There are lots of fish that could bite in Urbanna Creek at the mouth of the Rappahannock River – stripers, trout, puppy drum, and white perch - to name a few, but they didn’t like what I was cooking for dinner. So, there I sat, bite-less. I had been throwing grubs and Ratt’l Traps and dunking Fishbites off the docks, but no takers. As long as I was just going to sit there, I went to the … [Read more...]

  Speckled trout action has been on fire on the Outer Banks for several months, and now it’s “speck” time in Virginia. Specked trout and puppy drum action is picking inside the inlets. Topwater baits or popping corks baited with fresh shrimp, fresh cut bait or soft crabs will do the trick. Captain Beck and his Knot Wish’n Charter crews have been catching them inside Rudee Inlet. Long … [Read more...]

  Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) Fisheries staff will be busy this fall stocking catchable channel catfish in more than 120 waters throughout the state. These stockings will begin during the last week of October and will continue through November. According to Brendan Delbos, the State Hatchery Superintendent, “The fall catfish stocking program is one of our most … [Read more...]

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...]