This weeks catches

 

Seth, Coda, Cayden, Vanessa, Paul, Bubba and Donna

 

 Anthony and Don

A Whole lot of catching going on

Finally Stripers are in their summer pattern schooling and feeding. We are catching an average of 50 fish a morning but those numbers will increase as the Stripers finish spawning. In previous years catches in June and July can exceed 100 fish a morning. Come on out and get you some!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

 Jason's Crew

Vance's Crew

Today we caught over 100 Stripers and Hybrids in the morning between both boats. 

Hopefully everyone will remember the people who died while serving in our country's armed forces.

Saturdays Catches

 Mark, family and friends

Ronald, Sharon, Eugene, Jenn and Charlie

Cloudy and Pleasant, Water Temperature 77 * and Clear

Yesterday was a nice day on the water and we managed to catch a few Stripers as well. Between both boats we took about 250 hits and had a lot of fun.

Lake Anna Stripers

Caden, Steve, Bill and Bill

Sunny and Chilly [Frost this morning], Water temperature 68* and clear.

I have had a lot of people want me to start posting again so here we go. Today we started out pulling boards and hooked up with the largest Striper right off the bat in about 20 foot of water. We boated it and within the next 15 minutes we caught 5 Largemouth's 15 to 20 feet deep up to 5 1/2 pounds. That was enough of that so I moved on. Since the fish were not aggressively hitting the boards this morning due to the cold front driving them off the shallower flats I moved out to slightly deeper depths and we started hooking up. I was happy just to have action on a bluebird cold front day like today but the Stripers cooperated and we limited out before lunch. Stripers still have not spawned and are basically somewhat confused so expect plenty of spawning action to come before the fish retreat to their summer patterns. The bass we caught have not spawned either and were still main lake on ledges next to the channels, Whats up with that??? Funky spring weather I guess.

Recent Catches

 3/28 Caden, Bill, Bill and Steve

 3/27 Dwayne, Mark, Floyd and Tony

3/25 Tony's Bachelor Party

 

Six Tough Nuts

Eggs, Scotty, Shawn, Dylan, Corey and Ashley

Cold, Rain, Windy, Water Temperature 53*

Thursday night I called Corey and told him he may want to reconsider fishing on Friday due to the weather but he insisted on going because his family was driving down from Pennsylvania. I hit the water at 4 to catch bait and picked them up around 6:30. As I was putting my third board out on the first set two rods hooked up. I had not had time to show them how to handle a fish with circle hooks so we boated one and not the other. I put out 5 or 6 more boards and had moved about 100 yards when 5 of them hooked up. Talk about Chaos, I had to ask them what language they understood up in PA. Fish were going different directions, people were climbing over each other fighting fish, it was crazy. In the confusion one guy even threw the biggest fish of the day overboard after taking it off the hook??? Boy did I have fun with him the rest of the day. The weather was tough yesterday... Cold, rain and sustained 25 mph winds with gusts strong enough to back the boat up. They hung in there and we all had a ball despite the weather.

Back in the saddle again

 Michael, Emory and Dylan

Poose, Pete, Frank, William, Steve and Alan

Sunny and Warm, Water temperature 55*

I took off December to hunt with my grandson [both of us harvested giant bucks] then in January my wife and I took off and went to Florida. Been battling a cold for most of February but the time has come to come out of hibernation and get back to work. Took the kids out one warm afternoon and put them on a bunch of Stripers and boy did they get Cocky! Two of them even took their shirts off for a while enjoying the warm weather. Today I took Alan and his crew out and put them on these 19 Stripers. Looks like Lake Anna hasn't changed while I was gone, still giving up great stringers of Stripers.

Stripers are Rockin!

 Bill and Steve

Dennis, Cole and David

With water temps ranging in the low 50's up lake to 60* at the dam the all the Stripers want to do now is fatten up. Time to get out and fill the freezer and have fun doing it.

'Tis the Season for the fish to for big stringers

This is almost as nice as a Citation Striper

Lake Anna Citation Striper

This is a video Scott Haun taped of George reeling in

 a Citation Striper on October 5th

A few nice Stripers

Mike, Jim and Ray

Cloudy and cool, Water Temperature 72*

Although it was a slow day on the water today 

we managed to scrape up a few nice Stripers.

Back on the Water

George with a 37 inch 18 pound Striper

I take a break every September from being on the water to catch up with projects around the farm. Many of my clients have emailed me to see if I was OK because I had not posted any pics in September, thank you for your concerns, all is well. I got back out Monday taking Paul Mader and friends out fishing a half day but had to start at 10am due to some timing issues with them. I had warned them that the better bites were early and latter in the day but if midday was the only time we could go we probably would not catch a bunch of fish but we could maybe target some larger fish to make up for the midday blues. I looked for about an hour trying to locate some schools but all the fish I found were in 30 feet of water spread out over 100 acres hugging the bottom. When I see this it normally it tough to get bit. I finally set up over some larger arches and put baits in their faces with downlines. We popped 4 or 5 Stripers before we hooked into this pig. The fish had messed with the bait for about 75 yards but would not engage it. George stood at the rod for 6 or 8 minutes then all of a sudden the drag started screaming. It pulled off about 50 yards of drag and George dig great fighting the fish. When it finally came to the surface we knew we had a nice one and I netted it. I knew we could not release the fish because it was hooked deep and was bleeding profusely. I measured the fish and saw it was a Citation so we got all of our rods in and and took it to the marina for George to make it official. Lake Anna welcomed me back with a beautiful day with old friends and the largest fish George had ever caught. Great way to start the fall fishing season!

