Deno, Kerri and Al

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 83* and clear.

I caught bait early this morning then picked my crew up at their dock at 5:30. We looked for some fish for a little while then we set up on a couple just to familiarized with putting the baits out properly. After I felt confident they understood how to do it we went looking for schools. I found what I wanted to see so we set up on a small school. We started taking hits with the first bait that we got down. Birthday boy Deno popped the first couple of Stripers then his daughter Kerri got in the action. The action slowed up after about 15 minutes of constant action. We reeled our lines in and relocated the school. We had no mercy on them this time as everyone did an excellent job putting the baits out properly and reeling in fish. A couple of these fish had their way with Kerri today as they pulled her around the boat. This was Al's first time Striper fishing and he handled himself like a pro. Before we knew it we had caught our limit. They took home 16 Stripers and a Walleye. Deno has been out with me numerous times and loves the downline bite. His daughter Kerri and Al gave him this trip for his Birthday present. Probably the best present he could ever get, catching Stripers on his daughter.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DENO

Anthony and Brian

 

      Guide DP took these guys out this morning and this is his rendition of the events of the morning.

We left high point at 4 am in search of bait. By day light we had caught 2 pieces of bait. We went searching for schools of bait but the cloud and fog cover would not let the sun peek through long enough for the bait to gang up. At 730 we had 7 pieces of bait, I wanted to try something so we put out 3 lines baited with really large baits that we had. We made about a hundred yard pull and caught a catfish and a keeper striper. We threw them both back and headed to the marina.  We hung around the marina for 15 minutes or so and while Anthony was grabbing his trolling rigs, Brian said to me "man this morning has really been tough". I could see the disappointment in his face so I was hoping to change that very quickly.  Well, my boat does not like to go slow and after trying to troll at 4.5 mph we got the rigs in and went searching for bait.  We searched for a while and finally found what we were looking for. Anthony was throwing from the front of the boat and I was throwing from the back.  One of my throws hit the middle of the school and that was all that we needed.  As my net was falling another boat that we had seen earlier in the morning (struggling for bait as well) drove by and asked if we had had any luck. Well once we saw that I had landed about 100 baits, Anthony said let's try to stay with this school and help that guy out with some bait. After a couple more throws from Anthony he said let's go give him what extra we have and get out of here. So that's what we did.  We had never seen this gentleman before but we knew that he had struggled like we had and we just wanted to help him out a bit. He really appreciated our generosity towards him, we chatted for a minute and then we parted ways. By now its 9:15 and we search and search for a school of fish. We stopped and looked at a few schools but it was not what we were looking for. Now its 9:45 and knowing that Anthony needed to leave at 10:30 I headed towards a place where I had seen several fish earlier in the morning.  I was a half a mile from where I wanted to go when I ran over what we had been looking for. I turned the boat around, shut off the big motor and starting putting out bait. I was really caught up in the action when Brian said "man, I have never caught my limit in 5 minutes before".  After he said that I looked in the live well and it was full. We took a minute from the action to count the fish and we had 10. So we went back into the school and popped 2 more really quick and had our limit.  Then we cleaned up the boat and emptied the bait tank ( which took about 10 minutes) when we sat down to leave my Lowrance was still full of fish.  This was the largest school of fish that I have been on this summer and they were mostly all keepers, we only had 2 fish that were under the 20" mark. Today's bait collection was tough but we never gave up, we hung in there and gave it our all and it really paid off. I hope the gentleman that we helped out with bait had a successful day as well.

 

     

Dr. Jim Gardner and Guests

Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temperature 78* and Clear.

Today John and Brian took their dads fishing for Stripers. I picked them up at their dock then went and caught about 150 baits. We picked an area to fish where there weren't any boats and put out our baits. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to use up all of our baits. We had 15 keepers and the guys wanted to catch their limits so I went and caught some more bait then went to a different spot and put some baits in the water. In less that 10 minutes we filled our limits for a great day of fishing. Today we were quite busy trying to keep baits in the water. For an hour straight this morning we battled fish and could not keep up with the action. Jim and Brian have gone out with me several times but John and his Dad weren't expecting this kind of action out of a lake. Needless to say everyone will have plenty of delicious Striper for awhile.

