Pony Pasture, 9/9

[basspro48]

My dad and me drove up to the Pony Pasture section of the James (just above Richmond) this morning and had a pretty good day for that section. I caught 6, 3 of em were 14+ inches on a GYCB tube and the other 3 were about 10" on a Rapala Husky jerk. And my dad caught 4, biggest one being about 13" and the rest 8-10". Pretty decent fish, however I did not get a pic of the 15 incher I caught (biggest fish of the day :'() but it was a good day and I got to break in my new Loomis GL2 on some mean river smallies...aint nothin better.

Here's the only pic of the day, not very big but he fought like a brute...

[Micro]

Nice.  That is about the size of the biggest I caught today, maybe yours is a wee bit bigger.  

[SimonSays]

nice ones! I went last thursday and friday, caught a bunch of small ones, but nother like the one i caught thurs, I think i'll try it tomorrow morning to see how the morning bite is. A quick question what part of the pony pastures did you fish? I walked down river a little bit right after the last of the rapids in the area where people sunbathe and such.  How did you toss the rapala out? my jigs kept getting caught in the rocks =/ wouldn't wanna lose a rapala like that! and how large were the tube you were using ?

thanks!

[basspro48]

I parked at the Pony Pasture rapids parking lot, the one with the little ramp thing for kayakers, and waded straight across the river all the way to the other side. This is where the best fishing is because it receives much less pressure than the rest of the river. Once you get to the island with the trees growing on it you will see several smaller streams that cut through the island, there is one deep hole here that has a big tree pointing downriver right in the middle of it and there is always at least 2 nice 12+ inch fish in there. Then if you keep going across you will see a dam, this is not Z dam, in fact I'm not exactly sure what it is called, but it gets little to no pressure and the fish are just stacked up in the deep holes along the ledges. This is where I toss the Rapala and other hard baits like Bandit 100 series and LC sammy's and G-splashes (the topwater strikes from these fish are so vicious it is almost scary)

And I was using GYCB 3.5" tubes in wat/red flake, which brings me to a very important point...Don't be afraid to toss the big baits in the Pasture!!!! Yes this section may not look like much but resist the urge to toss tiny baits on little UL rigs, because there are big fish in there and they WILL break you off. I personally have broken off several fish in the 4+lb range due to undersized tackle. My preffered setup is a 6'6" MH Loomis GL2 with 12lb Seaguar fluoro and these awesome fish still pull drag like crazy, one of the 13"ers I caught made a total of 9 jumps before I could get him in, so don't think for a second that the beefier tackle will take the fun out of it

[SimonSays]

Thanks for the tips! I'll give it a try tomorrow morning and let you know