Hunt Smart, Fish Hard: Get Ready To Wet A Line

It’s about time to start wetting lines, fishing lines that is. The DGIF has some good tips to where to fish, what to use for bait and info about the fish. It seems everybody fishes for largemouth bass. Virginia offers excellent, extremely diverse freshwater angling opportunities. Over 176,000 acres of public lakes and 27,300 miles of fishable streams provide every freshwater angler something. Tidal rivers for largemouth bass, striped bass, blue catfish, and shad. Unsurpassed float fishing smallmouth bass rivers spread across the state. Expansive reservoirs renowned for largemouth bass, striped bass, and crappie. As well as numerous “close-to-home” small, family fishing lakes and ponds with great chances to land bass, sunfish, and channel catfish. There are also phenomenal stocked and wild trout fishing in the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains.

I.D of the Largemouth Bass: dark greenish above fading to a whitish belly, but variable depending on the water it lives in. Shows a series of dark blotches that form a dark horizontal band along its midline to its tail. Named because of its big mouth. Upper jaw extends well beyond the eye. Dorsal fin deeply notched. Average weight is 2 to 4 pounds, with up to 10 pounds, occurring in some waters.

Good lakes to fish: Anna, Gaston, Buggs Island, Chickahominy, Chesdin, Smith Mountain, Prince, Briery Creek to name some local lakes.

There’s more to this in the current issue of the Times Virginian newspaper. Support local journalism by purchasing the issue at a local newsstand or subscribing at www.timesvirginian.com/subscriber_services to receive the print edition or view the full article in the e-edition version.