BY BRIAN BOOG
How’s everybody been doing? Welcome back to this month’s Small Waters. I hope you all have been getting out on the water and catching some fish. The weather is starting to get warmer, the days are getting longer and the fish are in all three phases of the spawn around the state’s waters. Things are getting good. Summer and topwater explosions will be here before you know it! We’ve got it good here in Virginia.
Before I get into the fishing, I have to give a quick review of my new Minn Kota Ultrex LTO trolling motor. It’s amazing. What a beast! There’s no comparison between the 12-volt Edge – 45-pound thrust that my boat came with and the LTO – 24 volt 80-pound thrust. They’re not even in the same stratosphere. On 10 it pushes me 4 mph!! Insane! Almost as fast as my 9.9hp Mercury. The spot lock on it is a game changer. I can fish in the wind! It’s the simple things in life. Just awesome.
This month I fished and am going to be writing about Lake Prince in Suffolk. Before I get into that, I also got out and fished a few other places. Waller Mills in Williamsburg, Chick Lake in Lanexa, Harwood Mills in York County and Beaverdam in Gloucester. All beautiful lakes. I forgot how much fun Beaverdam is. I’ve been trying to figure out when they’re going to reopen Little Creek. It’s been closed for months. There were some real cold and windy days, but I did manage to catch a bunch of fish. Nothing over four-and-a-half. Lots of two and three pounders. It was fun to spend a lot more time this month with the Neko rig and drop shotting. It’s such a fun way to catch them. Shout out to Park Ranger Eberly. I met him at Harwood Mills and want to wish him well.
Let’s talk about Lake Prince. Lake Prince is one of the oldest Norfolk lakes. It was impounded in 1925. It’s 946 acres and has depths up to 30 feet. It’s one of five water supply lakes owned by the city of Norfolk. It has a ton of everything you need to have in a great lake. Coves, points, islands, bridges, long and winding creek channels, steep drop offs and wood. So much wood… I thought Lake Cohoon had a lot of wood. Prince has three times as much. It’s loaded with every type imaginable – a treble hook nightmare.
You need a City of Norfolk sticker to fish (I bought mine at Oceans East Bait & Tackle in Virginia Beach) and Prince has a 9.9 hp limit. The boat ramp is a single wide and It’s located at 4324 Lake Prince Dr. Suffolk, VA. The ramp is open from sunrise to sunset. There’s plenty of parking for trucks and trailers.
Lake Prince is stocked annually with stripers. It also has largemouth bass, bluegill, redear and slime darts (chain pickerel).
The biggest area of the lake is at the bridge that leads to Western Branch Reservoir. Side note – Western Branch seems to be closed due to the fixing of the aerators. There’s an island in the center and endless amounts of points to fish. The two major creek arms go off of this area. The depths in this section and for the most part average around 20 – 30 feet. Five feet off the bank you’re sitting in 15-20 feet of water. Really steep drop offs. You really could spend a day fishing in this section up to the first bridge. There’s just so many different types of wood to throw at.
That’s what I did my first day at Prince. I side-scanned around trying to find anything that looked fishy. The problem that I found was that the bottom is loaded with nothing but fishy stuff. There’s endless wood debris fields.
I ended up doing all of my damage that day on a Megabass Vision 100+1. I fished it off the banks in 10-20 feet of water near trees in the water. I ended up catching a few smaller fish and pickerel. I tried a bunch of other baits, but the jerkbait was the only thing that they would hit.
The next time I went out I ventured up all the way to the back where the shallow cypress trees are looking for beds. The pollen on the water was out of control, so I couldn’t see that much. In retrospect I might have been a few weeks early looking for beds.
I threw a Senko and a Neko rig around to see if anything would bite, but there seemed to be no signs of life anywhere. No takers. I spent the rest of the day making my way down the winding creek arm through the two bridges throwing everything that I had in the boat.
Everything at Prince is so fishy looking. I pitched a jig at every good looking tree, shook a minnow (still getting the hang of it), but nothing worked. I caught one two-pounder on a 1/2oz Jackhammer off of the edge of one of the bridges. I’m sure it was operator error.
On subsequent trips I just couldn’t figure the place out. I fished hard and spent full days there trying to crack the code. Whatever decision I made was not the right one. I put in my time at Prince. I didn’t end up with the results. It happens.
Lake Prince is a beautiful place. There’s plenty of fish in there, I just didn’t find them this month. There are tons of tournaments there throughout the year and talking to the locals, there’s giants in there. If you’re a kayaker, this is an amazing place for you. Plenty of protected coves all around the boat ramp area. I met a local at the ramp named Rebel, who was as nice as could be and told me all about the lake. Meeting guys like Rebel make a tough day on the water not so bad. He was super cool. If you have any recommendations of where I should fish next Email woodsandwatersmagazine@gmail.com
