REB9  09/05/2008 - 19:21  Trip Reports  River  Roll Your Own    Wow, can't believe it is September already. The monsters are back in school, work is going full bore, summer vacations are over. What to do, what to do... With Hanna heading for us real fast, I decided I needed to spend some quality time on the river before the deluge. I PM'd SMALLJAW, MUSKALUNGEE, SPOTHOGG and OGBUDHA to see if they had a kitchen pass today. No takers by 7AM, so off to the reever all by my lonesome. I launched the boat around 8AM and found the river running low, clear and full of salad! A beautiful morning to be alive. Found the fish to still be in summer patterns. Caught several dinks and a couple real nice fish. As I had to renew my drivers license and change the oil in the GMC, I pulled chocks before lunch and headed for the ranch. After I finished up my chores, I decided to head back out for the PM bite. Hooked the James River Jet back up to the truck and waited for my 8 year old son Patrick to get home from school. As soon as he noticed the boat connected to the truck he lit right up and said, "when we going"...... Now was the answer and off we went.

Steve826  08/30/2008 - 22:02  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    With all the stress of school starting back up and having company for Labor Day this weekend, we knew it would be difficult to go fish this weekend but we made time to go to Cunningham Falls Lake for a short time this evening. Fished the dam area and got absolutely nothing. Gulp nightcrawlers, Senkos, swimbaits, suspending jerks, spinnerbaits...not a tap. Only positive about the trip was catching a spinnerbait that must have gotten hung up on someones line...free lure :) Saw a ton of minnows nearby. Just couldnt get anything to bite. Very very frustrating. Its been almost 2 months since i've caught a bass. I really hope the fishing gets better soon...or I somehow start getting good at it :)

muskalungee  08/25/2008 - 15:48  Friends of MDfishing.org  Roll Your Own   

I found this picture while going through some old photos at the house, thought you guys would be interested in seeing what theDuder looked like as a kid....
-Mike

Steve826  08/24/2008 - 13:13  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    Fished a local pond last night with my dad from 7-8:30. Started out with a Senko fished in the dam area...no bites but my new reel casts a weightless senko GOOD. I'm having a little trouble with detecting Senko bites...what I usually do is cast out as far as possible, let it fall on a slack line, wait a few seconds. Then wind up the slack, and twitch the rod tip up a foot and let it fall on a slack line again. And I retrieve the senko doing that..but since the line is slack, how do I detect bites?

Well anyway after that...decided to use my zebco that i had rigged up with a small hook and bobber to catch some bream to use as bait. Within seconds I caught a little 4 incher so I rigged him up on a size 1 hook under a larger bobber. Had something big take a swipe at it...my bobber moved about 3 feet in 2 seconds...but I didnt connect. Spent the rest of the night catchin bream on my other rig just waiting for somethin to go after the bream i had under the bobber. The grass was HORRIBLE...i cant wait til it gets cooler out and can actually catch some bass..hopefully..I havent caught a bass since July :( Ahh well its ok I had fun catchin little bluegills anyway haha

Steve826  08/17/2008 - 13:42  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    My family went camping this weekend at Cunningham Falls State Park and had a real good time. We went fishin both nights so I got to test out my new reel! It performed really well. Didnt catch any fish though...but it casted and retrieved real smooth and no line twist! First night I fished watermelonseed grubs on a 1/8 oz jighead..for about 3 casts, until I started pulling up huge chunks of grass with it due to the weight. I hate that grass that grows in the lakes during the summer. Switched to a weightless Senko which didnt get as much grass on but I still didnt get any solid bites. Still trying to learn how to fish a Senko...I sort of just deadstick it for a few seconds in cover and then twitch it back to me real slow. Eventually it got too dark and we had to go back to the campsite.

ogbudha  08/15/2008 - 07:10  Trip Reports  Potomac  Roll Your Own    Launched yesterday and fished the Lower Potomac with a hard core bass tourney buddy o' mine. We fished out of my jet rig. Huge flats of grass,spadderdock and a jet rig just dont mix! :)
We ran all over Mattawoman, Chicamux,Leesylvania,Quantico, Smoots, Nanemoy, and Occoquan (sp)
Most of the fish came out of Occoquan.
Fished frogs,buzzbaits,senkos and jigs.
I focused on grass lines near drop off and isolated pockets of grass. I had a decent bag of fish and had my limit with 1 hr. I ended up with 2 dozen keepers.
My best five fish weighed in a little over 12 pounds total weight
This trip ended my streak of a 5 pound fish coming int othe boat. Prior to this trip I was on a long long streak of pegging a 5 poundr a trip. I did miss 2 fish....one followed my swimbait to the boat and took a swipe at it....I got a great look at her and guestimate around 6.5 to 7 pounds....she was a beast and left a heck of a swirl and wake when she missed the bait. I also had a decent hookup in the spadderdock on a jig...felt very nice.

Steve826  08/05/2008 - 20:36  Roll Your Own  Technical Information    This Friday, my family is taking the trip to Arundal Mills Mall for an afternoon...and of course me and dad will spend some time at Bass Pro Shops. This is actually going to be my first time at BPS, I usually get my fishing supplies at Wal Mart and we went to Cabelas in April-that was fun. But I have some money saved up and I got to thinkin. I decided I think I need an upgrade from my Zebco 33. I've been looking at a couple reels, but I still havent 100% answered this question- should I upgrade from a spincaster to a spinning reel, or should I just buy a better spincaster? I am leaning towards buying the spinning reel, due to some very good advice from Mike. But I am a little leery about shelling out 60 bucks for a spinning reel because of the line twists that probably will come with a spinning reel. If I were to upgrade spincasters, I would go to this: http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_44496____SearchResults

Steve826  07/30/2008 - 21:22  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    Hit the pond this evening from 7-9. Only caught one fish, a sunfish, on a nightcrawler. Other than the live 'crawlers, we also tried a variety of lures. Grubs, Flukes, Hula Poppers, and Hardnose frogs all failed. Dad got a tap on a grub and a half hearted strike on his Hula Popper and thats all. Me...well other than the sunfish I caught I didnt get anything else. Very very frustrating. This pond is starting to really frustrate me, because its a confusing pond to figure out the patterns. I've only figured out a couple things. One, the main forage is bluegills. Two, there is not many areas of the pond that we can find where bass routinely hold. Three, the bass seem to get active at dusk and feed on top. Tonight, we were perplexed that they didnt seem to be active feeding on top since it was rainy and overcast and we fished til it was real dark out. Oh well, we'll figure these fish out someday..hopefully.

Munkin  07/25/2008 - 14:29  Trip Reports  Black Hills  Roll Your Own    I plan on hitting Black Hills tomorrow morning if anyone is interested I have a open seat?

Allen

jackson  07/25/2008 - 03:47  Boating  Impoundments  Roll Your Own   

My Granddaughter Kaylie, Jacob's sister, wanted to know why she is never in photos I posted here? I then realized I'd not taken her with me this year! So we took off for a local "large pond". Due to gin clear water, bluebird skies, and significant grass growing out to 20' deep, not to mention the wind, catching brim was not in the cards. Enough excuses?? So after significant "discussion" we decided who was going to drive or rather do circles back to the ramp! An hour latter, normally 15 min., we arrived. What a ride! I;m still dizzy. Today, Friday, I'll be taking Her to a local stream. Hopefully I can help her hook up with her first smallie & first photo with a fish!