishing for now.


View Virginia Medical Fly Fishing in a larger map

Darden Towe Park, upstream about a mile or two from Riverview Park on the opposite bank, proved disappointing. Cam and I headed up there yesterday afternoon and were excited to find lots of underwater grass and rocks, which we surmised would hold lots of smallies. This was not the case. I caught a couple of bluegill on the CK Paradox spoon fly I just picked up from Albemarle Angler, but overall the fish that I saw were much smaller than downstream.


View Virginia Medical Fly Fishing in a larger map

I think the next stop on the Rivanna for me is Free Bridge. I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes. Tight lines, y'all.

Fishing Report: Sugar Hollow Reservoir

Wednesday, July 8th I took a quick late afternoon trip up to Sugar Hollow Reservoir with my buddy, David. The weather was perfect and the bass were definitely biting. Overall I think we hauled in about 6 bass, two of which were of pretty decent size.
We started at the dam and just walked along the shoreline fishing all of the good locations. David was using my go-to Yamamoto Senkos while I was fishing with my new favorite bass streamer, CK Baitfish. Yet another awesome fly by Chuck Kraft. I fish it just like I do a Senko. Just let it hit the water and fall slowly without twitching it. This usually will get a fish to bite immediately as it's got some great movement to it as it falls. Then I'll give it a 6 inch strip in every so often to bring it back up before letting it fall again.

David talks to fish, btw.

This lake is just teeming with fish. We barely walked 1/8 a mile around the shoreline. For the more adventuresome fishermen, I imagine the far shorelines hold some huge fish that haven't seen a lure/fly in a long time. (No boating allowed on the lake, fyi)

Fishing Report: South Fork of the Rivanna

Hit up the South Fork this past Saturday with some new bass poppers I made. I started out at the dam just off of route 29 and fished downstream. Had some great luck in the slower sections hauling in several largemouth and smallmouth. It was my first time using these new poppers and I must say they worked just as well as any of the 4-5 dollar ones I've bought in stores. I'll be posting instructions for how to make them and what materials you'll need sometime this week.

Here's a largemouth I caught as he was actively searching his grass bed for a meal. He put up a great fight and tried to lose me in the grass. Thank god I had on Ox tippet.
And my best smallie of the season so far. Also taken with one of my handmade poppers.

Pollak Vineyards

This weekend, my parents came up to Charlottesville to visit and go winetasting. We made the fortunate decision to visit the relatively new, Pollak Vineyards. By far, they had the best wines I've ever tasted that have come out of Virginia. We got to taste 9 wines all of which were solid. Even their Rosé tasted decent, and I HATE all Rosé. After the amazing wine tasting, we asked if we could throw a line in their pond and were granted permission. In my opinion, some of the best bass fishing can be done on private ponds and their pond didn't disappoint.

I hooked my dad up with my favorite bass rig for a spinning rod: a size 2 Gamakatzu EWG with a green pumpkin or watermelon Gary Yamamoto worm. Pretty much immediately he caught a largemouth. Thirty minutes later he had caught six bass, most of which were fairly big. I chose to try a Gulley Worm, something I had just picked up from Albemarle Angler. I'm not going to lie, I thought there was little chance a worm made of chenille would be as successful as a plastic bait in catching bass but it did the trick! I pulled one bass in on it and then lost the worm to what felt like a HUGE bass that broke me off at my Ox leader. I think I'll have to start tying more of these gulley worms. I'll post directions on how to do so in the near future.

I highly recommend everyone take a trip to Pollak. It's going to be the best vineyard in Virginia once people catch wind of how great it is. For now the prices for wine are still low, lower than what you'd find at other wineries. Hopefully, they'll continue to let people fish in their pond too... just be sure to ask nicely.

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.  

Fishing Report: Smith Mountain Lake

I hope everyone got to go out and fish a little this past Memorial Day weekend since the weather (at least here in Virginia) was perfect. Water levels had calmed down significantly allowing for some killer action all over the state.

For my three day weekend, I headed down to Smith Mountain Lake to fish/relax with my frat brothers. We stayed in an awesome condo courtesy of Matherne. Early in the morning on Saturday before a trip to Bojangles for some artery clogging breakfast, Matherne and I hit up the lake in search of striper and largemouth. Without a fishfinder, it became pretty clear that we'd have a hard time finding the striper unless they started actively feeding on the surface. We then resorted to throwing plastic worms (my favorites being the Gary Yamamoto 5 inch worms in green pumpkin, watermelon, and pumpkin). That morning we ended up hooking two good sized bass and losing one of them. I'd guess that they were about 3 lbs each.

After about 9 a.m., the action pretty much died off as the speedboats and jetskis hit the water.

At about 6 p.m., however, the fishing got better. The bass, as far as I could tell were still in their spawning beds close to shore so I headed out on my kayak and caught several more decent bass.

Probably some of the best fishing was done at night off of the dock. The first night, Dylan and I caught a couple bass and brim (I was using bass poppers and my fly rod). The second night Dylan showed up everyone and caught a huge largemouth. Finally, the last night, after Dylan caught a large crappie using a senko, we decided to catch some of the huge carp that pooled up around the dock lights. Using just some plain old hooks, bobbers, and balls of bread, we caught 6 of these mammoths. I'm not going to lie, they are some pretty gross fish but they sure do fight hard and long.

Overall, SML is a great place to fish. It's got a very healthy variety of fish and plenty of space for them to grow large. Thanks again to Matherne for letting us stay at his place.