Lowrance Screen Shots

 This is a shot of a sunken boat between the pilings on the south side of Dillards bridge. 

You can clearly see on the side scan the outline of the boat.

 This is a picture of a school of Stripers I located and fished a couple of days ago. I was running about 25 mph over a hump on the left side of the sonar screen and when I hit the drop off I noticed Stripers right on the break before it fell into the channel. [Just above and to the right of the 6 in 20 to 30 feet of water] I immediately slowed down and turned the boat 180 degrees, shut the big motor down and coasted over the area while my clients jumped up and prepared to deploy downlines.You can see just to the left in the middle of the pic the smaller arches of the Striprs gradually getting larger. That's because when going fast the Stripers appear as small arches because I am traveling so fast over them but as the boat slows the pings read the fish better and are over the fish longer resulting in better arches. As you can see on the right side of the sonar screen I came up on a 30 foot flat where we proceeded to "Spank" the Stripers. The side scan [blue screen] shows the Stripers on both sides of the boat but more and larger fish are on the right side. You can see shadows created by the larger fish about 30 to 40 feet to the right and a couple nicer Stripers out about 80 feet to the right. You can also see in the middle of the screen on the top my prop wash when I went back over the area [white cloud]. Guess what direction I steered the boat to catch fish?

This is a pic of of a nice school of Herring I located while looking for bait. You can clearly see the school on the sonar page ranging from 8 to 25 feet deep. The bait is extremely compressed [the denser the object the brighter or yellower the return] and easy to catch. Notice on the side scan there was more bait to the right side of the boat than the left side [Boat is currently at the top center of the blue screen at 0]. I threw off to the right and caught over two hundred baits in one cast, so heavy I had to get my client to help me lift the net. We had already used 200 baits that morning but the additional baits enabled us to limit out. On this screen I have customized my screen to instead of having my split screen in equal sizes I enlarged the bottom screen so I could see fish better which made my structure screen smaller. The way I have the screen with the side scan going all the way across the screen shows much more detail than if I had the screen split vertically as is evident in the two screen shots above this one.

Figuring out a cold front.

Mark, Jack, Steve, Evan and Tom

Sunny and Cool, Water temperature 82* and Clear

I got on the water early and caught 200 baits for my clients. When I got to the marina they were already there, 15 minutes early. Now that's my kind of client! It even made it better when Tom introduced himself and said he was so excited that he did not sleep last night. I knew right then today was going to be fun. They brought their coolers down and got into the boat and right before I cast off Jack gave me a gift, a folding Buck filet knife! I asked why the present and Steve said because we know you will deserve it by the end of the day. As I idled out of the marina I thought to myself...200 baits in the tank, five guys who are as excited to fish as I am, a cool knife...Hope I can crack this cold front we had last night and put these fisherman on Stripers. Well I showed them how to deploy the down lines then I looked for schools. I could not find what I wanted but set up on three of four pods of fish with little results. I had burnt a quarter of a tank of gas, not put a keeper in box and was determined to beat this front. I decide to make a move contrary to the seasonal patterns of mid summer and kept my fingers crossed. We set up and put our baits out and popped a fish or two in about 20 minutes. Wasn't great but I was starting to figure a pattern out. I moved a little deeper and Evan and Jack caught a couple nicer fish. I thought I was on to something so I dialed in on the pattern and we opened a can of Whoop Ass on the Stripers. Mark was jamming up in front of the boat consistently catching nice fish and the boys were scrambling all over the boat reeling in fish after fish. We worked the pattern till we used up all but 6 of our baits. What a great day on the water with a fine family. They are on vacation this week and I am sure today's trip will be a good memory of visiting Lake Anna. To make my day even better when we got back to the dock they gave me a great tip. It sure is good to spend a day on the water with good people and to be appreciated for my struggles and labors throughout the day.

How Precious!

