I have been slow to update this. I have two reports for July. I managed three days of fishing at Avalon Pier in Kill Devil Hills, NC during 4th of July week. Besides some nice triggerfish, most of the catch were small bluefish, croaker, and spot. There was a nice barracuda caught on a bucktail, and that was the only big fish action besides sharks. The sharks are thick, with several 8 foot class sand tigers landed by people who were fishing at night. Be careful swimming at the beach, especially around fishing piers or when you see large schools of baitfish swim by.
This weekend, I took a friend to do some catfishing at East Potomac Park. Catching bluegills for cut bait was a bit of a challenge, but once we got fresh bait the catfish cooperated. We managed four catfish ranging from around 8 pounds down to a 16 incher than managed to swallow an 8/0 circle hook.
I know some of you cats are fishing. Post your reports here!
Comments
I never have understood why people swim near the piers. Crazy!
Thing is, they always have. The piers are located in crowded beach areas, and I remember doing just that as a kid. We didn't get attacked, though. Don't know if there is a mandated distance (other than common sense avoidance of hooks and big sinkers) for swimmers, though. I know there is for surfers, usually about a hundred yards. I think there are just so many more of us in the water that shark attacks will be more numerous just by virtue of statistics.
Bait and struggling fish in the water, the attraction of structure, and the addition of fish guts from the cleaning tables should be enough to cause one pause, though. And pier or no pier, that midnight swim might be the craziest swim of all.
A kid at Avalon Pier just caught a 47.5 pound cobia on a bucktail That is a nice fish!
Went muskie fishing at Chautauqua lake this weekend in New York. We ended up landing three with the biggest one being a little bit over 40 inches. They were all caught casting big soft tail jerk baits.
Two weeks from this moment I will be in Warroad MN waiting to head up to Lake of the Woods for musky, walleye and SMB. I look forward to this trip every year. I don't know if it is the fishing or the break from the 90 degree weather we have in VA.
Wow that's a great place to visit annually! Good luck!
No luck cobia fishing last week at Windmill Pt. at the mouth of the Rappahannock, six short flounder today from near Gwynn's Island.
Avalon has their second cobia of the day.
the picture didn't show up, but congrats!
How do I get the picture to show up?
The link you use needs to end in .jpg, .gif, .png, or any other photo format. From what I can see, you are trying to link from a Facebook picture. Try to upload that picture through Imgur and get a web address that ends in a photo file format extension.
Thanks!!
Not a bad Saturday night in Lexington. This is after taking my boys down to Blacksburg to visit for the first time and even snuck them onto the field for a quick pic in the endzone.
pretty work!
Nothing special, but I went fishing off the dock at Smith Mountain Lake and caught three average size carp and a catfish. Just kinda messing around catching little sunfish with my niece using bread and they came out of nowhere.
No huge smallmouth like last year so far. This one was 17.5 inches.
Welcome to the site! That is a dandy.
Thanks. I'm glad to see my two favorite things in one post. Hokies and Fishing.
I was able to sneak down to Avalon Pier for the day on Thursday. Making bait was a bit challenging. I caught three bluefish (one was too big for bait- 19 inches long) and enough threadfin shad to use as bait for the day. Two cobia were seen and one ate a live bluefish right next to my threadfin shad.
I had my bucktail rod by my side, but never saw a cobia cruising. A houndfish ate a threadfin and my stepson wasn't able to keep him hooked. We had to drive back Friday night. On Saturday, a 50 pounder was caught on a live spot.
Down the road, Jennette's Pier produced a record king mackerel on a live bait- 65 pounds!
I am heading back down to the OBX to fish this Thursday and Friday. Hopefully the nice weather continues to hold up.
Finally broke the 8lb mark on a largemouth. Pulled this 8lb 8oz (23 1/4inch) fatty Saturday morning near Richmond.
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Awesome fish brother!!!! I would love to land one this big!
That is a beauty! Is it a farm pond honey hole fish, the James, or Chickahominy?
It's a private Rod and Gun Club over in King and Queen county, near Tappahannock. 3 smaller lakes that are well maintained and connected to the state hatchery.
Totally OT, drove through Tappahannock yesterday on my way back to Mathews. Gasoline could be had for $2.29. With fishing like that and gas so cheap, I'm wondering if I moved too far south.
