Charlie's Journal
As of April 2008 we are changing our schedule to bi-weekly or monthly updates. Please check the fishing forrum to see recent posts and discussions about the lake.
CPR! - (Catch Photo Release) We release 99% of our catches...
Although it would look really cool on the website and magazine articles, it's not very often that we post pictures of our clients holding more than a couple fish. We try hard to ensure the survival of all of the fish we catch. It is absolutely fine with us if the client would like to keep their catch for dinner, otherwise we will snap a picture as soon as we land the fish and revive/release as quickly as possible.
End of June
Above is a picture of Steve Schnieder wrestling a very angry 15 lb. Striper in late June
The fishing has been pretty good over the last couple weeks. For me, the evenings have produced a much stronger bite than the mornings. All of that can change in the matter of a day though.
The bass still haven’t fully settled in to their summer patterns yet. There are still a lot of transitional fish being caught by guides, tournament fisherman and weekend warriors. There are a number of techniques and depth ranges producing fish, making it very challenging to truly “pattern” the fish. Some are being caught near 20 ft brush piles on texas rigs, some have been taken on topwater baits near secondary points, others are on docks or in grass, I’ve also seen several schools of bass in open water fixated on schools of bait. For the most success, try deep cranks, worms and jigs in areas with heavy cover very close to deep water.
Striper fishing has been great, but not as predictable as it usually is by late June. Finding huge schools of active striper has not been as easy as in past years. We have still been able to catch good numbers (20-40) of fish and some nice 14 to 15 pounders but we’ve been working for it... In years past, by June, you could pull up to an active school on a 35 foot flat and have steady action until the school was spooked or driven off. This has not been nearly as consistent so far this year. The schools have been harder to find, and sometimes not even in the “usual” areas. It has actually been a lot of fun and very rewarding to find these fish in different areas— sometimes 50 ft deep, in the lower end of the lake and others in 10 ft of water!! There has been some brief top water action in the morning but usually the fish are pretty small.
Below are a few pics from recent trips
End of May
The past week marked the beginning of the Tuesday and Friday Night Summer tournaments... The lower weights and limits gave proof of the tough transitional patterns of late May and early June.... The largemouth are somewhat difficult to find but once you have located an active school you can load up. Soon they will be set in a consistent summer pattern. That being said, we have still managed to have some great days of Striper and Bass fishing over the last couple weeks. Most of my clients have wanted to persue stripers and many of those trips resulted in 20 - 30 keepers up to 10 or 12 pounds! The majority of the fish we caught were safely released except for a handfull that were kept for the grill... Below is a snapshot of Lake Anna over the past couple of weeks.
Bass:
Shakey Heads, Smaller Jigs, and Texas rigged worms in greens and reds are responsible for landing most of the Largemouth right now. If you get on an active school of fish, medium running crank baits and some topwater action is working out. Look for some of the deeper water areas to begin to produce. Lake Anna bass can be much deeper in the summer months than many anglers expect. It is not unusual to catch fish in 30-40 feet of water when it gets really hot.
Striper:
Striper action has been productive but somewhat slow during the day. The last few hours of daylight has offered some very aggressive feeding in about 20 ft of water..... There are huge schools of 5-10 pound stripers from Sturgeon Creek all the way up to the first bridges on both river systems. Look for tapering points close to deep channel bends. One you have located the fish, present deep diving crankbaits, swimbaits, and bucktails in natural and pearl colors. A very fast, erratic retrieve will cause explosive strikes.
Crappie:
Minnows, Small Grubs, and Tubes are catching good numbers of specs in mid to deep brush piles, rock piles and bridges.
