March 20 & 26, 2015 - Dead Carp Ditch

I went fishing after work March 20 and 26 down at the Cesspool, which is the pond at Yowell Meadow Park, which I've rechristened Dead Carp Ditch.  I don't know why I bother fishing here, seeing as its waters are apparently toxic to all piscatorial forms of life. 

Dead carp:

Dead catfish:

Dead sunfish:

I assume the amount of trash and goose shit that flows in here is part of the cause of the fish kills.  This park is sort of a dump.  Even the Town of Culpeper seems to phone it in a bit, categorizing a pay phone and "Soft Drink and Power-Aide Machine" as "amenities."  The park is apparently a great place for people wired on caffeine to set up drug deals, although that demographic isn't specifically identified in the Culpeper tourism website.

Hold on!  Maybe I'm being unfair, I saw an immature snapping turtle crawling away from the pond, trying to escape downstream:

Also, there appear to be crawfish here:

But most surprising, was this 10-12 inch largemouth bass I got on a brown flecked grub (on the 26th.)

March 22, 2015 - Mountain Run Lake

Went fishing out at Mountain Run Lake in the late afternoon.


Water was still sub-50, caught two fish, one of which I got a picture of:

 Got him on a crawdad:

The second fish was on a spinner, and was slightly larger.  Didn't get a picture of him.

By the way, in the event that it has never occurred to you, think of the word "sub-par."  It means less-than-good, substandard, shitty.  But in golf, being under par is a good thing.  So are golfers insane and ignorant, or are the rest of us?

March 16, 2015 - Mountain Run Lake

It was cool and breezy when I put in right around 6.  Fished for a couple of hours, caught my first fish for the year, on a rubber craw on a jighead.

Water temp was 46 F.

March 12, 2015 - Mountain Run Lake

Went down to Mountain Run Lake to see whether ice-out had come yet.  It's getting there, by the weekend maybe it'll be mostly ice free.

Cast from the bank and dock with a spinner and didn't catch anything. 

Lots of gulls.

March 11, 2015 - Delmarva Pond

It was a foggy evening, that fateful evening that I decided to go for a walk to what I'll call Delmarva Pond to hide it's true identity. 

I took a rod, with a 3/16 oz spinner, and with 30 lb braid, which has the advantage that if you snag some garbage some asshole threw in there, at least you can haul it out.

I fished for about 10 minutes, didn't catch anything.  No ice on the water, though.  Things are looking up!

January 11, 2015 - Lake Pelham

Went over to Lake Pelham to see what the fishing prospects might be.  They were nonexistant; the lake was frozen over with 1.5-2 inch thick ice,, measured at the floating dock off of Virginia Avenue.

When I was younger, there was a winter when part of South Holston Lake froze over, and I remember that we threw rocks out onto the ice, out of curiosity to see what would happen, and the impact of a rock onto the ice makes a strange noise, sort of a mix of a rubber ball "boing" and ray gun "pew." In the event that you've never heard the noise and are wondering what hallucination this is, I recorded a video:

Since I've got nothing going on until it thaws, maybe I'll make good on my promise to myself to get around to servicing my tackle.

January 3, 2015 - The new year

Went fishing with my father at a pond that will go unnamed. Water temperature was 47 degrees, sky was overcast, wind was light and from the east. 

I felt some degree of excitement, because the second generation of my mealworm colony was on the hook for my success, both metaphorically and literally. I started this colony of mealworms in October, I believe, and my original carton of 50 has turned into quite a few larvae.

Even before we started, my father described fishing with bait as a "debasement of morals" but then we stopped at a country store, and he picked up a carton of red worms.  Morals are a fine thing until fish are on the line, both metaphorically and literally.  I wonder how many times I can use that joke before it gets stale.

I fished with a mealworm tipped jighead under a slip bobber, while my father fished with a flyrod and a red worm.  He made his way around the right bank, and I made my way around the left bank.

My father switched to a marabou crawdad pattern and caught a nice bass:

One of the benefits of fishing with someone is the ability to share the elation that comes with success, and commiserate in the despondency and solicitude that come with failure. And it's ideal if the fishing partner is your father, or your son, presumably, because there isn't a push to be competitive, to kneecap your opponent and steal his tackle and scuttle his boat, because mutual regard and love preclude that kind of shenanigans.

However, it is a bummer that my mealworms weren't effective, since I'd been anticipating doing well on them following some success earlier in the year.  I don't think that today was a repudiation of my base and depraved bait-fishing tactics, however, and will try mealworms in the immediate future, since I will have an ample stock in a few weeks.


Anyway, here's to the new year, with hope in our hearts that it surpasses all those previous, and a certainty in our heads that it won't.