Flounder fishing has really picked up in the middle Bay. Limits and some doormats are showing up in the usual places. Cobia continue to get a lot of attention. I have missed some good fishing while traveling, missed some days out because of wind/wave forecasts, and heat index warning days. Yet another reason to be looking forward to football season and the coming fall weather. If/when I finally get a doormat, I promise to make myself take the time to figure out the imgur thing.
Cooler weather starting Wednesday!
I managed to get down to Belize at the end of May to do some fly fishing for Bone Fish at the Turneffe Flats. They might be the hardest fish I've ever gone after, but I managed to get a few.
caught this sail in CR in July. We didn't get the Marlin we wanted but the sails were active.
Down at OBX next week. July 28-Aug 1. Staying in Hatteras near the lighthouse.
Its amateur hour with me when i fish, so where is the best place for me to go to feel good about myself? Or is it to early to tell wind speeds and fish omens
Lucky you! I won't be down there till Sept 19th. But I am staying
right off the Old Lighthouse Rd. I guess we are mostly going to surf fish.
I hate the old Frisco Pier was destroyed years ago. I suggest The Point.
It is good fishing. Or you can drive up to Avon and go to the Pier. Enjoy! :)
Edit: I saw this video yesterday and it made me laugh all day. Today I found out it
was a joke but still too damn funny.
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2015/07/22/beachgoers-attempt-to-swim-in-h...
Saw that story too. I found it hilarious.
I laughed even harder when I found out they were made out
of plastic.
East wind- fish on the north side of Cape Point or Avon Pier. South/West winds- fish south of Cape Point or Frisco. Use a heavy surf rod with a big circle hook and a fresh chunk of bait for cobia and sharks. Use a lighter rod and fish close to the breakers with sand fleas for sea mullet and pompano!
Another so so day here today. Caught five flounder, only one keeper, maybe 25 croaker, destined for deeper water flounder bait, and a couple of nice spot. So far so many dinks. Hope the summer gives it up around here in Mathews.
When I was in HS and college (70s) you could not find a croaker anywhere. Just spot and bluefish. No Rocks and very few cobia.
Thanks! Ill probably end up just catching a shoe, toilet seat lid, or if im lucky the smallest fish out there. Regardless ill post a pic
Pompano are fun to catch (hit like a train wreck) and are so delicious!
And, no scales!!
My girlfriend and I did a half day float trip on the New with Tangent Outfitters yesterday. Beautiful weather and we caught about 30 smallmouth on stick worms, the largest fish being 17-1/4".
I have got to get up to the New and hunt the muskies. They have been catching some very good fish up there. Nice smallie. I just found this thread it is great! I wish I had something to report. I have only fished 2 bass tourneys this year. On Buggs and the Chick. Nothing doing but I could tell you what not to do!
I will add pictures on Sunday. I fished from 5:00AM to 4:00PM on Avalon Pier after driving all night from NOVA. I caught a really nice Spanish Mackerel right at sunrise. Otherwise there plugging bite was non-existsant. I gave up and used a sibiki to catch a handful of pigfish to run on my live bait rig. These certainly were not ideal, but I couldn't even buy a bluefish, menhaden, spot, or threadfin to run on the rig. I saw one big flounder caught, and a guy fishing near the surf caught about a dozen really nice sea mullet (whiting for non-locals) on live sand fleas.
As always happens when I have crap bait, we started to see large pods of cobia following big carpet rays around 11:30am. I got four good shots at keeper fish (20 pounders) with my bucktail and they refused to eat it. It didn't help that 3 or more bucktails came splashing down every time more than one person saw the ray with 3 or 4 big cobia following it. I even had one rush my pigfish, but when he realized it was a crap pigfish and not a tasty morsel, he turned away.
Finally my friend Jake managed an u encumbered shot at a pod of fish off the south side, and he got a 19.6 pounder to eat. I gaffed his fish for him (my first pier gaff shot in several years.) I am glad I didn't screw it up.)
Back to the planks in the AM.
Here is my spanish mackerel that ate a red and white gotcha plug on Thursday. This is the only fish that I got in two days with a gotcha plug, so making bait was nightmare-ish. Cobia were everywhere, but bucktails didn't entice any bites for me despite several good shots at 30lb class fish. They had lockjaw. Four managed to get themselves hooked. All but one were too small (33 inches) and went back to the sea.
Then, a kid named Curtis unlocked the mystery. He started fishing off the side of the pier on the bottom with eels. Since Thursday evening, he has caught 3 cobia (a 59 pounder, a 60 pounder, and a 37 pounder.) My buddy Jake got his second of the week, this time on an eel after I gaffed his bucktail fish on Thursday. Here they are:
Needless to say, it got crowded out there.
