The Chickahominy River near Lanexa is hot. Lots of fish are biting, especially bass.
Mike Johncox at Riverside Camp reported that 17-year old Thomas Carter from Sandstone boated a a handsome 6 pound largemouth. That’s a nice fish for the Chick, a tidal river.
Mike also said that if you want to have a neighborhood fish fry for catfish, now is the time. Lots of pan-size (1 to 3 pound) channel cats are biting as well as a few larger fish up to 12 pounds. Chicken loivers, crawlers, and shrimp are all putting g fish in the boat.
And if you want a meal of southern fried bluegills, well, the gills are biting too.
Mike rents jon boats and motors and keeps a good supply of bait and lures on hand.
Why not head for the Chick this weekend? It’s a hot spot.
Good Tides for Topwater
Low morning ides good for topwater bites. Frogs, poppers and walkers. Water is in the upper 70s and fish are pretty active.
In areas where you have enough water, try Lucky Craft G Splash poppers and Gunfish walkers on 30-pound test GAMMA torque braid. Over grass, hollow frogs on 50-pound Torque. Use white on sunny days and black when it’s cloudy. Keep a follow up bait, like a weightless stick worm on a spinning rod with 20-pound Torque. Be quick to abandon this strategy when the tide covers up the grass.
As the sun comes out in the mid day with more water go to docks pitching Mizmo tubes, jigs and other baits depending on water clarity. Muddier water, go to bulkier baits with appendages. Pitch to shady side of pilings on 14-pound test GAMMA Edge fluorocarbon line and a 3/16-ounce bullet weight. Also skip stickworms, Texas rigged with a 3/0 Mustad Mega bite hook, to large dock shady areas. Soak baits in garlic Jack’s Juice attractant.
Swimming jigs, swimbaits and chatter jigs will also be effective in grass beds. For the jigs, try crawfish patterns with craw trailers. Swimbaits work well with 1/4 ounce weighted Mustad Swimbait hooks. Use 14-pound test Edge. Swim and drop, snap free from grass.
Making contact with grass is key when using Mann’s Baby 1-Minus crankbaits. Go a bit deeper with Lucky Craft BDS4 cranks on 14-pound test Edge. Crank these baits to the grass and then snap and pause.
Capt. Steve Chaconas is a guide on the Potomac River. info@nationalbass.com
Lake Orange
The lake is clear and in the 80-degree range, reports Anglers Landing. The catfish bite is strong throughout the lake. Some walleyes are still being caught. Crappie are staging near structure in 10-foot depths. Bass are hitting soft plastics – a 6 pounder was weighed this week. Bluegills and redear sunfish are biting. Fishing overall is excellent.
Chickahominy Lake
Capt. Art Conway out of Ed Allen’s Boats and Bait reported that Chickahominy Lake mid-day water temperatures were in the low to mid-80’s in the lower main lake on Wednesday. The lake level was several inches above the top of the dam.
Fishing with Capt. Conway, Eric Webster had 42 bluegill, 1 shellcracker. and 3 bass. Karen Anderson had 32 bluegill, 1 shellcracker, 2 crappie, 3 yellow perch, and 1 bass. Capt. Bill Buck and Tom Porter had 34 bluegill, 2 crappie, 1 bullhead, and 3 bass.
Shenandoah River
On a recent float from Karo to the State Park, Ed T filed this report.
The water level was a bit higher than usual, so it was easier to paddle through this section of the South Fork. Some algae and debris were in the water, but it was not much of a problem. Good conditions, overall. I caught most of my fish in the morning with a #3 Mepps spinner. I caught a couple on a Bandit 100 crankbait and a few on 4” Senkos in green pumpkin. I spent most of my time working around the rock ledges with the spinner, but I also had some luck tossing Flukes near the banks, resulting in my biggest smallmouth that morning, a sixteen-incher. I also caught a 24-inch catfish.
The bluegills were hitting pretty well, some as large as eight inches. The fish were hitting steadily and I caught about twenty smallmouth by noon. Most of the smallmouth however, were small. A lot of them were about ten inches, and only a few were even twelve inches or better. After noon, I switched over to the Senkos most of the time. I was fishing them like I fish Flukes, in that I would give them a good jerk on the surface before letting them sink. After they sank down, sometimes I let them drift, sometimes I swam them around and sometimes I pulled them back up and worked them on the surface.
Around two o’clock, I also started using a Rapala Floating Minnow in silver. For some reason, the minnow was producing very aggressive strikes, sometimes on the surface and often as I cranked it in. They were really smacking the minnow, and I loved seeing that rod bend when they hooked up. The rest of the afternoon I divided my time between the Senkos and the Rapala. During the latter part of the trip I was having about as much luck fishing the flat areas of water as I was in fishing the areas close to the rocks. The afternoon fishing produced several decent midsize smallmouth including one seventeen incher. But much like the morning, the majority of my bass were under a foot. So I caught a lot of smallmouth, over forty, but not much in weight. I often have that problem in summertime fishing, and from talking to others, I don’t think I’m alone in that regard.
However, a local pro went out on the same section of river last Saturday and caught several smallmouth over twenty inches. If you watch for them, you can frequently spot smallmouth over twenty inches in the South Fork.
Overall, it was pretty good weather and pretty good fishing. We always dream of that big lunker, but catching over five bass an hour was not all that bad either. Summertime season makes it easy to catch a lot of fish, about as easy as it gets. So make some time to get out for some fun fishing on the South Fork.