Dan Whetsell

Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temperature 65* and Clear

Dan took his family out today to catch some fish and to celebrate his birthday. Dan not only caught the largest Striper of the day but also a beautiful Largemouth Bass. We boated well over 20 fish today for a enjoyable day on the water. What a great way to spend your birthday,  beautiful weather, great fishing and a wonderful time with your family and Pastor.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAN

Tony's trips last week

Jensen

Jensen

 Here are a couple of  Tony's charters from last week. He took Jensen out for a successful morning Spring gobbler hunt then took him fishing after the hunt for a great catch of Stripers.

Bill Irwin

HDS Pics

This is a picture of my boat going over some shallow structure. As you can see in the upper right side scan picture the structure is on the left side of my boat and so tall is shows a shadow behind the structure.

Here is a picture of Punk Stripers mixed in with some Herring. Notice the shadows in the Side scan of the Stripers.

This is a picture of a large rock pile.

Here is a picture showing bait on the extreme left of my sonar and downscan 

along with a Striper feeding on the edge of the bait.

Gary, Dave and Bob

Gary

Guide DP offered a full day trip to benefit the Moss-Nuchols elementary school PTA at a silent auction and Gary had the highest bid. Not only did Gary win the trip he caught the 2 largest fish of the trip. Thanks DP for giving a day on the water to the school.

Gary and Anna Clay

Cloudy and Pleasant, Water Temperature 66* and Clear

I met my clients at High Point this morning, caught 70 pieces of bait then set out our spread pulling 20 baits on boards. We fished the morning taking hits about once every 20 minutes or so then after 11 the bite died. Gary is pictured holding his big fish of the day.

Mike, Mike, Andrew, Katie and Wes

Tony took these Guys and Gall out on Sunday for a great day of fishing for Stripers. Not only was the fishing good the weather was beautiful. Looks like they forgot their Suntan Lotion!

Mark Dudley family reunion

Lynn, Robin, Andre, Derick, Richard, Bill, Nigel, D'Andre, Mark, Darren

Mark, his family and in-laws [some out-laws also] had the opportunity to rent a house on the lake to get everyone together for a beautiful weekend on the water. Tony and myself took them out for a day of fishing. Although fishing was slow and boat traffic was heavy everyone caught fish and tonight fish is for dinner. It was a pleasure to spend the day with Mark and his family.

Chris

Chris is from California and while he was visiting here in Va. he wanted to try some Striper fishing on the lake. Guide Anthony took him out and showed him how it is done.  Looks like some fat fish! 

Lane Technology Inc.

Johnny, Joey, James, Brian and Donnie

Sunny and warm, Water temperature 65* and Clear.
I met the guys at High Point at 6 and took off to catch bait. Bait had moved because the lake temperature had risen 15* in 2 days! It was certainly nice not to have ice on the deck this morning. Bait collection was a little tough, last week I would make 3 throws for 70 to 80 baits, today I looked for about 30 minutes till I found enough to throw on then had to cast a dozen times or so. We ran back downlake and put out a spread pulling flats and points for about a mile only to catch one fish. We moved to a different area and put out 25 baits and before long we started hooking up. We hit a stretch where we would take hits every five minutes or so and worked it for an hour till we went through 50 baits. I hated to leave to catch more bait because the fish were feeding and as luck would have it after catching bait we hit the same area only to catch a dozen catfish.We eventually made one final move to the splits and caught 5 or 6 more Stripers before running completely out of bait again. Today we caught 12 Stripers, 12 Catfish and lost another dozen Stripers. The water temperature has change so drastically it may take a day or two for the Stripers to adjust, but once they do the game is on.