Kyle, Brady, Janeile, Hanna, Steve and Levi

 Janeile

Brady

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 80* and Clear

I caught bait early then picked my crew up at their dock at 5:30 this morning. We did a mock set up to explain how to put the baits at the correct depth, caught a couple fish then went looking for schools. We looked around a little and set up on a couple pods of fish catching a few each set up. After some of the other boats moved on I set up in an area where I knew where we could have some fun. We were all set when I hit this particular spot and the action got crazy. For about an hour and a half we constantly caught fish. We fished there till 8:30 then had to leave, we had used up 130 baits. We fished till the last bait caught a fish. We then took off to search for more bait. After about an hour we had a couple full tanks of bait so we hit other areas with good success. We fished till the girls needed a break then went back out, caught bait and found even more Stripers. We worked them till we completely ran out of bait again. I have no clue how many fish we caught today but I do know we took over 225 strikes! Janeile is pictured holding the last fish of the day that she caught and Brady is holding his big fish of the day. We all had a whole lot of fun and action and there is plenty of food for dinner the rest of their vacation. This will certainly be a trip everyone will have fond memories of.

Stripers, Stripers, Stripers

 Ned

 School of Stripers

 School of feeding Stripers. Fish are streaking.

 School of Stripers next to a school of bait.

Left screen shows the Stripers on the left [arches] with the bait to the right of them.

Structure scan clearly shows the difference in the fish [larger lines]and the bait they are about to feed on.

These Stripers were not aggressively feeding in this pic but 10 minutes later they attacked the school of bait then we had our way with them.

A Whole lot of fun

This kind of action is what we are enjoying on the lake now and for the next month.

Book a trip soon to get in on some great Striper fishing!

Harry, Cora, Lizzy and Jared

Tony had a morning trip today and took these folks out for a fun morning of fishing on Lake Anna. Not only did they end up with a lot of fun memories they have plenty of wonderful table fare.

Tony, Jim, Zeek, Bob and Daniel

Cloudy, heavy rain, Water temperature 80* and Clear.

I got out on the water at 3 this morning to catch bait. I was worried that the weather would mess the bait catching process up like it usually does when it rains so hard. Well by 5:15 I had thrown 50 times for 6 baits. I went and picked my clients up at High Point then went out searching for bait. After burning a half a tank of gas I finally caught bait at 9 o'clock. I drove to an area that I knew had been holding some nice fish and we put the baits out, or attempted to. We started taking hits immediately and for 2 hours straight we had constant action. I could not keep up with baiting much less counting the fish we caught. Here are a few of the fish we caught this morning. It rained so hard I thought it might ruin the guys day but I warned them last night that the weather would not be good but they insisted on going. Believe it or not once we got on the fish they did not care at all about the rain. It ended up being a fun day with plenty of fish to take home.

A couple of Heavy Stringers

 Paul

Bubba

Cloudy and Cool, Water Temperature 80* and Clear.

Today we had two charters, Tony took Bubba out and I took Paul. We both caught bait way before daylight and filled our tanks up. They thought fighting the fish was hard, they had forgotten they had to hold the fish up for a picture by themselves.

Harold, Unju, Sean and Mijoo

Guide DP took these Guys and Gals out for a memorable fishing trip on Lake Anna today. When they had live bait the action was great. They caught 50 Stripers today and took home plenty of wonderful tasting meals.

Too Much Action

 Rob and Conner Cross

 This is a school of fish up on a shallow flat that I found while looking for bait early in the morning.

 We are over some nice Stripers and my side scan is showing me that there are more on the right side of the boat. I simply turned my boat to the right and all the rods bowed over.

 This is a picture I took this morning of a School of Stripers after we had caught 12 to 15 fish. As you can see not only on the sonar but also on my side scan that I was in the middle of a major school of Stripers. Notice the larger fish were at 26 to 30 feet. We had our baits set at 28 feet and were catching the nicer fish.

This is a picture that I took 30 minutes later than the above picture. We were still in the school of Stripers and wearing them out. I would have loved to got pics when we were really on the fish but I was kept quite busy.

Rain, Rain and rain. Water Temperature 79* and Clear.

I got out very early this morning to catch bait. It was raining so hard that the bait would not come to the lights. I struggled to catch 150 baits after hanging lights in 3 different places. I picked the guys up at 5:30 and showed them how to deploy the line to put the baits in the Stripers faces. Once they set out a couple of baits properly I knew they were ready so I had them bring the baits in and I went looking for a school. I ran over a school of Stripers as big as the UVA campus. [Rob is a professor in the management department at McIntire School of Commerce.] I set the boat down and we attempted to get out baits out. We would no sooner engage the reel and a Striper would hit the bait. It was total madness, excitement, joy and fun for a whole hour. In fact, we could not get but 3 or 4 baits out for over 50 minutes without getting hooked up. Conner was having sooo much fun he looked like a chicken with his head cut off running around the boat. He wouldn't even get the reel engaged before a Striper would try to take the rod from him.We worked the school till we ran out of baits, at 7:15. It is amassing what a boy [and a adult] can learn in an hour. They went from catching 30% of the fish that hit to boating almost every one. I kept hearing Rob talking to himself saying "This is incredible, this is incredible....." There was no way I could keep track of how  many fish we actually caught but I do know it was way too much action for two anglers. If you come fishing with us in June and July you better have at least 4 anglers on board or you will certainly regret not taking my advice. My thumb is still bleeding from taking fish off of Conner's hooks.