Cool, I'm at milepost 16.5 right now.
Props to you for your intrepid travels and pier travails. Hopefully, we'll both score today. Hoping for the big flounder.
Had a half a dozen good looks with the bucktail today (one down near the surf when I was desperately trying to catch a spot.) no hookups. I saw 4 hooked up, and three cobia landed (all about the size we got on the Bah last month.) Right after I left a 60 pounder was landed on a live eel.
I saw more cobia hooked today than Spanish, bluefish, spot, croaker, and sea mullet combined. I am struggling to comprehend it.
French, sounds like you and I are both jinxed this year. I lost what we're pretty convinced was my bucket list flounder today over near The Cell. Caught several sandbar sharks up to about three feet and a couple of keeper flounder, but as it so often is, it is the one that came unbuttoned right at the boat that I'll remember. Oh well, I'll try again today.
Took my 6 yr old and 9 yr old daughters to Kure Beach, NC.
A stiff wind blowing offshore to onshore kept the tide high for hours. When it started to recede we got some short Shakespeare salt casting rods and tossed doubles of squid to the onshore side of the sandbar and handed to rods to my daughters.
We could not reel them in fast enough. Little croakers were sitting right there and between 3 little girls, fishing for the first time, they hauled in 22 small fish in an hour.
Nothing to keep but to these little girls they were monsters.
Problem is that because it was their first time, that's now the expectation.
Nothing to keep, but you have just described the classic way to get a child interested in fishing. Short outing and plenty of action. I might have kept a handful of the biggest ones anyway, just to fry them up for an appetizer or something for the girls to get the full magilla, but it sounds like you had a great time.
Yeah, it was a blast, they were reading in doubles, we'd take the fish off, re air if needed, cast, hand the rod of and then turn around and take the fish of the other rod.
They were really too small, you could barely feel them on these little whippy rods.
They were maybe 5-6 inches long.
We quit when we ran through 2 whole squid and were out of bait.
That was good because the girls were getting tired.
I went rock fishing with some ACCylum buddies yesterday off of Annapolis and being a Hokie I naturally won the day with the largest one of 24" and of course the gentlemanly $20 wager. In was nice to beat a Nolie at something...
I went flounder fishing yesterday, again near The Cell, this time with a loluvawahoo guy. No wagers, but I did outfish him. It was his boat, so I didn't gloat, but football wasn't the main topic of discussion, to say the least. He did try the tennis, baseball, basketball angle, but we're too close to the fall for that stuff to stick. He's not very confident in their coming season and is very eager to replace the Timecop. I told him how much we all wanted them to give him a few more years to learn his job.
Edit: Forgot to add, both wahoos on board claimed, seriously, that they'd never even heard of Zima.
Guffaw. Add "dishonest" to the problem list associated with Charlottesville Delusion Syndrome.
They pronounce it "zinfandel"
Did you remind him that we swept them in baseball this year?
The second time I mentioned it, he put his fingers in his ears and repeated "Nah nahnny boo boo, I can't hear you" until I stopped talking. We talked about fishing from that point onward.
Not saltwater, but I went trout fishing the other day and got 3, including a pretty nice rainbow.
Well done. Where were you wetting a line?
Over at Big Tumbling, in Southwest Va. Going again this upcoming Friday.
Ah, back home!
Where you from, French? And since you're the pro on this board, what areas in Southwest Virginia would you recommend?
I grew up just northeast of Abingdon off of Old Saltworks Road. Big Tumbling was a short ride up to Saltville from me.
Still, I preferred trout fishing over at Whitetop Laurel above Damascus. I liked deeper water, and there were not any timber rattlers over there.
I am happy to share what spots I can depending on targeted species. Keep in mind, I am 10 years removed from fishing down that way.
I've been to Damascus, onto the mountain, but that was to ride the Creeper trail. Never fished over there. Do they stock it there every so often like they do at Tumbling?
Good job. That's a fattie!
Thanks! It was good eatin's too. Had it grilled with creole seasoning.
I bet it was. I'm eatin' steamed Chesapeake Bay crabs tonight. Fresh from the mouth of the East River on Mobjack Bay. Caught this morning, butter, hushpuppies. And beer. Lots of beer. Wife's outta town kinda beer.