Hilltop Consultants

Mike, Randy, Paul, Joseph, Ashu, Jim Turner, Diane, Nain, Bob and Sal

$100 Big Fish winner Nain

Paul

Cold and windy morning, Water Temperature 50* and Clear

Jim Turner wanted to take his company out on a fishing trip on Lake Anna so DP and myself met them at the marina this morning, divided the group up and made the cold run to catch bait. We both caught bait relatively easy and were able to start fishing by 7. I had only gotten 3 baits out when Nain hooked up and landed the big fish of the day. Before I could get all my baits out the wind got up out of the north and made it quite uncomfortable for my group where we were fishing. Dp's group could not feel the cold, probably due to the Beer they were putting away plus all the fish they were catching were keeping them warm. The bite was fairly steady for a couple hours then slowed for an hour mid morning. DP got on some nice fish around 11 then we all met back at the marina at noon to see who won the big fish contest. There was a lot of trash talk going around but in the end Nain topped Paul's fish by a couple pounds. Even though it was cold for some this morning it was a fun time for all of us.

Lowrance HDS

 This picture was taken while driving 18.6mph. It is a good example of how well Lowrance Structure Scan works, even at higher speeds. The sonar on the left side of the page shows a 5 foot hump with 20 foot water nearby. There is a vertical white line that is barely seen at the top of the hump. The upper right picture is side scan shooting out 80 feet to the left and right side of the boat. In the middle of the picture you may notice an hour glass shape that turns bright yellow with a horizontal line in the middle of it. [The brighter the yellow the harder the bottom] The bottom right of the screen is downscan. It also shows the depths very clearly and picks up this 'mystery' line at the top of the hump. It also shows a fish 18 feet deep on the right side of the picture just before the bottom starts back up again. The 'mystery' line is actually an underground silo with a concrete bottom. Notice in the downscan pic the yellow line extending down under the water portion of the silo. [ an underground silo is where a farmer digs out a huge trough into a hill where he stores his silage for the winter then puts a cover on top of it to keep it dry.]

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 There are two sections to this screen, the left side is bottom lock. It it locked onto the bottom regardless of the depth and is reading 2,4,6,8 feet up off the bottom. It actually is set to show the bottom portion of my screen zoomed in three times larger than the sonar on the right side of the screen. Those arches are Stripers stacked right on the bottom of the lake.

 This picture is a sonar page showing a group of Stripers that are streaking [active] up on the flat and another group of Stripers out over the channel. The fish on the flat are catchable, the fish over the channel are inactive and will not feed.

The upper sonar picture is a classic feeding scenario for Stripers. They are on a flat looking to eat. The larger lines at 20 feet are the Stripers and above them are 10 inch gizzards.

The bottom picture is an area of the lake stacked with probably millions of Gizzard Shad. Notice in the top portion of the screen in my history that I had been marking the schools for a couple hundred yards. Think the fish have enough to eat?

Josh, Mike, Jonathon, James and Josh

Cold and Cloudy, Water Temperature 48* and Clear

I got up this morning and went outside to start my truck and it was 25 degrees! I picked the guys up at High Point at 6:15 and headed out to catch bait. After about 5 throws we had over 70 baits and we were ready to go fishing. I set out a spread of boards and a bobber pulling shallow flats. It was hard to walk in the boat because the deck was a sheet of ice. We worked an area for over 2 hours only to catch 1 keeper. The water temp had fallen overnight and I knew it hurt the bite. We made a move to catch more bait and set up in a different area. We worked it for the rest of the day taking hits about once every 15 minutes or so. The Stripers were off today, We caught 9 keepers and a punk, along with a dozen Catfish and a Crappie. We had a lot of fun today and it sure was nice not to have to fight the wind.

I expect the fishing to explode next week, I am seeing temperatures well into the seventies by mid week. The Stripers will feed heavily and start their spawn. 'Tis the season for catching Big Stripers!

Brad Price and daughter Kaci

Kaci

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Brad has been booking trips with us for about 5 years now and always brings his daughter Kaci along. Brad sometimes doesn't pick the best days to fish, they have been out on some very cold days when most would not even think to venture outdoors. Guide DP took Brad and Kaci out fishing for Stripers and here are a few of the fish Kaci caught. You would be surprised how fast you warm up reeling in a big Striper!

Eugene and John

Sunny and cold, Water temperature 49* and Clear.