First Week of May
I've been spending the last week catching stripers in the 8-10 lb range. Every where from the s-turns to Sturgeon creek.. Early and late they will feed on shallow points and humps, hitting jerkbaits, poppers, and zara spooks. during the day they are in deeper water taking rubber swimbaits and crankbaits. I've still managed to fit some good bass fishing in but the stripers have just been too much fun to turn down. Below are a few pics
April 2008
Aprill has been fast and furious! Fish have been taken from 1 to 35 feet of water and were caught on a variety of baits. For Bass, the Carolina Rig and Shaky Head have produced the most fish, While live bait, early topwater plugs and swimbaits have been taking the majority of Stripers. Crappie have been on docks, grass and brush biting minnows and pearl tubes. The tricky part was to identify what was going on THAT DAY. One day they were shallow, the next day they were deep, some were in pre-spawn, some were finished. It was a very exiting and challenging month and I expect May to bring in more consistent weather and plenty of great days of fishing.
Here's a handfull of photos:
Aprill has been fast and furious! Fish have been taken from 1 to 35 feet of water and were caught on a variety of baits. For Bass, the Carolina Rig and Shaky Head have produced the most fish, While live bait, early topwater plugs and swimbaits have been taking the majority of Stripers. Crappie have been on docks, grass and brush biting minnows and pearl tubes. The tricky part was to identify what was going on THAT DAY. One day they were shallow, the next day they were deep, some were in pre-spawn, some were finished. It was a very exiting and challenging month and I expect May to bring in more consistent patterns and plenty of great days of fishing.
March 27th 2008
Went into the Pamunkey side of the lake this evening with Jim Martin, avid Lake Anna Striper fisherman. We were mostly looking for stripers and found alot of them, we just couldn't get any of the bigger ones to bite. We caught a couple smaller stripers and missed a few strikes on swimbaits. But...... Drumroll........ I did manage to catch a length citation Largemouth with my trusty jerkbait! Woo Hoo!.... it's second one over 7 pounds in the last two weeks!
March 22nd 2008
The temperature dropped to the 30's overnight which drastically cooled all the creeks and shallows. I had to pull out of the shallower water and find fish holding in deeper water (sometimes 20 ft) earlier in the day. By the later hours Jeff was cathing some nice sized fish on Flukes in lay downs close to deep water.
After I Dropped off Jack I headed back out with Taylor. We went back down to the lower end of the lake and cranked Rip Rap with Rattle traps and Crankbaits. I lost a really nice fish next to the boat and Taylor boated a couple nice keepers. The big one was about 4 1/2 pounds.
March 21st 2008
This was 7 year old Samanthas first fishing trip. Samantha, her dad and I went crappie fishing for the first part of the day, using small minnows on brushpiles and docks. She boated about 30 crappie, a few white perch, some catfish, and a ring perch. We then went up to the end off the North Anna and Samantha wrestled her first 2 pound bass off of a rocky point. Way to go!
After I dropped of Samantha and her dad off at the marina I went to check some of the warmer coves in the lower end of the lake. I found very productive pockets of 59 - 60 water in the back of coves that were around 54-55 at the mouth... I caught about a dozen 2 lb bass and a 4 pounder pictured above. Caught them all on a shakey head worm.
March 18th 2008
Took clients out to learn early spring bass patterns and jerkbait techniques... we caught a few smaller keeper bass but the fish were pretty quiet... towards the end of the day Debra caught her first striper on a jerkbait. Cold, windy and tough was the best way to describe it.
March 17th 2008
Berry Landry wanted to get his nephew and two of his friends out on the lake. So we went out for a couple hours and had a crappie competition... Winner gets $20, loser cleans the fish. We caught about 75 crappie on Pearl grubs and kept a few for dinner... This one was alot of fun!
March 14th 2008
Pictured above is a before/after shot of Lake Anna Stripers. Jack Bartel and I went out today to get to know Lake Anna... He recently bought a new center console and wanted an intro to the different areas of the lake. It turned out to be an incredible day to take a tour. While we were in some of the current striper hot spots we stopped and threw some swimbaits at warming banks and managed to land a few keepers. Once Jack got back home, his wife cooked up the fresh catch with home made mango salsa on top... Man that looks good! Thanks for the pic Jack.