Nice, never had any steamed crabs, and I'm also underage, so can't have any beer. Welp. The cons of being a teenager, lol. I'll have to make my way to the Chesapeake someday and try my hand at it, see how I fare down there.
Beer is a wonderful thing, but not for everyone, and not for everything. I would suggest you avoid it as a youngster, except for steaming crabs and shrimp, maybe, but I think most of us here would say that alcohol consumption is a twin edged sword. I do hope you discover the Chesapeake Bay, it is a wonder of the fishing world, and a seafood bonanza. Be young as long as you can. The crusty world is gonna get you anyway, no reason to rush it along.
Thanks for the advice. I've only recently started getting into fishing this year, and I'm having a blast doing so. Looking back, I keep thinking, 'Why haven't I done this earlier?!' It's just something about it, heck, I have a good day even if I don't catch anything, just sitting there listening to the creek flowing calms my mind.
If you can continue to pursue it, fishing will never let you down. Escape, stress reduction, etc. are but a bit of it. In my case, it's a legitimate addiction, but I believe it is never less than a worthy endeavor. I could tell fishing stories from today until the day I die and never tell them all. Not every thing you do can afford the same inspiration.
Yeah, fishing is how I have fun nowadays. Aside from working, fishing's basically all I've done this year. I'd say I've got an addiction as well, I always look online for different types of spinners to use, or how to catch a certain species, or even what type of bait that I'd need that other online fishermen recommend.
In my younger years, there was no "online" to look to. Information came from hanging around the tackle shops and subscribing to fishing magazines. I used to keep them all, years worth in fact, just in case I needed to learn about a kind of fishing I was unfamiliar with or in case I was traveling and wanted info on fishing in a new area. The absolute best way to learn, however, is to meet more experienced fishermen and go fishing with them. I've been fishing for 59 years, and still learn something almost every time I go, but it's my fishing partners that I've learned the most from. Oh, and take pictures. Guys will brag and bloviate about their catches, but it's the pictures that tell the tale. Now, I do lie about fishing, but not like you might expect. I will seldom tell a stranger on the water that I'm catching fish, especially when I'm really on 'em. When I was guiding on the New, I had my clients remove their lures before we got to the landing so nobody could see what we were using. But if I actually tell you I caught something, you can take it to the bank.
Well, looks like I'll have to find myself a fishing buddy. I often run into other anglers where I fish at, and I ask for general advice that could be useful. Could pertain to bait, knots, etc. Then, they usually start talking about their fishing stories, which is always fun to hear.
I've caught around 25 trout this year, and 1 smallmouth. I'm going to try to top it off with a largemouth for this year, but I've never caught one. Or a catfish. I'll go to the New sometime and try to see if I can land anything from in there. With your guide knowledge, would you happen to know what spots would be best in the New River?
Many folks can help you find a few spots on the New to go, depending on your craft. My biggest asset as a guide, other than 35 years of fishing for smallmouth with some really great fishermen, was my boat. I could go anywhere. If you are afoot, access to good fishing is somewhat limited. The river can be treacherous, swift current and unpredictable bottom, rocks, etc. can make for a tough wade. Traditionally, the New is best fished floating, the river stands alone for beauty, regardless of the fishing, but there are a few wading opportunities. If you tell me where you want to fish, in general, I'll tell you what I know about the area, if I know the area. If you would care to, you can email me at newriverangler@hotmail.com. My name is Tom. I'll turn you on to some good smallmouth lures/tactics now that I don't need secrets to make a living.
Just got back from SML this weekend. Caught a nice crappie out of a brush pile as well as a small channel cat off the dock. Going back on Thursday and hoping to get on some Striper early in the morning.
On vacation in the obx right now in Duck. Spent a few hours on Jennette's pier this afternoon. Very slow, caught two tiny croaker that were barely bait size, and 4 blue crab that we brought home for an appetizer to go with the scallops and shrimp we got from Austin Fish Co at MP 12.5. All is well though, I'm getting my fill of maple bacon deliciousness from Duck Donuts.
Largest trout I've ever caught - last weekend:
This was on the upper Clinche right after Norris dam. Fought it for over 10 minutes on 6x before it tired out! Didn't measure, but it was over 25", maybe 5-7 lbs!
Big Stoney Creek stocked today = fresh rainbows for the grill.
The crappie fishing has blown up here around the Middle Peninsula. Beaverdam Reservoir in Gloucester is producing numbers and size. A buddy and I got dozens of nice ones last Friday at a private pond nearby. Spring has most definitely sprung.