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| Virginia Outdoorsman - A Sporting Store For All Seasons | |||||
| "Offering Expert Advice And Assistance To All…..Novice To Professional" | |||||
 FISHING REPORT
SMITH MOUNTAIN LAKE, VA May 5, 2008
Water Temp: 66 degrees Water Clarity: Good Overall, the weather will be favorable this week with highs in the 70’s and lows in the upper 50’s. On Friday a cold front will move through the area pushing night time temperatures into the 40’s with daytime highs in the mid-60’s. Scattered thunderstorms and showers may precede the cold front, continuing through Friday. The rest of the week we can expect sunny to partly cloudy skies. With a new moon this past Monday, May 5th, it will be nice and dark on the lake at night. The new moon should bring another wave of spawning bass up onto beds this week. Bass have been spawning for a month or so around the lake, and anglers have caught good numbers sight fishing. Many of the bedding fish can be observed in shallow water several feet deep. Other bass are spawning on beds in slightly deeper water (4-7 feet). When bedding bass are deeper and harder to see, you can use a locator lure to attract the guarding bass. Searching for deep water bedding fish? Try a variety of different flukes and swimbaits such as ZOOM Salty Super Fluke, Strike King Zulu, YUM Money Minnow or Berkley Hollow Belly. Do you want to irritate and catch guarding bass? Try pig and jigs, tubes, plastic worms (in a variety of colors), creature baits and finesse plastics rigged on shaky head and ball jigs. A number of pre and post spawn bass suspended in deeper water can be located using electronics. Once located, these fish can be caught on Senkos, small jerkbaits, crankbaits, Carolina rigged plastics or Zappu’s “INCHI WACKY” (Jig Head Wacky). This specially weighted jig is used to present worms wacky style to bass holding in deep water. Bass are also being caught at night using floating jerkbaits that are cast and retrieved slowly near the shoreline. Good lures for this technique include the Storm Jointed Thunderstick, Cotton Cordell Redfin and series 10 and 12 Rapala Floating Jerkbaits. Many anglers exchange the hooks on these lures with very sharp treble hooks by VMC, Gamakatsu or Owner. The most recent Saturday night tournament was won by the team of Albert Johnson and Jake Collins with a total weight of 18.05 pounds. They also had the big fish weighing 5.65 pounds. Austin Hicks and his dad Randy won the SMLBass Sunday morning tournament this week with a total weight of 9 pounds 5 ounces, also capturing the tournament “big fish”. Dan Jessee had the second best total weight in the Sunday SMLBass tournament. The Tuesday night tournament will resume this week . The Cave Spring Optimists held their 40th Annual Spring Fishing Tournament this past weekend. The Bill Cochran Youth Tournament big fish category was won by Allen Yopp with a 10.90 pound carp. Second place went to local angler Isaiah Phillips who brought in a nice fish that weighed 5.10 pounds. Hunter Altice took third place with a 4.36 pound fish. Hunter also had the lightest fish in the youth class weighing .44 pounds. Hunter Clark brought a fish to the scales weighing .46 pounds and Dalton Matney had one weighing .56 pounds. On the adult side, Ricky Cowden set a new tournament record with a catfish weighing 35.12 pounds and had the largest crappie weighing 2.38 pounds. Any striper had to measure at least 37 inches in length to be entered. Although none made it to the scale this year, several fell short by less that a quarter inch. Larry Horne caught the heaviest smallmouth bass weighing 4.18 pounds to take first place in that class. H. Ayers brought in the best largemouth weighing 6.48 pounds. Second place in the largemouth category went to Robert Mills and third place to Randy Sayers both with bass weighing 6.40 pounds. Striper fishing is still mixed. Anglers are catching stripers using live bait on freelines and split-shot lines. Planer boards and floats continue to be used to spread out the bait and get it up close to the shoreline. Occasionally stripers are being marked in deeper water and downlines are being used to catch them. Stripers continue to be caught at night as they come to the bank to look for spawning alewives, but that bite has been spotty. The alewives have been coming up at different times around the lake. Many of the night bite fish are being caught between midnight and 2:30 a.m. Trolling with umbrella rigs (Captain Mack’s) continues to produce stripers, especially along deep drop-offs and the edges of humps and points near deep water. Although crappies continue to hit small, live minnows, small jigs and tubes, many have pulled back into deeper water. While there are still good numbers being caught the fish being caught are not as large as they were several weeks ago. Catfishing has really picked up over the last two weeks as anglers target large flatheads using live shad, shiners and cut bait. We recently had several fishermen report they caught flatheads on flukes and floating jerkbaits. Many of the catfish being caught weigh 20 pounds or more. We just added a line of frozen herring bait and it should work well on bottom rigs. If you like big fish action, now is a good time to cast live or cut bait out on a flat, hump or point bordering deep water for stripers and flathead catfish. If you are looking for a set of accurate fish scales, we just received several new digital models that are very accurate. They come with or without a tournament culling system and will weigh fish to within an eighth of an ounce. We’ve used them to weigh everything from fishing rods to lures and they work well. Good luck and great fishing. Mike Snead VIRGINIA OUTDOORSMAN (540) 721-4867 http://www.virginiaoutdoorsman.com 40 Village Springs Drive, Hardy
VA 24101
In Westlake Directly Across From Wendy’s On Rt 122
(About 3 Miles South Of The Hales Ford Bridge) |
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