Northern Virginia (Nova) Fishing Discussion/reports

[dd123]

On 7/8/2020 at 5:08 PM, Kayak Dad said:

Snakehead in Fairfax county.

 

I just got turned on to this fish, and I'm hooked! Setting aside, for now, the invasive species discussion, I'm curious to get some feedback on techniques in the NoVa area.

 

For context, I caught a ~3.5 lber at Burke Lake, but overall picking has been SLOOOOOW. That one fish was AWESOME though and was cooler than every large/smallmouth bass I've ever caught.

 

A few snakehead questions for you guys:

 

- What time of year is best? I know it's best in the summer, but summer is a long time and I'm wondering if I missed the heart of the bite.

- What time of day do you guys like?

- Other than Burke lake, where do you guys like to go? I'm on an inflatable  kayak with little kids, so I'm focussing on small lakes vs. the fishing the potomac basin at this point.

- It seems like a lot of is sight fishing...true?

 

Tight lines.

Just some info from families

 

- Best March-May, June is a stretch

- Can be caught all day, no preferred time for them

- Try the waters around Fletcher's cove and chain bridge road connecting to DC

- Some people catch them with plastic frog or just look around the shore and yank em with strong hook... if you're lucky

 

[Bigbarge50]

Anyone know what is up with the posts and nets in the southern end of roaches run? 

[Fourmilekayak]

I've been hitting the Four Mile Run section where it opens into the channel on both sides of the airport pier (south side).  The FMR side has a nice channel running up the right side before the bridges (about a 10-15 foot wide section ranging from 9-13ft, but the landscaping crews for the airport decimated all of the grass and hydrilla cover last week along the rocks.  I've covered that area early morning around 5am to about 10am and there's almost zero action.  Swimbaits, buzzbaits (early), sticks and Senkos, etc.  I don't really see anyone pulling in much up from there into FMR whether it's from the shore or boat/kayak.  As far as the other side of the airport pier, it seems to sit around 5-8 feet for the majority of the flat and then drops off into the channel quickly.  My fish finder read around 24 feet about 20 feet off the flat into the main breakline and I think maybe all of the water/sewer line construction they did in FMR pushed a a lot of the bass out there to the rocks around the airport and that dropoff.

 

When I've been biking past Roaches Run lately, it seems like it would be just perfect for some bass after this rain has mixed things up a bit.  I can see tons of cover in different areas there and was wondering how people were fishing it (bank, boat, kayak, etc).  Also, I found the depth charts from a while back for that are online (https://www.charts.noaa.gov/BookletChart/12289_BookletChart.pdf).  Do these seem accurate (somewhat)?  I know some of the areas where I described above have a changed a little, but it matches up better than I thought.