A Whole lot of Stripers

Dp's clients Tim, Ryan and Steve

 

Tony's Clients Corey, Janet and Ron

Today Guides DP and Tony had charters so they both got out on the water very early to catch bait. Today was not only a fun day on the water but a great fishing day as you can see by the smiles on their clients faces and the large stringers of fish. This morning our clients caught over 100 Stripers. That is a lot of work for the guides and they certainly earned their tips today. Looks like the summer Striper bite is on!

Richie and Guy

Guide DP took Guy and Richie out today. Here is his rendition of the day.

"Picked the guys up at 5:30, went to look for fish. After a short drive we found a few to set up on. We set up on 4 different small pods of fish today and would catch a dozen on each set up.  This was a half day trip and at 9:15 the guys said that they wanted about 4 fish to take home to the wives, I looked in the live well and there were 8 in there already, oops! We had a dozen baits left so we set up on one more school. The first 3 fish were some of the best fish of the day and they swallowed the hooks. They would not have survived if we had released them. By then we had gone through 105 baits and boated nearly 50 stripers, allowing us to get off of the water before the lake got crowded."

John, Bruce, Collin and Ben

Sunny and warm, Water temperature 75* and Clear.

I got out very early this morning, caught bait and picked the guys up at High Point. I looked for fish for about 10 minutes and found enough to set up on. We put our first set out and caught 15 Stripers in less than 30 minutes. We were on our way to a fun morning. Today we hit school after school picking 8 to 10 fish out of each stop we made. Today we took about 200 hits and caught about 50 Stripers. Collin is going to remember this trip for a long time. He went from not touching a bait and having difficulty reeling in fish to changing his own baits, setting the lines out and spanking a lot of nice Stripers today. Caught the better fish today on Cicadas.

Lowrance HDS Technology

 This is a picture off of a HDS-12 with traditional sonar on the upper half of the screen and Side Scan on the bottom half. DP was collecting bait for a trip early in the morning. In the sonar portion of the picture the boat is over 35 feet of water and shows some small Stripers in the upper water column with plankton stratified between 20 to 25 feet on the left side and on the bottom on the right side of the sonar screen. Very little bait is showing up on the sonar. The bottom half of the picture shows Side scan in a 60 foot scale [looking out 60 feet to the right and left side of the boat]. It clearly shows bait to  the left of the boat. It also shows very clearly DP's 10 foot net and rope sinking into the bait. At this point there was one bait in the net but after letting it fall he caught about 2 dozen baits. We use this technology daily not only catching bait but also while we are on fish to track the direction the schools are moving.

 This is a cropped view of the picture above showing the net falling into the bait.

 This screen shot shows traditional sonar on the left side of the screen, side scan on the upper right and bottom scan on the bottom right of the screen. The Stripers are suspended between 22 to 35 feet. The line in the middle of the pic is us dropping our bait down through the Stripers. On the side scan  you can see Stripers not only under our boat but more Stripers to the left side of the boat. Down scan is simply is confirming the fish under the boat. We caught about 15 fish in just a few minutes while fishing this school. If you look at the upper portion of my sonar it shows my history of the previous few minutes. The purplish square is the same as the current sonar and the further you look back to the left  the further back in time we go. With the touch screen I can simply touch any area in the history, it pulls the screens back to that moment so I can view what I previously went over and if I wish I could touch that area again and way-point it to return to the exact spot.

This shot of my Lowrance shows the boat in 16 feet of water. This is a massive school of bait.

We threw the net and caught about 60 beautiful baits.

Lowrance HDS-12 Pics

 This picture shows a brush pile with a school of Crappie suspended just above and to the right of the pile.

 This is a school of Stripers that we worked that were suspended in 15 to 20 feet of water.

 This is a brush pile that rises off the bottom about 12 feet.

This is a hole in a flat that if work quite often. There are 4 screens on the Lowrance. The extreem left screen is in bottom lock at 3x zoom. The next part of the screen is traditional sonar showing Stripers near the bottom with gizzards above the fish. The bottom right screen is downscan showing a clear picture of the fish and bait.

Tires Unlimited

 Billy, Bill, Larry and Floyd

Billy...20 inch  Bass

Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temperature 70*and Clear.

