2024 Fall Catches

 Just a few misc. catches from the fall of 2024.

An evening trip with Andy on the Lynnhaven River yielded this nice red drum.

Fishing in the early morning light in the Lynnhaven River with with Josh.  We pulled in a couple fish like this before the rising sun shut down the dock light bite.

More evening fishing with some catches of redfish...

Fishing with Joe in the Lafayette River brought this 20" trout to hand.

Time for the rivers to bed down for the winter...

Long-sleeve shirts and bare feet

Had a glorious day on the Lynnhaven River yesterday.  Had a fresh coat of paint on the Whaler since summer, but had not had the chance to get her wet.  

Hurricane Joaquin spoiled the fun a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got my chance to get out yesterday.

You know it's fall when you wear long-sleeve shirts...


but fish bare-footed!


All the better to feel the fly line underfoot my pretties!

The tide was going out.  I fished two marsh cuts and caught fish at both.  At the first, I probably caught a dozen on a steady pick.  A sinking line and a mummichog clouser were the ticket. 

 The fish were plentiful, but all around the 12" size.  I wish I remembered to bring my tagging supplies.  I think the fish size reflects the bad winter we had last year and all the fish kills of speckled trout.  If these guys can survive until next year, perhaps we'll get some quality fish next year.

I also caught this scrappy striper dink.

 The mummichog clouser was first shown to me by my friend Kendall Osborne. The color variation of the classic Bob Clouser minnow, is orange on the bottom, then white, then pearl flash, then chartreuse, then olive, then black on top.  Complicated - yes; effective - YES!

Leaving the first spot, I was content, but wanted to run the engine a little more so I motored over to another favorite spot and, although the river was packed, this spot was wide open.  I anchored up and started catching fish almost immediately. These specks were a little bigger, perhaps 16", and had a little girth to them.  Fun!

After a few "one more cast"s I finally started up the Yamaha and headed for the barn.  It was a beautiful, brisk October day.  The specks were plentiful,  the sun was shining, and the boat ran good.  Perfection.

I have some underwater video I haven't looked at yet.  Stay tuned...

Speckled Trout Fishing in the Lynnhaven River

Papa Carlo and I fished in the Lynnhaven on Veteran's Day.  (Thank you for your service Papa Carlo!)

The tide was low and rising and we started off at the usual place on Keeling's Drain.  Nothing doing so we crossed to the north side and tried a spot near an oyster reef, but that didn't tighten our line either.

We moved again - this time over by Dunkart's Hole on the way to the Western Branch - at the mouth of a small drain.  Pretty near the first cast, I felt taps.  Missed a couple bumps, got my timing down, and was hooked to a nice fish on the 6 wt. and a #2 clouser.

This one was an 18 incher.  Tagged him and sent him back to Neptune.

Caught two more foot-long specks, tagged them  and then took a break.  Carl responded with a nice fish of his own.  He landed the biggest catch of the day - a nice 20" fish on a mummichog-colored half and half fly. 

As the action slowed down, we went back to the starting point, but Keeling's Drain was like a parking lot.  We found a spot off the honey hole but near a rip and I picked up one more little speck.  One more tag for the day.  The boat in the honey hole was catching a speck on damn near every cast and when they finally picked up and left there was a melee rush to get there.  We tried, but didn't want to go all combat fishing so we shied off and finally picked up and headed for the barn.  We had a nice day, caught some quality fish, did our part for science and conservation and had fun to boot.

Can't ask for much more than that!

Peace!

East Ocean View Fishing Report 11/10/13

I met David and Ron Sunday morning to cast around the breakwaters and jetty in East Ocean View.

We fished the water west for about half a mile in search of speckled trout and then back again, but with no luck.  The fishing was good, but the catching was lousy!

Next time we will get them!

Speckled Trout Fishing on VA's Eastern Shore 2012

Here is a video of a speckled trout outing on the seaside of Virginia's Eastern Shore.  One word describes it:  "mirrorlike"!


Eastern Shore Speckled Trout Fishing from Coastal Explorer on Vimeo.