I picked the guys up early at High Point and set out for a cold run to catch bait. Thankfully all I had to throw was twice this morning to catch 71 beautiful baits. That was enough to turn the deck into a sheet of ice. We made a short run and attempted to set out a spread of boards but the Stripers kept interrupting us. We had some decent action for about 90 minutes then it subsided. I decided to go catch some more bait and try to set up in an area that I wanted to fish before the wind got up too bad. Well I put out 3 or 4 rods then the wind hit us like a sledgehammer and I had to put the trolling motor on 9 just to keep the boat going 7 tenths of a mph. It seems like the wind has to howl every day! We fished that stretch for about 3oo yards without a hit. Then I pulled up on a point and hooked up with 2 or 3 fish. We then went to another point and took 2 or 3 more hits. I turned to go back to those areas but the wind would not let me so I gave it up and moved elsewhere out of the wind. We worked this small area for about an hour only to catch a couple Stripers and 3 Catfish. This was not getting it so I decided to make one final move. We topped the bait tank off again and headed downlake to make one final last stand on something completely different. Our perseverance paid off and we popped the three biggest fish of the day. 

Active Stripers near the bottom

 

Jason, Doug, Howard and Tim

Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temperature 48* and Clear

I picked the guys up at their dock at 6:25 then went to catch bait. I made about a dozen throws and put 70 pretty baits in the tank. Boat traffic was busy where I wanted to fish so we made about a 4 mile run and set out a spread of planner boards pulling a flat with deep water nearby. Once we got up on the flat with our spread we started taking hits but the fish were out in the deeper water nearby the breaks. We worked the area for about 2 hour until too many boats had run over the flat so we made a move. We went and filled the tank up again with bait then setup another spread of boards. We worked for about a mile before we started taking hits again. For the next 4 hours we would have plenty of action catching some nice Stripers. Tim caught the two largest fish of the day, both about 10 pounds. Today we took about 35 hits. The water temperature is about 22 degrees colder this year than it was this time last year.

Recent Lowrance Pictures

School of Crappie

Gizzard Shad and Stripers

Stripers

Stripers

Here are a few pictures that I took off of my new Lowrance HDS-12 unit. In the top picture I was graphing a 10 foot flat and then pulled off of the flat to the nearest drop off. Notice the bright yellow on the bottom, that is a hard rock bottom with a couple of rocks right on the top of the break. That is a contact point for that particular flat. The cloud hanging on the point is a school of nice crappie. Bass, Stripers and Crappie use contact points on flats to congregate before they move up on the flat and disperse to feed and they also get back together after feeding and school up on a contact point before moving back out over deeper water where they usually suspend. When I am looking for fish and don't find them deep or on the ledges or contact points I will not look up on the flat and spook the fish, instead I will shut my big motor down and immediately put out a spread of boards.
  In the second picture I am graphing a 20 to 25 foot flat marking Stripers [on the bottom left] then seeing the smaller Gizzard Shad prior to going up on the break. At the very top of my screen is my history, about 2 to 300 yards of graphing. As you can see, I had been going over numerous single and double fish relating close to the bottom. The Stripers are the larger arches.
   The third screen is actually 2 screens, the left screen is bottom lock showing 2,4,6,8,and 10 feet up off the bottom. The right side of the screen is traditional sonar. The Stripers were positioned very near a break.
   The fourth screen is sonar on the left, side scan upper right and down scan bottom right. The sonar and bottom scan are clearly showing Stripers from 9 to 14 feet. Side Scan shows a couple Stripers out 40 to 60 feet to the right side of the boat. Notice on my sonar page up on the top of the page in history that I had been going over a lot of bait then after the bait stopped I started marking numerous Stripers. I was traveling 4.6 mph while taking that picture. You can also see on my down scan the Stripers quit marking then the bait reappearing.
   I regularly take out anglers who need help learning their units and not only instruct them on how to use them but show them how to put fish in the boat. The next 4 months are great months to fish for Stripers on the Lake. Book a trip and learn more in a day fishing with me than, well, you decide.

Blaine and Carl

Blaine

Cloudy, Windy and Cold, Water temperature 46*.