March 13th 2008
That's what I'm talkin about!!! This 7.3 pound sow was caught on none other than the trusty jerkbait... Warming clay point with a slight wind blowing into it.. the same scenario that has been working for well over a month. My clients really wanted a mess of Crappie to take home with them so we tied on the jigs and caught about 60-80 specks. The temps in the upper end of the North Anna were around 55-56 degrees in the shallower water.
March 12th 2008
Once again I have fallen short on making journal posts, so here is a quick rundown of the last couple weeks. Taylor and I fished the first LAPR tournament a couple weekends ago... It was a rough day and the fish that we were targeting would not cooperate. By the end of the day we were frustrated, wet and only had a few pounds of fish in the livewell. Since then I have been able to get back on several nice size bass, using jerk baits, shakey heads, swimbaits and flukes. Pictured above is a 6 pounder from todays trip. The water temps are heating up and and so is the fishing!
February 25th 2008:
Made it out for about from about 2:30 - 5 p.m. this afternoon.... With all of the big catches yesterday and the high pressure rolling in, i figured that it would be a pretty tough bite. I couldn't find any fish or bait in shallow water so I put the jerk bait down and headed out to 30 ft of water... I marked a few fish on a main lake point and dropped a shakey head on them... they were catfish. I caught 2 of them and moved on. I finally marked some fish in 26 ft off of a secondary point in levy creek. This time they were bass. I caught 4 fish, one on a Football Jig and the other 3 on a shakey head. They were all between 14-15 inches long except for the one above that was just shy of 18 inches... I can't complain, it was time on the water.
February 20th 2008:
Picture 6lb big fish 16lbs total
I've had the flu for the last few days and I knew the fish were biting... It was driving me Nuts!! I finally got out of the house and headed out on the lake. It was cold, Snowy, and COLD!!! Anyway I started out around noon in the back of one of the mid-lake creeks and caught a couple nice stripers on a swimbait... Moved about half way out of the creek to some of the the windblown banks and caught 3 smaller Bass and a 6 pound Bucket mouth on a Jerk bait. That fish must have been hollow! It was 21 inches long and I would have bet money that it was over 7lbs. Oh well....
I Moved on and tried the north side of the 208 bridge with no luck. So I went back to a windblown shallow flat below the bridge and scored a couple 3 pounders on my Jerk bait. I was freezing so I stopped by the marina to warm up and grab a sandwich. I went up to the splits area and scored a few more small bass and one about 3 pounds over a wind blown stump field... Went back down to the Sturgeon Creek area and caught another Striper and a 2 pound Bass.... It was one of the best days for me so far this year!!!
February 15th 2008:
I went out for the second half of of the day and fished till dark... we caught some nice sized fish... I'm still lovin' that jerk bait. We did A LOT of searching, covering tons of water etc. The bigger bass that we caught during the afternoon were suspended near deep water and feeding on windy banks with direct sun. Right before dark we went into Sturgeon Creek and caught a nice striper and several smaller bass. All in all a pretty good day.
The picture above was a double up on a 3 and a 4 pounder in the mid lake region.
February 5th 2008:
Went out with Tim Edwards today.. we didn't catch a ton of fish but we did catch some nice ones... We also lost a couple really nice bass in the 4-6 pound range... Warm Rocky banks and Jerk baits did the trick today.
February 4th 2008:
I've been really bad about updating this section of the site... I went out by myself this evening. The surface temprature was 4 - 5 degrees higher in certain areas due to the warming trend over the last week.... It turned out to be a pretty good couple of hours. I caught 4 bass, 3 large white perch and about 20 or more stripers. The bass and white perch came out of about 3 feet of water in the very back of one of the mid lake creeks. The Striper were slamming jerkbaits near the dike in about 6-10 ft of water.... no monsters but plenty of action...