Chloe and Mason

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 83* and Clear

Today I caught bait early and picked my clients up at their dock. I looked for schools for an hour and found a nice one. We tried to get set up on them but with only two anglers it is about impossible to get all the baits out, reel in fish and bait quick enough to hold the fish. We popped a few of them but by the time we took the fish off the hooks all the baits had been hit and the school moved elsewhere. I knew then I would have to resort to fishing places rather than schools like I wanted to. We worked area after area and by 11 we had used up 175 baits. I went to catch bait, found a school and on my first cast caught over 200. We continued to fish different areas but the wind was howling over 25mph which gave me few places to set up on. All I really wanted to do was to put these two beautiful children on fish which I was able to do. We caught a whole lot of punks today but at this age they were excited just to see a rod bent over. They screamed every time a fish came on board. The kids reeled their fish in by themselves with very little assistance with the exception of the large fish which we had to touch the rod to keep the fish from tangling other lines up.  

   God Bless the Children.

Lowrance HDS Screen Shots

 This is a school of Stripers that we worked one morning last week. They were feeding on White Perch but we caught them on Herring. The diagonal dashes are the white perch getting out of Dodge. You can see up in my history bar up above the 1 on my sonar page that I had been on the school for a while.

 This is another shot of a school of Stripers where we caught some nicer fish.

This shot is from when I was looking to catch daytime bait. Notice that I changed my screen to Side Scan on the upper half of my screen and Sonar on the bottom half. I did that because I could see more clearly out to the sides of my boat with the wider scan shot [as opposed to the screen in the top pic]. In the top screen my boat is currently at the top of the picture where that white vertical line is at 0. Halfway down on that screen on the left is a school of Herring 20 to 50 feet out to the left of the boat. I would not have located and caught that bait without side scan. Further down toward the bottom of the side scan screen is a school of bait [same school you see about halfway on my sonar page]. Notice on the side scan page that more bait was to the right side of the boat than on the left side. The occasional disturbance near the surface on my sonar page is the disturbance that my motor made as I try to locate the bait. The side scan also shows the prop wash as a white cloud 2/3's of the way down over the 0 line where I had run over the bait and turned back around to catch it. Daytime bait can sometimes be difficult to catch but with Structure Scan technology it makes my life a lot easier. After burning up 200 baits that I caught pre-dawn I can catch more bait and eventually more fish. Greentop Sporting goods has Lowrance on display for you to play with and experienced salesmen to answer questions to help you catch more fish.

Angling Virginia Episode #7

Here is the show we taped back in June

with Angling Virginia.

If you enjoy the show and would like to see others in your market area,

let Angling Virginia know. They plan to market it across the state on Fox

Networks but need your support. Check them out on their

 Angling Virginia  facebook page. This show aired in Richmond.

 

A Fruitful Friday

Chris, Zane and John

Sunny and Pleasant, Water temperature 84* and Clear

DP took these Guys out this morning and put them on the Stripers.

I gave a trip to the Louisa Shriners to raffle off to raise money for 

children and Chris won the raffle. God Bless the children.

How Sweet it is!

 Christian and Michael

Tubing

Cloudy and Cool, Water temperature 82* and clear

My grandson Michael had a friend from his baseball team down for a couple days so we tried to pack as many activities into 2 days as we could. Yesterday Michael wanted to run his bird dogs so we hit the woods at 6:30. After a couple jumps we gathered them up and they rode dirt bikes and 4 wheelers till it got about 93* outside. They were ready for the pool by then which lasted till 5. After a shower and dinner they were pooped and fell asleep watching a baseball game on TV. This morning when we got up it was raining so we were not in too much of a hurry to hit the water. It cleared up by 9 so I filled the tank and headed to the water. We hit the water at 10 and took 5 minutes to locate bait. Three throws later I had 200 baits, Sweet! We rode less than a half a mile and found a school of Stripers. I baited the rods, Michael put them down to the desired depth and before he could get another rod baited we would hook up and Christian would reel the fish in. While he was reeling it in Michael would bait and deploy another rod while I would net the fish and take it off the hook. We did that for 20 straight fish. Mike wanted his friend to reel in as many fish as he could. After all that action I noticed that I had never put my trolling motor down. I relocated the school, tried to get some baits wet but the fish would not let us get more than two rods out without hooking up. In less than an hour we had caught bait and boated 25 Stripers. It now looked like rain was coming so we put the rods up and I pulled them for 30 minutes on the tube then they went swimming for 15 more minutes while I emptied the bait tank. We were back at the marina by noon, took pictures and got home in time for lunch. 

