BY BRIAN BOOG
This month I’ve been fishing at Lee Hall Reservoir, a 230-acre lake owned by the city of Newport News. It’s located in Newport News Park, but the boat ramp is at 13564 Jefferson Ave. in the Newport News Campground behind the campground office building. You’ll need a day or annual pass to fish. It’s $6 a day or $55 a year, which gives you access to both Lee Hall and Harwood Mills. You can also rent a jon boat and there’s plenty of parking. The lake is electric motor only and open for fishing sunrise to sunset.
The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources states that largemouth bass, bluegill, yellow perch, redear, black crappie, limited numbers of brown bullhead and chain pickerel and blueback herring live in Lee Hall.
I guess I’ll start with the sections of Lee Hall. There’s the first section, where the boat ramp is. That goes all the way from the ramp out to the pipe.
Beyond the pipe is another section.
If you lay down in your boat you can maybe make it under the pipe. This leads you to a very, very shallow area that’s no more than a foot deep. I didn’t spend too much time back here.
Going even further, there’s a wooden bridge that crosses the reservoir and there’s extremely shallow water beyond that. More like a swamp.
Directly on your right from the boat ramp is the underpass that only very low boats can get under that leads you to the water you can see from Interstate 64.
With all that said, let’s get to the fishing.
I’ve been to Lee Hall somewhere around 10-12 times. The boat ramp section is, for the most part, all weeds and shallow. It seems to average somewhere around three feet. There’s a few spots where it’s deeper, but let’s just say it’s 1-3 feet deep and all weeds.
I focused 97% of my time fishing in the boat ramp section and the visible from I-64 section. The Interstate section has deeper water and some visible wood to fish. There’s also a small, cement dam on the far end with some deeper water in front of it.
The first day I showed up knowing nothing about the place. I got out there and discovered that you couldn’t fish the shoreline because of the shallow water and the place was all weeds. I had a Senko, a flipping stick, a frog and a big swimbait. Can we make this work?
I cruised around trying to find a break in the weeds, something different. Where are the fish?
I skipped the Senko around some weed edges and caught a few two pounders and eventually found a sandbar that looked like it might have some old beds on it.
I flipped a Big Bite Baits Fighting Frog onto one of the beds and got distracted by something…a bird, a splash in the water; it doesn’t take much. When I snapped out of it, I realized my line was swimming far away. I set the hook like that’s what I expected to happen and landed a five-pound even bass. Excellent.
I spent three subsequent days on the I-64 side, throwing the two extremes: one day big baits, the next small. The results were random. Totally random. The fish were all over the place. Always in a different place day-to-day.
And they bit anything from Whopper Plopper 110’s, Senko’s, Megabass Pop Max’s and Jackhammer’s. I did catch another five on the Fighting Frog in Junebug flipping it to the dam wall in 13 feet of water.
I ended up one of the days with 19+ pounds on my best five. I did have to do the paddle of shame back to the boat ramp when my trolling motor died.
Each trip I tried to break the code, figure out the puzzle of the place. That’s what this is all about for me. So, each time going, I eliminated baits that just weren’t working. I had to only fish baits that stayed high up in the water column: above the weeds.
I ended up with five or six baits that seemed to do the trick. A Whopper Plopper 130 in phantom shad, a Dep’s Evoke 150 in chrome, a Z-man Big Blade Chatterbait in shad with a Hog Farmer Spunk Shad (probably my number #1 bait) staying very high in the water above or just ticking the tops of the grass.
My baits got consistently crushed day after day. I used a Senko in any color and a Yellow Magic 1/2-oz popper in Japanese shad or Megabass Popmax in Aurora Reaction and a Strike King Hybrid Hunter shallow in green gizzard shad.
This is what started working for me. I’m sure there’s folks out there that have success with other things.
Using this arsenal, I started having more consistent days catching bass instead of scratching my head.
For the next bunch of trips I decided to focus all of my time fishing the boat ramp section. To really try to figure it out. I power fished the big blade chatterbait all the way down the left side to the pipe. Let’s stop for a second and talk about the Newport News Waterworks giant weed-eating paddle boat that I’ve dubbed “Mad Max”…
It’s out there most mornings eating and chewing out weeds up and down the reservoir at a slow and menacing pace. You just have to alter where you want to fish based on what side of the reservoir the paddle boat is going down.
I caught quite a few all around three- to four-pounds doing this. Just casting in any direction with no rhyme or reason but staying in three feet of water.
Once I got to the pipe, I skipped the Chatterbait under it, working my way across, and caught a fish about every third set of pilings. They were hammering it as it went by. I caught about 10 heavy three pounders in a row doing this, with a fat, 5-8 as the kicker. I ended up that day with 20-3 for my best five. I also caught a 1-1 redbreast sunfish on a Senko. It was enormous!
You’ve got to appreciate Lee Hall for what it is. It can be a tough place to fish. There are big largemouth in there, that’s for sure. I’ve talked to guys that fish it all the time and they say that they’ve caught bass up to at least nine pounds. I saw one caught just shy of seven. I’ll tell you first hand, you can struggle out there, but if you bring the right baits, you can definitely have fun and catch a lot of fish. See you on the small water.
Any suggestions of where I should fish? Email – woodsandwatersmagazine@gmail.com