Simrad Screen Shots

 

 These screen shots can be clicked on to enlarge.

Deceiving screen shot. 

This shot shows 4 or 5 fish on the sonar 5 to 10 foot deep. They appear to be nice fish due to their color but in fact they are only 12 to 14 inch fish. The reason is they are so close to the transducer and the reflection of the pings is so much stronger at that short distance. The fish at 25 feet are 3 pound Stripers. They appear larger due to the length of the arch but notice the boat is almost still, I am only going a half mile an hour. If they were nicer fish they would also have more color in the center of them. To associate them with the side scan, the A's are the same fish and the B's are the same fish. When you look at side scan the boat is at the top of the side scan screen at the 0 mark. Everything below it is history. On sonar the boat is at 0 and everything to the left of it is history. Presuming I was going .5mph when I popped the picture the B fish are about 30 feet behind the boat. On side scan the darker blue is the water column and at 36.9 feet out either side it picks up the bottom then the beam shoots out to the sides of the boat 120 feet similar to a flood light. I am posting this pic to demonstrate how when using side scan you can see that the B fish are about 5 to 10 [deep] feet from the boat and the A fish are 25 feet [deep] from the boat in the side scan portion of the screen shot.

 In this shot I was running about 25mph when I ran over this hump and notice numerous fish relating to it. I slowed down [you can see the surface clutter on the right side of the sonar page near the surface which is my boat coming off plane] to turn back around and work the fish. When traveling 25mph structure scan still works but does not show single fish at that speed. I use my sonar page primarily to locate fish at higher speeds then once I locate them I use both to get back on them and to determine their size.

In this shot I am marking keeper Stripers between 20 and 25 feet deep clearly on my sonar screen. The fish show up on my side scan as lighter vertical dashes. These are feeding Stripers. They are streaking in the sonar shot [swimming up and down] and wiggly on the side scan view. Notice on side scan some fish are larger than others and on the right side you can actually see the shadows of the fish which indicate larger fish. Side Scan is like shining a flood light out to the sides of the boat, the objects appear lighter and the shadows are behind them. The larger the shadow the bigger the object. If I were looking at structure on the bottom of the lake, I would see the structure clearly and could estimate how high the structure came off the bottom by the size of the shadow behind it.

Although these are screen shots taken off of my Simrad, Lowrance shots are similar. I post these shots to help my clients understand what they are looking at when they are on the water to help them locate and catch fish more proficiently.

A Great Morning on Lake Anna

 When you find this

 You should end up with this!

Sunny, Mikki, Taz and Will

 Mikki and her big one

Will with a nice Bass

Sunny and Warm, water Temperature 88*

This morning I put 200 Herring in the tank, picked my clients up and taught them how to deploy the baits. I then located a school of Stripers and set down on them. As I was baiting everyone the Stripers started blowing up around me and anxiety to say the least hit an all time high. They could only get a couple baits down before someone would screw things up but eventually after cutting 7 lines apart that got tangled the fish started hitting the deck. For 45 minutes it was constant action and by 7:30 we had 17 Stripers in the box. After the rush was over I looked, and looked and looked for other schools with no success. Finally I just set up on some structure and Mikki popped her nice Striper and we caught a few nice Bass. This morning the fishing was intense to say the least but the crew got it together and pulled it off. They thought they were going to have a leisurely morning sitting around reeling in a fish here and there....NOT.

Wednesdays Catches

 The Roberts Family

 Fred, Mike, Jillian, Josh and Scott

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 90* and Clear

Got back on the water after spending a couple weeks at the beach and Tony and I put our clients on some nice Stripers.

Tony's Recent Catches

 Edward, Nathan, Drayton, Andrew and Doug

 Robert, Cody and Casey

Lowrance and Simrad Screen Shots

 In this Lowrance pic I had just thrown my cast net. You can see the net completely open on side scan. To the uneducated eye it appears like the net is falling sideways vrs horizontal but it is in fact falling perfectly. Side Scan is looking out to the side of the boat similar to a flashlight beam. The depth of the water is 22 feet, the surface being 0. The transducer is picking up the net as a side view falling through the water [dark blue] clearly showing the sinkers on the bottom of the net. I threw on some bait that were on the surface trapped in the top and right side of the net which slowed the decent of the net on that side.

 In this pic I threw on a very large school of bait and the diagonal line is the net falling through the bait. The screen is scrolling from right to left so the net hit the surface in the middle of the shot and fell straight to the bottom but because the screen is scrolling it appears that the net sunk at an angle.

 In this screen shot you can clearly see a major school of bait with a couple fish near the bottom of the school.

 This is another shot with a couple fish [yellow marks] in the middle of the bait.

 This Simrad shot shows where I scrolled back and looked at Stripers I had gone over a few minutes prior to taking the shot. Even after the fish have left the screen you can touch and drag the screen back into history and view the screen and if I wanted to return exactly to the spot simply waypoint it. I would then use my chart to return to the waypoint. On the Navionics chart above you can see my boat and that I was on the edge of the channel [brown area].

This shot is a school of punks. The arches are small, very little color in the arches and as you can see on side scan very small dashes out to the sides of the boat. Learn to identify what fish and size of the fish before you waist your bait and time working non keeper fish.

Wednesday's Catch

Christian, Adrian, Wesley, Nathan

Tony continues to lay the smack down on the Stripers

 by putting his clients on nice ones.

Rockin the Stripers

Tony put his crew on the Stripers this morning. Robbie, Eric, Jason, Gary, Wayne and Kyle. Gary practices catch and release or they would have had all their limits.