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I visited my folks in NOVA this past weekend and fished with my father again on Saturday. We were supposed to do a snakehead hunt at Leesylvania on Friday evening, but it was raining pretty hard, so we hoped for better weather on Saturday.
Since we didn't know what the weekend boat activity would be like at Leesylvania, we tried to launch at Bull Run Marina. Unfortunately, the crew teams were practicing, and they're impossible to be around. We ended up launching at Fountainhead at around 10am.
To our dismay, we found crew teams practicing there, too, but there is more room to keep out of the way. The downside is having to listen to the coaches bellowing over bullhorns. We used to fish that area from a rented jon boat since I was a kid, but I hadn't fished Fountainhead in about 7 or 8 years. We decided to hit our old stomping grounds to see how they looked on the sonar.
The fishing was super slow. I only caught one small bluegill, but had several follows. It's pretty frustrating when you can't even catch bluegill. Dad landed one small bass and lost several others. He was using a 4" electric blue worm. I threw all kinds of stuff without a hit: crankbaits, worms, jerk shads, frogs, spinnerbaits, and inline spinners.
There were tons of fish on the sonar, and I tried jigging a Stingsilver in a couple places without even a sniff. The coolest thing was that I saw a school of bait on the sonar, and there were several big fish in the bait school. Unfortunately, that spot was right in the path of the crew boats. I saw a lot of catfish marks (I think), too, and will have to go back with some bait to see how big they were.
We called it quits at 1pm. The crew teams quit at noon. If we had known that, we would've shown up later and fished until evening. Still, it was pretty cool fishing all our old spots, and the water was surprisingly clear despite all the rain.
Since we didn't know what the weekend boat activity would be like at Leesylvania, we tried to launch at Bull Run Marina. Unfortunately, the crew teams were practicing, and they're impossible to be around. We ended up launching at Fountainhead at around 10am.
To our dismay, we found crew teams practicing there, too, but there is more room to keep out of the way. The downside is having to listen to the coaches bellowing over bullhorns. We used to fish that area from a rented jon boat since I was a kid, but I hadn't fished Fountainhead in about 7 or 8 years. We decided to hit our old stomping grounds to see how they looked on the sonar.
The fishing was super slow. I only caught one small bluegill, but had several follows. It's pretty frustrating when you can't even catch bluegill. Dad landed one small bass and lost several others. He was using a 4" electric blue worm. I threw all kinds of stuff without a hit: crankbaits, worms, jerk shads, frogs, spinnerbaits, and inline spinners.
There were tons of fish on the sonar, and I tried jigging a Stingsilver in a couple places without even a sniff. The coolest thing was that I saw a school of bait on the sonar, and there were several big fish in the bait school. Unfortunately, that spot was right in the path of the crew boats. I saw a lot of catfish marks (I think), too, and will have to go back with some bait to see how big they were.
We called it quits at 1pm. The crew teams quit at noon. If we had known that, we would've shown up later and fished until evening. Still, it was pretty cool fishing all our old spots, and the water was surprisingly clear despite all the rain.
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