According to Katie Martin DWR Biologist, over 200,000 hunters will take to the woods this fall and most with deer on their minds. That said, the availability of mast – acorns mainly – will have a lot to do with hunter success. Lots of nuts mean the deer won’t have to travel far for their meals and will expose themselves less to a 30:06 cartridge. When mast is poor, it’s a different story. Deer … [Read more...]

Fall is here, and that means think “small”. Small as in smallmouth bass. Fall is the perfect time to catch the most dynamic freshwater fish of all. Smallies are active, they’re in fishable waters, not deep, and they are hungry; and Virginia is blessed with great smallmouth rivers, both large and small. With shorter days and cooler nights, temperatures are perfect, both in the air and in the water, … [Read more...]

      Our boat was not ten minutes from the dock before Capt. Reece Stecher saw them. “Get your rod ready, there they are,” Reece shouted from the tower. “I saw them too, an angry mob of red drum. They had trapped a hapless school of mullet on a shoal and were laying waste to any and everything that moved. My Johnson Spoon didn’t make it five feet and it was, “Fish … [Read more...]

  More and more anglers are practicing catch and release. The idea is that a fish is too valuable a resource to be caught only once. But catch and release is only effective if the fish is released back into the water alive and able to resume its natural life. Many well-intended anglers kill fish they intended to keep alive. The late Lefty Kreh, a fly-fishing guru, told me once that he … [Read more...]

  I was headed to the Rappahannock River last September hoping to get into the spot – those big yellow bellies that show up each fall. For this, I needed bloodworms. As soon as I saw the first bait shop in West Point, I stopped.  No bloodworms, they said. Nobody’s got them. Again and again, I stopped and there were indeed no bloodworms to be had. But on my last stop, a lady said she did … [Read more...]

  All summer, boats venturing out in deeper water have returned to the docks with nice Blue Line Tilefish. These colorful bottom dwellers hang out in deep water, really deep water, like 250 feet and more. They hang in the same kind of habitat with groupers and snappers and prefer sandy bottoms. James Friend Dickerson and buddies chartered The Doghouse out of Manteo last week and caught … [Read more...]

  Eighty-one teams fished the Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament last week. Cash awards totaling $785,250 were handed out. That’s a lot of dollar bills for the big bills – the blue and white marlin. It’s the peak season for them right now. As a rule, the billfish action gets hot and heavy from now until the first big Atlantic hurricane passes by.  Then it slows down considerably, but for … [Read more...]

(From Paige II Charters) Saltwater fishing right now is as good as it gets. Almost every species is biting – particularly spadefish and Spanish mackerel – both delicious in the eating department. Spadefish and sheepshead are on Chesapeake Bay structure. Kayakers have been catching lots of large sheepshead around the pilings of the CBBT. The Spanish are well up into the Bay as well as roaming … [Read more...]

Sailfish, blue marlin, white marlin! Yep, they are off the coasts of Virginia and Carolina now and they’re biting. It’s perfect timing as the local tournament season is underway. Boats have been having multiple hook-ups with blue and white marlin. Mahi catches in Virginia are coming from inshore seamounts such as the “Hot Dog”. Wahoo are in the same area as well as tuna. Swordfish, too. Carolina … [Read more...]