Today did not start out very well. It was 24* this morning when I left the house. I attempted to roll my window down but it was still frozen solid. Well the glass separated from the track and broke the window. Before I got to the marina Blaine called me and said they had a flat on 95 and would be late. Unfortunately we did not get out till around 8 so we caught bait and set a spread of boards out. The water temp had fallen again with the cold weather and snow and had dropped to 45.2*. We were in for a repeat of last Saturday when the temp dropped 5*. We fished for about 3 hours without the fish being aggressive. The wind was howling and it was cold. The water temp only rose a degree and a half up to 46.8 but that was enough to put the fish on the bank. We made a pass on a clay bank and had 3 or 4 fish hook up. I turned the boat around to try to hit it again but my trolling motor batteries [4 of them] were tired of fighting the wind and made it difficult to control the boat. We worked the same pattern for a couple hours then got blow off the lake. Blaine is pictured holding one of the two Bass he caught today. The fish inhaled the bait so deep he swallowed all of the hooks and died so we kept her. We were able to release his other Bass unharmed.

Kurt

Anthony took Kurt out on Saturday to teach him how to use a Lowrance and also how to catch Stripers on Lake Anna. They caught 9 Stripers and kept these 5 fat fish to take home for the table.

They only wanted to keep 4 but the fifth fish swallowed the hook and would not survive.

Gary, Dewey, Dean and Rick

Partly cloudy and cold, Water temperature 46*

Oh, what a day. We got out yesterday morning, air temp 24* and water temp around 45*. We took about an hour to catch 70 baits then went fishing. After about an hour of fishing I knew we were in trouble. We had about 4 or 5 short hits and caught one fish which was right at 20 inches so we threw it back.There were a few boats in the area and I was limited to where I could fish. I decided to make a move so we threw away the 24 baits we had on our lines and went to catch more bait. We made a couple casts and filled the tank up with beautiful baits. We set out a spread in an area where we could not see another boat for a mile. After pulling a half a mile we had not taken a strike. I had 3 other friends and guides out that I had been talking with that were experiencing the same thing. We finally started taking hits on subtle points right up on the bank. For the next 3 hours we would take hits boating about a quarter of the fish. About noon our problems started . Bass boats started cutting us off, the wind picked up a little and other Striper fisherman started dogging us so we could not turn around and hit productive areas. After 45 minutes without a fish I decided to make one final move to an area where I knew there were fish. The move paid off, we hooked up with 5 or 6 fish in a hundred yard stretch. I turned back and  hit the same bank taking another half dozen hits right up on the bank in about a hundred yard stretch. Throughout the morning I kept telling the guys that the extremely cold nights had turned the fish off but once it warmed up in the afternoon they would eat. Our patience paid off and we probably would still be out there catching Stripers if it wasn't for an discourteous Striper fisherman. He watched us catching Stripers on the bank and had the nerve to go between us and the bank right where we had been fishing for over an hour spooking the fish. I had to move out of his way so my boards would not go under his boat.We ended up having well over 40 strikes today and keeping 14 Stripers for the guys to take home. It was a long tough day but we hung in there and made it work for us. 

A nice Crappie

 

A client and friend Brian Nickols caught this 2 1/2 pound Crappie

Saturday on a 6 inch Gizzard Shad along with some nice Stripers.

A nice stringer of fish

DP

 

 

Guide DP went fishing for a couple hours yesterday evening and caught this nice stringer of Stripers.

Lowrance HDS 12 Touch

Here are a couple pictures from my new Lowrance. Click on the pics too enlarge.

Both shots are showing the unit set up with 3 screens. The left screen in the top picture is traditional sonar set in a 31 foot scale showing the bottom of the lake at 23 feet deep, two Stripers around 20 feet, a small bait pod at 10 feet, surface clutter from 1 to 5 feet, then my history above on the very top or the page. Note in the history single fish showing up 200 to 300 yards back. Also in the top pic on the upper right side is side scan set at 80 feet either side with the Stripers showing up as vertical lines and the bottom right screen is down scan also showing the school of bait at 10 feet and the Stripers below them.