Just doesn't get any better than that.

It doesn't get any better than this

Alex and Jimmy

Cloudy and warm, water temperature 85* and Clear

Tony had the honer of taking these two boys out yesterday Striper fishing.

How wonderful to teach these future fisherman the joy of the outdoors and the satisfaction 

of reeling in fish like these. I was fishing beside them with my clients catching fish after fish but I got 

distracted by them reeling in fish. Thanks to their parents for giving them the opportunity to dream about

the outdoors and the memories of the day.

Another Good Morning

Cody, Shaun, Tremson, Keegan and Brett

Cloudy and Warm, Water temperature 84* and Clear.

Today Tony and I had charters so we worked together to put our clients on fish. There were spells of pure chaos and time of patience trying to catch bait after we used up the early morning baits. It was a "catching" kind of day, the fish wanted to eat. This is a picture of Tony's clients taken at the marina. I picked my clients up at their dock and did not have a stringer large enough to hold all of our fish on the boat.

   Wow, what a fishery!

Lowrance Screen Shots

I have my side scan set on the upper half of the screen and my sonar on the bottom. You can see Stripers on the sonar between 30 and 40 feet. The fish were feeding up over the 35 foot flat on the left side of the screen but once I got out over the deeper water they were inactive. I have my upper limit set to 13 feet because all the fish I saw were very deep.

 This is a school of feeding Stripers. We had numerous rods hooked up at once. You can see quite a few fish out on the side scan as well. If you look up in my history bar at the top of the sonar page just above the 1 you can see the bulk of the school we were fishing. Notice all the streaking going on. The Stripers were feeding on White Perch. Most of the Stripers we caught that day were around schools of Perch.

 Here is another school of Stripers. Notice my dead bait being drug through the water column at 25 feet on my sonar page. We had just boated a bunch of Stripers and had not had time to change out that bait.

This is a picture of the road bed that parallels the 208 bridge. You can see how it is undercut when I come up from 40' to 27'. This is where the pavement stopped and the old bridge began. A couple of Bass are holding right on top of the road. How do I know they are Bass? We caught them.

A Good Saturday Morning

James, Nick and Ryan

James's dad Rob fished with me yesterday and had so much fun James

wanted to try it this morning so Tony took them out and "Spanked" 

the Stripers. Tony thinks they caught almost 100 Stripers by 11.

The Barr family better have plenty of room in the freezer!

Rob Barr and Family

A nice Bass

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 86* and clear

Today Tony and I had clients so we double teamed the Stripers today keeping our clients on fish. We hit numerous schools and went through about 600 baits today catching fish after fish. Everyone had fun today and there was plenty of fish to take home to eat. Both boats caught Largemouth Bass also. Lake Anna sure is a good fishery.

A fun Friday

 Caleb, Haas and Red

Caleb

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 86* and clear

Tony took this crew out today for some fun catching Stripers on the Lake.

Tony and I worked together to put both our sets of clients on fish today.

Angling Virginia fishing for Stripers on Lake Anna

Want to see what we do and how we do it? Check out

Angling Virginia with Lake Anna Striper Guide Service on Lake Anna. The show is Angling Virginia, it airs Saturday morning at 8:30 on WRLH Fox 35 Richmond, which also is FIOS and Comcast channel 11. Shane is also posting the show on his Angling Virginia facebook site next week for people to watch that are out of the coverage area of these stations. If you are fishing on Saturday don't forget to record the show.

Here is the sneak peek for this Saturday. On the boat with Jim Hemby Striper fishing on Lake Anna. We had a blast.

Copy and paste      https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1466915426888824 

Wednesday Morning

 

Kyle, Pat and Rory

DP took his clients out this morning for a busy day of fishing.

By the looks of this stringer they did some good catching as well.