January 13th 2008
Placed 2nd in the winter series... see Taylor's Entry for more
January 12th 2008:
It's been a while since I've posted.... For the last two months I've been rebuilding the power head on my boat! AAAARRG. It feels really good to be back on the water looking for fish! Taylor gave Christina her first baitcaster for Christmas so I took them out so she could learn how to cast it, and maybe even do a little prefishing for the tourney tommorow :-). She'll be a pro in no time. We started out at the lower end of the lake looking for some feeding fish, but fell short. We couldn't find anything. So we headed up the mid lake area and found some birds working. We managed to get into a nice school of bass. We caught several nice keepers before I had to take off to go to the boat show in Richmond. Not bad for one of the first days back on the water!
October 21st 2007:
Overall a pretty good day of fishing... the fish were active later in the day again. We were catching most of our fish trolling in the main lake. Looks like we have alot of rain in the forecast for the upcoming week... we'll see what it does to the fishing (and my lawn).
October 20th 2007:
Really tough! That is the only way to explain this day. A little bit of rain came through last night for the first time in months (we really need it) The cold front and bright skies have just shut the fish down. We managed to catch a few scattered fish but nothing consistent.
October 19th 2007:
Taylor and I made it out tonight for a couple hours... right at sunset they really turned on. We doubled up few times and caught a few casting... we were looking for a monster but didn't get him tonight... lots of 6-9 pound fish though. See Taylors entry for more
October 18th 2007:
Another evening bite payed off for us... we trolled several nice sized keepers off of 13-16 ft humps. the evening topwater action was awesome! Fish were fighting each other for our poppers and zara spooks. We lost one in the 15 pound range!
October 17th 2007:
The bite seems to be progressively getting better (and later). I had some boat problems early in the morning, but Bob and Sharon were very tolerent. I don't think we missed much though... I just haven't been catching alot of fish early in the day this week. A couple hours after lunch we started catching some really nice stripers. I'm not sure how many we caught but we had an overall good time.
October 16th 2007:
Meet "SuperDave" on your left and Dale on the right. These guys are avid bass fisherman but new to Lake Anna. They are also pretty competitive with each other so it added a little bit of anticipation to every catch. We managed to boat over a dozen fish in the second half of the day. It ended up being a really fun trip, especially the topwater bite right before dark.
October 15th 2007:
Chip and David Ashton from Lorton Virginia ventured down to Lake Anna for the day... it was very cold overnight making the morning bite pretty tough.... we managed to put a few fish in the boat around mid day. Trolling around the splits seemed to be the most productive for us.
October 14th 2007:
I've been in Florida for the last few days and flew in at 1 a.m this morning to make the last day of the LAPR classic tournament. Taylor fished the first day by himself, catching over a dozen smaller fish. About halfway throught the day he demolished his lower unit on a rocky point and missed the weigh in. We had a really hard time catching fish, I guess we were just unable to adapt to whatever changes the fish made in the last week. We did manage to catch alot of Stripers after the tournament though... For more details on the catch see Taylors journal entry for the 14th.... It was one of the best striper bites for us this year.
October 10th 2007:
Made it out for a couple hours... the fish were on 8- 12 ft rocks hitting crankbaits and small jigs. No monsters but several fish in the 3 pound range.
October 7th 2007:
Unfortunatley Daves team lost in the tourney this weekend but it gave him a chance to come out to Lake Anna one last time before he went home. We only caught a few decent stripers so we tried some night time Bassin techniques. Dave is an avid Striper and Hybrid Bass fisherman, but has never really fished for Largemouth... Thankfully his first real bucketmouth trip was a good one on lake anna. We got into a few fish with worms and jigs, largest one weighing about 4-5 pounds.
October 5th 2007:
Dave was in from Ohio for the WAGS soccer tournament. He flew in to Baltimore and drove straight to the lake.... meeting up with me around 11:30 or so. We went to the splits area to start off and within twenty minutes we doubled up. Not a bad start... The action slowed a little until about 2:30 when the action began to "heat up" we consistently boated 2-5 lb stripers for the rest of the day.
