ello everybody and once again, welcome back to this month’s Small Waters. We’re smack dab in the middle of this blazin’ hot summer and that means it’s night fishing time usuing top waterin’ crawlers and big wake baits. It doesn’t get better than that!
The water in most lakes and pounds is now in the high eighties, low nineties, the air is thick, the grass is growing in and for the most part, the fish have moved out off shore chasing bait. What have you been catching them on? Have you joined the urchin army? The minnow mafia? The Karashi club? Or are you keeping it old school soakin’ a worm?
I finally gave in and stopped by Oceans East in Virginia Beach and Fishing Pro-Tech in Toano and grabbed a few wacky wall walkers. Not since the arrival of the Beatles or the Senko, have I seen the craziness of a bait. It’s really cool to watch with all the different rigging options, sizes and shapes. Well, whatever it is you’re out there throwing, make sure you have plenty of water on the boat and protect yourself from that sun. It’ll get you good.
This past month I got out a bunch and tried my best to catch some fish. I fished Chick Lake in Lanexa, Lake Prince in Suffolk, Diascund Reservoir in Lanexa, Hardwood’s Mills in York County, Burnt Mills in Suffolk and Waller Mills in Williamsburg. All with varying degrees of success.
I caught fish all month and I threw everything under the sun at them, but in the end, I caught almost every fish this month on a power shot and a Evergreen Shower Blow 125 in emerald shiner – the same lure that I got hooked in my finger with last year. It also caught me my biggest fish of the month, a 5-2.
For the power shot, this month, I’m really liking the Xzone deception worm in Big Limit and black – blue flake. I did catch the world’s angriest Diascund reservoir three-pound bass on a Megabass I-wing 135 crawler. Bass hit crawlers with such venom. It’s one of the coolest things to witness. What do they think a crawler is?
The last two tournaments the Ol’ Fellas had were at Waller Mills and Lake Prince. I did ok, nothing special. I’ve got to improve my tournament game big time. I caught all of my Waller Mills fish on top when they came up busting on bait. Nothing over three pounds. My Lake Prince fish came on a drop shot. Not enough weight to get the job done. Can I redeem myself at the next tournament at Diascund? I’m certainly going to try!
I stopped by the RLOS weigh in at Diascund. Sixteen pounds won it and 5.71 was big fish. It seems to be a well-run club.
Enough rambling, let’s get talking about Burnt Mills.
This month I drove over the James River bridge and fished Burnt Mills, a 711- acre reservoir in Suffolk. It’s open from sunrise to sunset, has a 9.9 horsepower limit and you need a city of Norfolk sticker. There’s plenty of parking and the gravel boat ramp is pretty small. Pretty bare bones. DWR states that there’s largemouth bass, bluegill, slime darts, black crappie, perch and redear sunfish.
The whole upper half of the lake is loaded, not Briery Creek loaded, but loaded with an awful lot of submerged trees and stumps. Be very careful when motoring up there. Even running your trolling motor can be dangerous. I hit plenty of them while going up and coming back. I’m sure the locals have it dialed in, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Burnt Mills has some serious depth in places. I found up to 38 feet.
You could fish in the area of the boat ramp which is more or less a big circle for the day without even heading all the way up into the great swamp where all the trees are. It has shallow grass mats with huge drop offs, a long dam, an outflow building, some small coves, an island and plenty of laydowns. The shallow flats that are there come out of nowhere, so be on the look out for them. This area and really the whole place is perfect for Jon boats and kayaks.
Heading up towards the great swamp, it’s almost like fishing a river. It gets pretty narrow, long and windy. There’s also no shortage of coves and fingers to explore off of the main creek channel. It seems to go on forever.
Like Lake Prince, Burnt Mills has tons of laydowns and bushes in the water. The entire shoreline is loaded with them. Every point that I fished went from one foot to 20+ feet very quickly. I made it almost up to as far as you could go in the great swamp and there were some docks to fish. I like docks. That’s where I caught the majority of my fish. On the edge of the grass lines and in the middle of coves on a power shot. I threw everything that I had in the boat, but the only success I had was with the power shot. I fished the whole way back to the boat ramp flipping at every tree, bush and laydown that looked good. It all looked good! The days that I was there, it just wasn’t the deal.
I’m going to be honest, today the Suffolk lakes, Prince, Burnt Mills and Western Branch are not my favorite lakes to fish. They make me super frustrated. I can’t even come close to figuring them out. All it will take is one good day to change my mind. I just need to crack the code on them. There are hundreds of anglers that fish these lakes on a regular basis that have them one 100% dialed in. I’ve heard of the 30-pound bags. The fish are there.
This is the ultimate angler challenge. To go back to lakes you don’t really like and figure them out. Learn to appreciate what they have to offer. What makes one laydown different from another? What areas are holding fish? It’s part of the process. I’m going to have to fish these lakes often. The Ol’ Fellas fish all three of these lakes multiple times a year. I have no choice but to figure them out. That’s the beauty of this obsession we call bass fishing. Stay safe out there.
If you have any suggestions of where I should fish next, please email me at woodandwatersmagazine@gmail.com