Nice Stringer

Hooked on Stripers

Carter and Patrick

Sunny and Hot, Water Temperature 86* and Clear

Today I caught bait before daylight then picked my clients up at High Point. I was surprised to see a long time client standing on the dock waiting to get into my boat. A friend of his had booked the trip and I was unaware that Jimmy Chen was going fishing today. He brought his son Carter with him and Patrick drug his dad Chris along to take fish off of his line. This was going to be great, two eager boys wanting to catch fish and two dads and myself to bait and take fish off the lines. We had a lot of action and a lot of fun using up the 200 baits that I caught this morning. We fished till we ran out of bait catching over 50 Stripers and a dozen Catfish. The boys are holding up a couple nice Stripers that they wrestled into the boat. Bet they can't wait to go again!

Lake Anna Stripers

Bill, Gloria, Debbie, Mike and Mike

Tony and I both had charters today. I had only three anglers and we limited out early this morning. Tony struggled a little early this morning but after lunch came back hard and put his clients on some nice Stripers. They ended up catching over 100 fish today, unfortunately a lot of the fish were under 20 inches. The short fish are fun to reel in and believe it or not most of our clients enjoy catching them as much as the big 'uns. This lake is a great fishery. Where can you constantly catch fish after fish, day after day, in the middle of the summer with generous creel limits of 4 Stripers per person per day? Thanks to the Dept. of Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries for managing Lake Anna to be such a great place to catch Stripers.

An easy morning

Ralph, Ben and Daniel

Cloudy and Warm, Water temperature 84* and Clear

I picked up my crew this morning at High Point and wanted to go around the corner to explain to them how to deploy the baits and how to reel in the fish with circle hooks. Before I got around the corner I saw off in the distance fish throwing sprays into the air about 6 feet high. Well I didn't get a chance to explain anything

because once I got 100 yards away from the breaking fish I shut my big motor down, put my trolling motor in and shoved rods into the guys hands. We managed to get a couple baits out before we started hooking up. We caught 5 or 6 fish then I pulled off of the school and went elsewhere. Charlie called and said that he and Tony were on em so I hightailed it to them and set down about 100 yards from their boats. We got our baits out and started hooking up immediately. Within 3 to 4 minutes the buzzards started circling us then a house boat trolled right over us spooking the school. For anyone who does not know this, big motors SPOOK FISH. Sometimes I wonder if they are intentionally trying to spook the schools of Stripers we are working or if they are simply Clueless. Anyway we had to leave that area and look for other schools which took about a hour out of our fishing day. Once I found what I wanted we set up on them and started popping fish. One buzzard followed us there but I kept him out and away from our boat enabling us to limit out fairly easy. We were able to get off the water this morning early before it got too hot.

Thursday afternoon

DP and Brian

Sunny and Hot, Water Temperature 85* and Clear

Guides DP and Brian were out yesterday evening working on DP's boat and finished

up with it around 7pm so they caught some bait and fished for thirty minutes boating 

their limit of Stripers. We do half day trips in the evenings if any one wants to go.

Jim_Hemby@hotmail.com   540 967 3313

A slow morning

Guy, Joe and John

Sunny and Warm, Water temperature 86* and Clear

I took this motley crew out earlier in the week to catch some Stripers. We took a bunch of hits but the moon was not aligned with Venus correctly, the barometer was wrong, it was the wrong time of the month, a front was passing through, boat traffic was bad and I just sucked as a guide. I get spoiled catching so many fish on a daily bases that I get down when we don't limit out. Well today was one of those days and it happens to all of us.I could not locate the schools well and spent a lot of time on the big motor looking. Regardless of our stringer size we caught a lot of fish and had a lot of fun trying. These guys were great to be out on the water with and took home enough fish so their families would not starve the next couple of days. 

North Anna Power Station

Kenny, Dave, Paul and Mark

DP took this crew out this morning. Here is what he had to say...

Dave's wife booked him a trip for his birthday present, and what a present it was.  We left the marina at 5:45 and looked for fish for about 15 minutes and finally saw a few to set up on.  By 7:45 we had gone through 125 baits and were well on our way to a great day. We went back to High Point to get ice for the fish and for the guys to rest a bit. After catching bait we all had to gather ourselves from a story that was told while I was throwing the net.  Let's just say that Mark got his man card back when one of the guys told us about a "pedi" that he had received  along side his wife. I won't mention who that was but I bet his wife really looks after him on his birthdays.  We set up in another area and caught a few keepers then mostly punks.  Finally, we found a really nice school of fish and set up on them and nearly went through another 80 baits.  By 10:00 we had our limit and called it a day.  Looks like there will be a fish fry for the Delta shift at North Anna Power Station.  Happy Birthday Dave!!!!!!