I got out very early and caught bait then picked up my clients at 5:15 at High Point. We made a short run and I put out a set of 10 planner boards and 6 or 8 downlines pulling flats. We had an earthquake yesterday and I was wondering if it would affect the fishing today like it did a couple years ago. [When we had the earthquake and aftershocks we would only catch half the fish that we were normally catching.] I put my boards up on the bank expecting to catch the fish shallow but we only took a couple hit the first 20 minutes of the morning but when I pulled out a little deeper we started getting Jammed. The guys didn't expect that kind of action and they were quite shell-shocked by 7:10 this morning. We had taken 100 hits and put over 30 fish in the boat! Our boating ratios were down because we had a clown on the boat today that thought he could do it his way. After loosing too many fish to count and knocking the largest fish of the day off his sons hook with the net he settled down somewhat resulting in us landing more fish. We left at 7:20 and looked for some more fish and bait then picked up Bill at the docks around 8. We fished the rest of the day but never had the kind of action that we had in the morning. It sure was a lot of fun for all of us today, we boated well over 50 Stripers, a couple Bass and a few Catfish.

Fibertech

 Daren

William

Daren, Brad and Dale Roop

Sunny, cold in the morning , Water temperature 66* and clear.

Today I got out early and caught bait so that we could have our spread out at first light. I caught the bait but one of the guys was late because he had to work till after 2 last night. We started to put our spread out around 6 but it was already too late, I could only get a bait or two out before it got hit. [I wanted to have 15 lines in the water so when the fish turned on we could have numerous hook-ups] We had constant action for about an hour, that is when I finally got all my rods baited. We hit areas nearby and picked up a few fish but the major feed was over. I set up over a few more areas before I had to take William back early to the dock so he could go to the airport. I popped a quick picture of him with a few fish, threw the fish in a cooler and sent him down the road. We went back out but our good luck charm had left us, seemed William on board was the key to catching fish. We fished different areas for 4 more hours only to catch punks and a few keepers. At 2 I decided to look for some fish in a different area and the move paid off. We had to get off the water by 3 and we had about 35 baits left. We baited our hooks and the madness began. For the next hour we had constant hook-ups and used every single bait in our tanks. We got back to the dock and snapped a quick picture of the guys holding a couple of fish each from the livewell then they had to rush off. Today we caught over 40 Stripers and a few catfish. The cold front had positioned the fish out near or over the channel today making it difficult to catch everything we saw on my Lowrance. Daren is pictured holding a couple of the fish we caught early this morning.

Happy Mothers Day

This being Mothers Day Tony and I thought we would let the "Moms" sleep in so we woke up Tony's son Alec and my grandson Michael and took them fishing for a few hours this morning. Michael is pictured holding up a very nice Bass he caught and in the bottom picture both boys are doing battle with two Stripers at the same time. In the first 45 minutes of the morning they landed a dozen Stripers.

We would like to wish all Moms out there a happy and wonderful 

MOTHERS DAY.

Sport, Money and Huffy

Guide DP took these guys out today for a morning of Striper fishing and looks like they had plenty of action.

Steve, Bill, Steve and Brad

Sunny, Warm,  Water Temperature 70* and stained.

I got out early to catch bait then picked the guys up at 5:30 at the dock. I threw for another 45 minutes till I had the baits I needed then we went fishing. I set out a spread of boards pulling flats and right away we had 5 or 6 fish rise our baits and swirl them numerous times but never hooked up. After a couple hundred yards with out a fish I moved out just a little deeper and we put 4 or 5 fish in the boat within a couple minutes. We worked that pattern for a while then went and caught more bait. We set up fishing yet another pattern and everything we had out started taking hits. After 15 minutes I had to retie some rods and rebated everything and hit it again. We had a great day catching well over 20 Stripers, a Bass and a few Kitties. Today was a celebration of Bill's birthday, his loving wife Joan had bought this trip for him as a surprise birthday gift.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILL

A good day of fishing

 Eric Norby, Ae Yon, and Chris

Erron, Paul, Bob, Jay and Ron

Rainy morning turning into pleasant afternoon, Water temperature 66* and Stained.

Tony and myself both had trips this morning so we hit the water at 4am, caught bait and picked our clients up at the crack of dawn. Tony worked one side of the lake and I hit the other side. We both pulled big spreads of planner boards rigged with big Gizz. Both boats caught 20 Stripers each and everyone went home with great Memories and good table-fare. Fishing was spotty today, there were times of chaos when every rod would get hit as well as times of 30 to 45 minutes of no action. The weather probably had a lot to do with the action today.

A few recent catches

 DP took Rich and Chad out Sunday for a great day of fishing.

 Here is Matt holding up a couple nice Stripers from our trip on Friday.

This is Dr. Frank Lewis holding a Citation bass that he caught fishing with me on Thursday.

Chris, Pat, Rory and Kyle

Pat

DP took Rory Sullivan and his family out today for a great day on the water. Pat showed the Boys how it was done by catching the big fish of the day.

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