By Brian Boog
What’s going on everybody and welcome back to this month’s Small Waters. The air and water are starting to warm up. Big fish and big bags are being caught all over Virginia! The pre-spawn is upon us. I started the month off fishing the Busch Gardens lake hoping to catch a giant, but I caught 20 or so 2-12’s on spinnerbaits and jigs. The giants of Busch still elude me. Are they still in there?
This month I fished Big Bethel Reservoir (BBR) in Hampton. BBR is located in the Bethel Recreational area which is located at 123 Saunders Road in Hampton. The boat ramp entrance is on Big Bethel Rd., which is right around the corner. The park has a paintball course, a picnic area and other outdoor activities. Boat rentals are available at the maintenance building in front of the boat ramp.
The boat ramp is a single wide and has a brand new 100-foot or so fishing pier next to it. It’s very tight getting back behind the maintenance building with a trailer. Doable, but tight. There are a couple of sharp turns. There’s enough parking in the small lot for six or seven trucks. There’s also an older set of docks close to the new one sitting in three-five of water. Both sets of docks are skipping heaven. There’s no fee for using the boat ramp.
There’s not a ton of information out there on the interweb on Big Bethel Reservoir, but here’s what I found. BBR is electric motor only. It’s 124 acres. It has largemouth bass, channel catfish, black crappie and a whole lot of carp. I’ve seen them jumping. No reports on the sunfish family.
BBR is a long and skinny reservoir with a dam on one end and the other end is nothing but an expansive flats area with depths about a foot. There’s a whole other area on the other side of the dam that is not open to fishing. The maximum depth is 10 feet (area by the dam) with the average depths 3-6 feet. BBR has five or six small coves, cuts and a bunch of shallow points.
The shorelines of BBR have your traditional laydowns, buck brush, cement walls by the dam, two sets of docks and a few cypress trees. My side scan says the bottom is littered with wood that looks good for cranking. There’s also a few giant brush piles scattered throughout the dam area of the lake.
Now, let’s talk about the fishing. The beginning of the month was cold. The water temps were only in the low 40’s. I layered up and launched the Coleman Crawdad for the first time at BBR. I brought five or six rods; what I thought might be good for the cold.
I had jerkbaits, big swimbaits, jigs, crankbaits and RatLTraps tied on and I started trolling around seeing what the place was about. Depths? Water temps? Any other information I could gather to help my cause.
BBR isn’t that big, so I learned the general layout pretty fast. When I realized that the deepest area was by the dam, I decided to focus there first.
I was just covering as much water with the Lucky Craft LV 150 lipless in spring craw that I could. Hopping it off the bottom. Soon enough, I hooked into my first BBR bass. A freakishly white 2 ½ pounder. I kept throwing the LV-150 around the dam area and working my way out back past the docks all the way into the back where the Coca-Cola sign cove is and that’s where I finally got bit by my second BBR bass, identical to the first one, another 2 ½ pounder. The Trap was the only deal that day. They wouldn’t bite anything else. With nothing else seeming to be going on, no real signs of life, I called it a day. I was officially frozen.
The second time out was not so different from day one – frigid wind and bitter cold. I didn’t last too long out there, but managed to catch one 3 ½ pounder on a Rapala DT6 in Mule off of a point opposite the boat ramp. The fish was in six inches of water – a nice reward for standing out there freezing my butt off!
The next couple of trips the water has been increasingly getting warmer. By the later part of the month, it was in the mid to upper 40’s. I decided to leave all the bigger baits at home and focus on small baits like tiny cranks (Spro Little John 50), Rapala DT-6’s, 8’s & 10’s, 3.8 Keitechs on a underspin, Ned rigs and a jig. My idea was to downsize and slow it down.
I was dragging the Ned rig around the drains in the middle of the coves, Cranking the DT10’s in the dam area and slow-rolling the underspin on the bottom by the brush piles that I’d found. At the end of two more days on BBR, I caught six fish in the two-pound class. Not great, but it sure beats shoveling snow.
The following week, I spent two more days at BBR. The air and water continued to get warmer, in the upper 40’s. The first of the two days, I threw everything that I had at them, but for the life of me, couldn’t catch a fish. The skunk found me. Brutal.
The following day I went back and decided to throw a squarebill at the hard cover along the shoreline, hoping they had moved up. After a few hours of fishing, I finally caught a four-pounder on a Rapala OG Rocco squarebill in chartreuse black out of a tree at the entrance of a cove.
The last two days of fishing at BBR the water temps are 49-56 degrees. The air is in the high 60’s. These fish should be on the move up into the shallows, right?
I started the day by cranking the heck out of the dam area. Just ripping the DT10 in Parrot color on the bottom hoping to get a reaction strike. My fifth cast, I hooked into a 4-2. That was it for the next four hours. Not a bite, just the carp jumping out of the water.
I decided to move up shallow, put the trolling motor on high and throw a Rapala DT Fat03 squarebill in silver at any piece of hard cover that I saw. These fish have to be somewhere!
After an hour or so, I bounced the squarebill off of a log and hooked into a 4-0 even. It was sitting in an inch of water. Bonkers. That was it. Strange. I finished off the day with two decent fish.
The last day I hit the water at 7am and was off by noon. I just wanted to see if anything was going on. The water temps were 52-56 degrees. I was hoping the fish would show signs of life. In my days on the water there, I hadn’t seen any bait on the Lowrances. No signs of life. Not a thing. I fished around the dam cranking. Not a bite.
I started working the shoreline opposite the boat ramp throwing a Spro Little John 50 in matte shad and caught a 2 ½ pound scrapper. He was sitting right on a piece of hard cover in a foot of water. I tried repeating this for about a ½ mile of shoreline. Nothing else was hanging around. I packed it up at noon and my time at Big Bethel Reservoir is up.
Big Bethel Reservoir is a cool, little body of water. At 124 acres, it fishes very small. Not the best place. Not the worst. I like it because it’s different. I wonder if the fish use the section of the one-foot flats at some point during the year. Do lily pads grow in and take over? I’ve never seen what it looks like in the summer. The shallow depths definitely narrow down your tackle and make you focus on that 2-10’ zone.
I know BBR has big fish in it, I’ve seen the pictures. I just couldn’t catch em’. BBR is another great spot for the kayakers. I’m sure in the summer it’s busier, but all the times I’ve been out, there’s only been one other boat out there. If you’re in the Hampton vicinity, it’s worth hitting for a day on the water. Happy hawg hunting.
Any suggestions of where I should fish next: Email woodsandwatersmagazine@gmail.com