Four very happy fisherboys

Dylan, Brandon, Jake and Chase

Sunny and Hot, Water Temperature 86* and Clear

Tony did it again, he put these boys on some very nice Stripers.

Talk about action, they had caught about 40 Stripers by 7 o'clock 

this morning. This will be a day the boys will always remember.

Happy July 4th to all.

Fouth of July Weekend

 Justin, Dave, Kathy, Tara and Luke

Luke

Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temperature 85* and Clear

Tony picked up his clients at their dock after catching a tank full of bait.

Looks like they caught some great fish for just a morning charter.

Luke is pictured holding his big Striper of the morning.

That's a nice stringer of Stripers for a holiday weekend.

A Hot Wednesday

Dillon, Tyler and Cory

Sunny and Hot, Water Temperature 87* and Clear

This morning I picked up my clients and went looking for fish. We set up in an area where I knew some fish were working and before we knew it we were taking hits. We caught about 20 fish in our first school but 16 of them were punks. I left them and looked for bigger fish but had difficulty locating schools today. We eventually set up in different areas fishing "spots". We would catch a few here and there and sometimes have constant action. By noon Tyler had caught 11 Stripers and was on a roll. This was his first Striper trip and considering the heat he did exceptionally well. Although I considered today slow there was plenty of action to keep the boys out in 95* heat. I would have loved for them to catch 20 or 30 Stripers each but it just didn't work out that way today. We caught plenty of Catfish and got punked today.This will be a trip they will remember for a long time.

Lowrance Screen Shots

 This is a picture I took yesterday morning when I was working a school of Stripers. We had located and set up on them about 10 minutes prior to this picture. We had 8 rods hook up at once but by the time they took the fish off the hook the school had left. I fired the big motor up and went the direction I thought they were heading. About 200 yards away I ran over the school. On the left side of the sonar screen you can see a little motor noise interference [vertical black dashes] because I was running about 25mph. Just as soon as I saw the beginning of the school [ just on top of the ledge, smaller red dots] I put my shifter in neutral and as ran to the front of the boat to put trolling motor in while my clients got up and readied their rods for bait. I baited them, they put them down and 30 seconds later all the rods were hooked up. You can see on the sonar that as the boat slowed the arches got bigger and bigger. I had only slowed down to 1.1 mph but as I slowed even further after I took this shot the screen turned to spaghetti and that is when we hooked up. The sonar page works better than the down scan at speeds in excess of 5 mph as you can see in the picture. Once I slowed down enough the down scan picks up the fish as well as the side scan in the upper blue page. I then used the side scan to stay on the school by turning the boat 90 degrees and I maneuvered the boat in the direction that I saw most of the fish.

I took this picture while I was catching daytime bait. You can see on the sonar page all the Herring between 10 and 20 feet deep. On the history page in the upper part of the sonar page you can also tell how long I had been on the school which was massive, probably about 40 yards wide. The down scan shows the bait as well but is showing more definition. Notice that I can see the individual baits clearly which helps me distinguish what kind of bait it is. The side scan portion of the picture shows how wide the school of bait was and tells me there is more on the left side of the boat than the right so I threw on the left side of the boat and captured enough bait to finish the day.

My journal shows a lot of pictures of Stripers but my Lowrance is the main tool I use in locating bait and fish to put my clients on. I have used Lowrance for over 40 years, always catching plenty of fish, but this technology and understanding how to use it and how to interpret what I see is one reason why we consistently put our clients on fish. If I could just get them to listen to me when a fish gets on my life would be a whole lot better. If you enjoy my posts of Lowrance shots let me know and I will continue to post them. If you have a Lowrance and have a question about it email me and I will try to help you. One of my guides Anthony Hicks and myself are Pro Staff Navico, which Lowrance is part of. If you want to learn more about reading and understanding Lowrance , consider booking a trip. When you leave at the end of the day you will know your depthfinder, how to locate, set up and catch fish and also have torn up thumbs from taking fish off the hook.

Fishing is fun, Catching is the Bomb!