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.

Fishing Report: Moormans TJTU Section

Rich and I made a quick trip to the Moormans on Monday, June 15th, to see if we could pull in any of the left over rainbow trout that had survived the terrible poaching that occurs there.

We saw only one rainbow in the upper hole just below the dam but couldn't get him to pay attention to anything, not even the always successful kreelex. We did, however, have a fun time reeling in tons of sunfish, chubs (so gross), and small bass.

I actually stopped by the river again this past weekend with my parents to show them around. Dad threw in with his favorite black woolly bugger hoping to catch a few bass/bluegill and actually hooked up with one of the remaining rainbows only to have it unhook just as he was getting to the riverbank. I'm amazed that any of the trout have survived the poaching. Hopefully, they'll continue to outwit those who are stealing fish.

Fishing Report: Rapidan River

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Rich and I have been decompressing from finals and starting our summer research projects.

This report is two weeks old, but should still be pertinent. On my way up to D.C. on Friday, June 12th, I made a quick stop off at my favorite stream, the Rapidan. Water levels were a little high but flowing well and the fish mainly stayed deep but still came up to take dry flies if they looked tasty enough.

As seen in the USGS discharge data, the levels are high for this time of year but remember that we usually start to see some decreases this time of year. Fortunately, due to all of the rain we've had, the levels have remained at ideal levels for the upper sections of park streams.

I caught most of my brookies on parachute adams and my snowshoe humpy in sizes 12 and 14.

I also caught one on a golden retriever (a version of the classic woolly bugger that I've had a lot of success with for everything from crappie to trout) in the tan color on a size 10. I was hoping to pull in a brookie larger than 10 inches but no luck this time.

All in all, it was a great trip. The Rapidan never fails to deliver.

Late Night TV Host Conan O'Brian's Attempt at Brownlining

As I was fervently avoiding studying for the Pathology final, I tuned in to Conan last night and was delighted to see that he and his buddy, Andy Richter, decided to take a trip to the Los Angeles River. As you will see in the clip below, they attempted (a very generous use of the word) to fly fish.

Not one of his best gigs, but I enjoyed the fact that they even thought to include a second or two of them trying to throw lines.

Reminded me that I also saw some Hollywood fly fishing a while ago on the new show, Kings. Never actually see the actor throw out a cast but whatever river he's "fishing" looks phenomenal.

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.  

Apparently Sperm Whales Enjoy Fishing As Well

Just saw this video from Nat Geo and thought it was amazing. Researchers found that sperm whales, in order to get an easy meal, will approach cod fishing lines and shake them to release the hooked fish.

I guess I'm thankful I'm not fishing in deep oceans. I'd be furious to lose a fish because a whale outsmarted me.

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.