On Friday, me and Evan Shearer decided to take out his jon boat to Claytor Lake to do a little "fun" fishing. We left Blacksburg with high hopes; we had just heard from a fellow member of the Virginia Tech Bass Fishing Team, Jody White, that the bass were starting to move onto their beds. We hit the water late, 2:00, and immediately started over to a cove that produced for our last tournament.
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| Captain Shearer, we are very organized when fishing.... |
We motored in to the cove and immediately dropped the trolling motor and started fishing a dock that was falling apart where we pulled out three keepers out of the previous week. Evan was throwing a Tied Up Tackle Jig, but I opted to throw the Alabama rig with 3.5 shadilicious swimbaits. We didn't land anything, but had a couple hits as we made our way back to the end of the cove. With no fish in the boat, we decided to make a 10-15min run to Peak Creek.
After entering Peak we were both amazed by the number of people trolling for stripers. We must've missed the memo, because of the 50+ boats we saw, we were one of seven boats bass fishing. Anyways, we made our way to the very back of Peak and started fishing the docks with our Tied up Tackle Jigs, but the muck on the bottom made it hard to tell a fish from debris. So we moved off the docks and started fishing a bend in the arm of Peak where bait was busting left and right. This got me excited and I tried a spinnerbait with no takers, A-rig with no takers, topwater, and got NOTHING! I did see something very cool though; a school of bait was about 6in below the surface when a solid 3lb largemouth came up and exploded on the school.
We saw a storm begin rolling in, and opted to make a last cast before running to temporary shelter. Evan managed to toss his Tied Up Tackle spinnerbait into a tree 15ft above the water. With no way of reaching it he tried to muscle it out, when the unthinkable happened. He was working it out of the tree (not even working it too hard) when I heard a loud "POP!" I turned around and saw an Abu Garcia Verdict in 4pieces with braid wrapped around it in a mess. Strangest thing I ever saw, 4pieces! We didn't have much time to sit around and think about what happened; we had to outrun the storm. We ran around the point to Rockhouse Marina where we waited out the storm.
Once the storm passed we decided to head back to the launch, but on the way back we were going to work one more bank leading up to ramp. On the main lake we were positioned about 50ft from the shore and I started heaving my Alabama rig. First cast, I felt a decent thump. I set the hook and felt a headshake and got pumped; then there was nothing. I was bummed to have lost our first and only fish for the day, but when the rig reached the boat I saw a little flash. I quickly lifted the fish into the boat, thanks to 65lb braid, and was elated to not have gotten skunked. But with another storm rolling in, we both decided that getting off the water would be a priority.
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| Not a monster, but it got rid of the "skunk" |
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| Time to tuck tail and run! |
Tally for the Day
LMB: 1
Setups:
St. Croix MH Mojo and Abu Garcia C3 spooled with 65lb Power Pro for the Alabama Rig
Falcon BuCoo M and Abu Garcia Revo S spooled with 30lb Power Pro with 20lb Seagur Flurocarbon for Jigs.
