bigehokie

My brother in-law and I went out to the lake and began fishing around 7:30am. It was a pretty slow day for both of us. We were both fishing texas rigged plastics, spinner baits, tubes, and some crank baits. Near the giant lily pad field, I caught a 10 inch largemouth and so did he. I wish we had some frogs on us or possibly even a fly rod. The largemouth were SLAYING the lily pads...I'm assuming frogs or dragonflies as they were all over the place. We paddled a little further up and I had several large hits on a laydown in the middle of the lake. I did manage to pull in a 2 lb-er here and had another break off.

In total, we fished 8 hours or so and saw a lot more bass hitting the surface than hitting our lines. It was a good time and I'll be back.

For my weekly yak outting, I decided to drive out to Diascund Reservoir and give it a try. I launched around 5:45am and fished until about noon. From the launch site, I fished NE, all the way to where I64 crosses over (I did a crapton of paddling today). For the most part it was REALLY slow. I caught 6 or 7 small white perch. These guys weren't too much bigger than the 1/2 oz White Bleeding Shad Rat-L-Trap I caught them on. There were tons of these fish in the reservoir tho and they hit that Trap like it was nobody's business. At first I thought they were gizzard shad but looked em up on DGIF and they were definitely white perch. I also caught a small bluegill and had a nice sized yellow perch follow my Rat-L-Trap up to the yak, but he didn't bite. I had to stop and do some repairs to my anchor trolley and as I was getting back in the yak, noticed something that looked like a pike (pickerel?) hovering about 7 or 8 feet from where I was! Also saw 2 large cats (not sure what kind) in a small cove. By the time I saw them, they had already seen me and they darted off. I also managed to get my anchor stuck under a log and spent about 15 mins trying to get it out (10 feet of water). I thought I was gonna have to cut 'er loose for a while...

Like I said, pretty slow day except for when I started to head back in. I saw a few gars hitting small bait fish at the surface so I decided to throw the Trap a few times in the vicinity. I hooked up on a few more white perches (starting to hate them now) but on my "last cast before I move", something substantial hit. He made a small run but didn't put up much of a fight. In about 30 secs, I had a 3 foot long nose gar up to the yak. I had no idea how to get my hooks out of this thing...I didn't have any fish lippers or anything. Took out my long nose pliers and basically destroyed the treble hooks on the Trap, trying to release it. I wish I would have had a camera, those things sure are funny looking!

I had a good time fishing but wish I could have been on the bass. I'll certainly head back out as it seems like a good place to fish. There is tons of water here and is impossible to cover in a day (might need a week!).

My 2nd week fishing for Largemouth Bass, 2nd week in my yak. I didn't see a lot of fish and didn't have a lot of action. I'm going to attribute that to my inexperience fishing for this species as the water and structure in this lake is amazing. According to the VDGIF, there's over 30 acres of submerged timber here. There's also numerous weed beds. Fishing both of these structures for 4 hours, I didn't get a single strike. I'm going to attribute this to me not knowing what I'm doing...

The wind also played havoc with my yak as I didn't have my anchor this day. If I could have anchored down a bit, maybe I would have been able to cast to all the places I really need to.

I'll try this lake again at some point, but think I'll cut my teeth on some more prolific waters first before I make my way back.

I just purchased my fishing kayak and wanted to give it a test this weekend. The rain didn't deter me. I only caught a couple of small ones, but saw a couple of MONSTER largemouth.

After moving away from Blacksburg in the summer of 2008, my wife and I returned to visit friends (well she visited friends, I fished). I absolutely love this creek. It's my favorite in the NRV area.