   The bottom screen shot is a little more active. I am traveling at 2.9 mph and Gizzard Shad are everywhere in major schools. These baits range from 7 to 12 inches long. The side scan also shows the baits well and in the far left side out about 70 feet is the channel ledge. The down scan shot shows the bait as well. The bottom shot was taken at 1:52 pm on Wednesday, 2 hours after a major front blew through. The front had pushed the bait from being scattered earlier in the day to positioning itself right over the channel. I drove through well over 200 yards of nothing but bait. This is usually a bad sign for Striper fishing, when the bait and fish are positioned over the channel they are not feeding.

Tommy, Jeff, Chuck and Jordan

Crazy Weather, Water temperature 46*

Wow, what a day. I picked my clients up at High Point then went to catch bait. The lake was glass, the ski was bluebird, and expectations high. I went to where I had caught bait the last 3 days and there was none. I kept looking till I found some scattered bait then threw about 20 times to fill the tank up. I set up in an area where I had caught a couple fish earlier in the week and worked about a mile stretch catching a few fish. By 9:30 the wind started to blow and clouds rolled in. By 11 the wind changed direction blowing out of the North dropping the air temperature 10 degrees. White caps were everywhere on the lake and squalls were blowing just North and South of us. Needless to say it did not look good. I looked for about 45 minutes to find a place to catch fish using the pattern that I was on that would be out of the wind but there was no such place on the lake. I decided to fish a couple areas I knew fish were in regardless of the wind. Many times today the wind would spin my boat around so I had to resort to using not only my trolling motor to help steer the boat but also my big motor to push us into the wind. I had my hands full putting baits out, retying lines that got fouled with other lines, netting fish, running to the helm to run the big motor and trying to steer through gusts with hopes of keeping the boat on somewhat of a course. All the hard work paid off, we ended up catching 22 Stripers today despite the weather. Jordan is pictured holding up the big fish of the day, a 12 pounder.

The calm before the storm

10 pound Striper

5 pound Bass

1 1/2 pound crappie

Anthony called me yesterday around 11 saying he had just got back from Florida and that he wanted to take his boat out for a couple hours fishing and did I want to go. We had gone to Florida last week and I returned early to take care of my house in the snow storm. Anthony wanted to get out on the water and relax before going back to work today to face the storm of issues he may have after not being there for 10 days. Come to find out everything had gone well at work for him and he worried for naught. Well I met him on the water around 12:30. We only had a couple hours to fish because he had to get off the water at 3. We decided to set up in an area where we could pull shallow flats and if the fish were not there simply pull out and hit 20 to 30 foot flats giving us a chance to pattern the fish. It was cloudy yesterday and the fish were basically scattered. We took hits in all depths catching decent fish everywhere. We were using small baits pulling planner boards and downlines. We caught 7 Stripers, a Largemouth and a few Crappie in 2 1/2 hours of fishing. I kept the Crappie for a good dinner last night.

New Lowrance

Michael

Lowrance HDS 12

My new Lowrance came in yesterday afternoon so I decided to hook it up this morning and take it for a test drive. My grandson Michael was down for the weekend and was dying to go fishing so we mounted the Lowrance and went to the lake around lunch time. My goal today was to get use to the Lowrance then if we had time to take Mike fishing. We worked [and played] with the depth finder for about 2 hours then we went and caught bait. I put out a spread of planner boards and downlines pulling 20 to 30 foot flats and before we knew it we hooked up with 3 at once. Mike wrestled them to the boat and I netted the fish. I left that area because I wanted to take some clients to it this week and moved to a similar area on the lake to see if I could establish a pattern. We put out the same spread of baits and had the same results. We caught 11 Stripers and kept 8 to bring home and fillet. We motored back to where we launched the boat, popped a picture and got home in time enough to clean our catch for dinner. I love my new Lowrance and Michael loved spending an afternoon on the water. I feel sorry for the Stripers this year, they don't stand a chance with this new Lowrance technology.

Eddie, Lee and Pee Wee

Guide Brian took these guys out Tuesday before the storm hit fishing for Stripers. They caught 10 fish, 1, Bass, 8 keeper Stripers and 1punk Striper. Although fishing conditions were poor Brian hit numerous places catching a fish here and there to make a successful trip for his clients. The weather is going to break next week and the Stripers should enjoy the warmer weather.