TheKurrent

Nicely done! That's a great handful of brown ones.

Not specific to your area, but have had good luck on the VA side of the New (below Claytor) on all your mentioned arsenal. Plus a few others: -Topwater: buzzbait, plopper and Rico popper are hard to beat -Finesse / Plastics: possibly an unpopular opinion, but I’ve had success on a short tagged drop shot with a fluke and various other baits. Don’t overlook a salted tube with a rattle head either. -Moving baits: Rapala balsa square bill (this is MONEY)

@wasabi_VA - thanks for the welcome! What would you consider the local waters for Cville? Would love to get out more out west on the reservoirs / lakes.

@Matt Bacola - it’s typically good for a few fish and one of the closer lakes to drop the boat in from Richmond. Would definitely recommend it over most others from a distance perspective. I split my time between mountain and gravel. A bit more on gravel these days.

Howdy All! New to the posting side on Bass Resource, but not new as a lurker to the forums or a fisherman in general. One of my goals for 2023 was to start journaling in my personal life, recording my activities (both on the water and on the bike) and be more organized in general. With that, I wanted to share some of my backdated fishing logs from my days on the water in January of 2023 as we come to a close. Holler if you have any feedback / questions, find this useful or want to get out for some catching. Total Days on the Water: 4 Total Bass Caught: 12 Waters Fished: Lake Chesdin (0 fish and only one outing) and Chickahominy Lake Top Baits: Lipless Crank, Spinnerbait and Texas Rig Overview of Best Day: Launched out of Eagle's Landing at Chick on Jan 7 at 9am with water temps around 45, 2-3' water visibility and a full moon the night before. Started the day off with my usual 7 rod setup, 3 spinning rods (shakey head, texas rig & underspin) and 4 casting (lipless, spinnerbait, chatterbait and a glide bait). 10 minutes into the morning and a BIG pickerel slammed the spinnerbait right next to a cypress knee. The next 3-4 hours were junk fishing, swapping through all my baits and multiple different area types looking for a bite; flipping cypress, ripping grass flats, scanning deep dropoffs, current breaks, etc to no avail. The clock struck 2pm and the bite was on... For the next hour, 5 bites came through with 4 on the spinnerbait and 1 on the texas rig. And just like that, the bite turned back off. Moved back over to a grass flat around 4 and found another big pickerel on a lipless. And that was it.. In all, a 5 fish bag (maybe 10lbs) was pretty successful from my standards in the winter. The key for the day being that one hour bite window during a major moon phase and fishing a shallow bank with a big dropoff nearby. Biggest of my January fish, weighing in just under 4. This was a one fish day and came 5 hours into a 6 hour day bouncing a lipless on a grass flat. Looking forward to February with a trip to Florida in the works and hopefully some more days on the water. Cheers, Kyle

That's a great win! Any free lure is a great lure. Don't forget with the suspending jerks in the winter that the pause is your friend. I always count in my head (1 Mississippi, 2,3, etc) , starting with a faster rip, pause, rip at around 3 seconds and then move all the way to 10 seconds with 1-2 second increment additions. I know some guys talk about 30 second all the way to a one minute pause, but I just don't have it in me to wait that long... If they're that slow to react, I'm typically moving to a ned, jig or tube. Good luck this weekend.

Big fan of the Rapala Shadow Rap Deep in the winter months. Favorite colors are the Moss Back Shiner and Albino Shiner, both of which have produced multiple river smallmouth for me this winter. I'm typically fishing anywhere from 4-10ft behind ledges and ripping them into the slower moving water, then letting them pause for 3-10 seconds, depending on the fishes reactions that particular day. In fact, this year, I wrangled in my first VA citation smallie (20.25" & 4lbs) on the moss back shiner variation.

@Bird - I make it out west quite often with my wife's family in Roanoke (and a general need to scratch a musky bug). Are you fishing the New? Love the section between Radford and Eggleston for targeting big number smallmouth days and Musky. Thanks for the warm welcome @GaryH!

@Scott804 - Scratch that, looks like I can't PM people yet. Maybe because I'm a new member? Can you send one my way?

@Scott804 - Appreciate the warm welcome. Always open to new fishing buds and exploring new territory—will shoot you a message.

Howdy! Long time lurker and first time poster. Intro on myself: I've had a fishing rod in hand for as long as I can remember—I tell my wife that it's likely I came out of the womb with one in hand (our first-born, 4 months old now, did too). I grew up with a dad that prioritized fishing over most other things; we fished the everglades (both salt and fresh) on a weekly basis, took trips offshore to scratch the big game saltwater bug often and as I grew older, the general fishing bug has never left. After high school, I decided that I wanted to make fishing a career and had the opportunity to mate/deck on multiple sportfishing outfits that traveled the east coast and Caribbean. Eventually, one of the outfits led me to California where I decided to shift from the vagabond life and move into the marketing space. It's there that kayak fishing and the swimbait bug bit me. I had the opportunity to fish the SoCal lakes that I'd read about in books: Dixon, DVL, Hodges, Castaic, Perris, Clear Lake, etc and fished multiple kayak tournaments with the SoCal Kayak Anglers club. Fast Forward to 2020 and my now wife and I decided to pack up and head back east, landing here in Richmond. Since our arrival, I've been again been bit by a new bug: river smallmouth and tidal largemouth. Shifting to now: When I'm not tied to raising a new-born or working a demanding job, I'm running up-river from Richmond in my little jet sled for smallmouth, picking away at the tidal largemouth fishery nearby (James, Chick, Pamunkey, etc) or trying to figure out these VA lakes (Chesdin, Chick lake, Lake Anna, SML, etc). I've had good success learning the ins-and-outs of river smallies through all seasons, of note, the need to throw a ned rig when nothing else works, but have recently shifted my goals to getting back into honing my largemouth fishing skills and finding a club to join (and ideally a few tournaments to fish). Moving forward: I'm looking forward to sharing any knowledge that I gain with the crew here and in return, will absolutely be using this space as a resource to learn and connect with others. I've recently thrown my hat into the co-angler bucket for two BFL Piedmont series tournaments (SML and James River), but looks like I've been booted to a waiting list. I'd love to figure out a few other opportunities for tournament fishing as a co-angler while I'm still looking into upgrading my non-tournament rig. A few questions: Anyone in the area need a fishing buddy? Happy to throw in for gas and bad jokes. Are there other series that I should be looking into locally? Cheers and looking forward to connecting with y'all and learning the ways of the bass.