Some Fish

   Fishing has REALLY slowed down, and I haven't really gotten into much worth writing about. I think I have been through all of my tackle over a dozen times, snipping old knots off of hook eyes, re-organizing, changing out rusty hooks, and anything else I can do to stay entertained. I have managed caught a few fish here and there, managing to keep myself from experiencing withdrawal symptoms! Spring isn't coming fast enough... Here are some short blips of what I have been up to lately:
    My brother and I went to the Chesapeake Bay for one night and one day to fish for stripers. We fished HARD and only caught 2 stripers, a 25" and a 26", both at the mouth of the James River. We very well could have been the only ones to catch any fish at all that day, reports were TERRIBLE!

   Another attempt I made at catching fish was going to the "Hot Side" on Lake Anna. I only had about 3 hours to fish, it was more of an exploratory trip. I spent half of my time on the cold side looking for stripers on my fishfinder (no marks). The other half was spent trolling deep diving crankbaits on the hot side, I caught about a 2 pound largemouth, and had many bites, pulled the hook on 2 fish.
    I did skip out on posting about my trout fishing on Whitetop Laurel in the last week of December. We did really well, but it was pretty much the same as last trip, we duplicated and refined our techniques from November, and absolutely slayed them.

 17" Rainbow (Wild)

 

16" Brown (Wild) 

I also caught a few stocked trout this past Sunday, despite very high creek flows that I had never fished on that stream before. We had temperatures in the single digits-teens for a few days, so I resulted to ice fishing for my pet trout in my back yard, caught 7 or 8. And yesterday I managed to hook 2 largemouth on a 3" jerkbait, one of them 1lb that I landed, the other was easily over 5, but the hooks pulled! 

This fish sure meant a lot more than it would have in the summer! He looks like a dink, but he was over 12"