8/8 central VA

[flyfisher]

Had some stuff to do yesterday morning so I waited till around 2 to load up the kayak and head up to a local military base that has a bunch of lakes to fish.  I debated on going with conventional gear or fly rod and decided to go all fly rod.  While I have been using the fly rod this year probably 9 to 1, most of it has been on the rivers.

Anyways, i get up there and the lake is up a few feet but visibility is solid.  I rigged up my standard starting file...topwater and two streamers of various types to see what they prefer.  

Picked up a few on the topwater but a lot of misses too so I switched over to the streamers and it seemed to be the ticket.  I ended up catching 12 total with the majority being on various streamers.  The bite was solid so I figured I would experiment on different colors to see if it mattered.  I was fishing mostly bluegill patterns so i switched over to both white and black base color streamers.  They got some hits but it wasn't till I switched back the bluegill colors did the action pick up.  

The one downfall of the trip was I ended up setting the hook and my fly rod snapped.  This is a rod I have had since probably 2002 or so and it has caught me hundreds if not thousands of fish, ranging from largemouth, to brown trout to seat trout and even a redfish.  When it broke it sounded like gunshots and made me duck...they were shooting artillery on the base that day too so that didn't help.  The rod has a lifetime warranty so we will see what they say as far as repairing it.  I don't want to replace it with something else though but maybe they will give me a good deal on a new rod and i can keep the bottom section since I got it as payment for guiding and it has my name on it from the factory.  

No real dinks caught but nothing huge either.  it was probably my best day on this lake using just the fly rod.

 

Last pic is the one i broke my rod on so i was able to land him at least.

 

[TnRiver46]

Pretty fish 

[flyfisher]

4 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Pretty fish 

Yeah this lake has really dark fish, even the ones that are caught "deeper" which here is like 8-10'.  They remind me of the bass I catch in a river/swamp around here that are almost completely black.  

[TnRiver46]

5 minutes ago, flyfisher said:

Yeah this lake has really dark fish, even the ones that are caught "deeper" which here is like 8-10'.  They remind me of the bass I catch in a river/swamp around here that are almost completely black.  

I was going to comment they look like swamp fish but I have no clue what a military base lake looks like 

[flyfisher]

4 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I was going to comment they look like swamp fish but I have no clue what a military base lake looks like 

This is just a 75-100 acre lake that is man made.  Nothing swampy about it really.  The base has about 12 ponds/lakes you can fish but only two are accessible without going through the base gates so I rarely fish inside the actual base.  It is a hassle to go through security lol  I get my permit every year and it is worth the $20