September 28 2007:
I picked up Lt. David Fernandes and friend Brad around 6:00 this morning with hopes of showing them some feirce topwater striper action. It didn't happen. After an hour or so of trying to "spook" the stripers, we gave up and went bass fishing... We managed to boat a couple of keepers, but that too was very slow. To finish up the day, we tied on the crankbaits and putt out some trolling lines. We hooked up with a few keeper stripers and called it a day. We'll try it again in a couple weeks!
September 14 2007:
Fish seem to be moving up shallow. I fished mostly mid-lake points and lay-downs using light tackle. Caught about 5 keepers averaging 2-3 pounds. The water is still way down offering a sneak peak at prime shallow water structure. I've been riding around just taking notes of rocks, stumps, etc. that will make great hide outs for shallow water bucket mouths.
Septmber 8 2007:
Pretty good day of fishing... caught about 10 keepers, mostly on deeper rocks and brush with small jigs and worms. Light line and light weight was the key. It was hot and bright, making presentation very important. Sorry for the bare chested photo, like I said it was Hot!
August 31 2007:
Here's my first attempt at recording video while I'm fishing.... Not as easy as I thought it would be. The good news was that I found a bunch of stripers that were feeding on the surface, and managed to catch about 20 of them ranging from 2-5 pounds. So what's the bad news? I did an awful job of taking video footage! Above are the few clips that I could salvage, but they really don't do justice to the fishing trip. The Stripers were trying to rip the hooks off of my zara spooks and poppers. Take a look (Quicktime is required) and let us know if you like the idea of posting video instead of pictures. info@hookedonlakeanna.com
Tuesday August 21 2007: No Picture available
What an evening, we went out at about 6:00 p.m., the fishing was very slow for everyone (except Bradley and Chisolm, See the tourney results for more info). To get it started off, I hooked a 2 pounder that wrapped itself around a dock piling... with no way to get him loose I stripped down and went in the water after him! I went down to the bottom of the piling and pulled him out and handed him to my partner. It was worth a chuckle! then we went uplake and tossed some worms on a normally productive rock point... I hooked a monster! He was all of ten pounds and fighting hard! About the time my partner got the net ready, we realized that it was a slimy, no good, CARP!!! Bummer, I was sure that I had a new lake record. Anyway, to top the night off we stopped at one of our spots on the way back to the weigh in. Taylor hooed a really solid fish that wrapped him up in some brush and broke his line... we were pretty well done at this point. It was a pretty frustrating evening, but I can't complain, at least I was on the water....
Tuesday August 14 2007: See Taylors entry
Saturday August 11 2007:
We did it again! There were almost 20 boats for the 3 o'clock Saturday Tournament... Most of the usual suspects were competing for the top two spots and Big Fish. I took my dad out with me for this one and we had a great time! Pops boated the first two keepers right off the bat... I hadn't had as much as a peck! I thought dad was gonna take me to school in my own boat! At about 4:00 we marked a few solid fish in the main lake at about 30 feet or so (different spot than last night). The boat traffic was crazy! We had a random Jet boat pull right up next to us thinking that dad was one of his co-workers. He courteously idled away trying to do as little damage as possible. No sooner than he was getting up on plane, I felt a vicious THUMP coming out of the depths and my line went limp.... I took out the slack and set the hook on what felt like a cinder block. Dad got set up with the net right before this fish tailwalked about 30 feet off of the bow of the boat. Holy @(^$@& dad says! We danced around the boat for a couple more minutes and finally put her in the net. We averaged about a fish an hour after that and weighed in with over 14 lbs and the big fish prize for two nights in a row!! Man, better enjoy it while it lasts!
Friday August 10 2007:
Almost 80 boats lined up for take off around 6:30 p.m. at Highpoint Marina. My partner Taylor and I started out at one of our deepwater holes, throwing worms and crankbaits. After about 20 mins. or so with no action we were thinking of leaving. Fortunately we decided to stick around for a little longer and try some other variations of baits. Low and behold, one of the first color changes did the trick. I wish we had video of this catch. I set the hook on this fish and immediately stuck my rod tip into the water.... I knew this was a chunk! He managed to surface about 4 times before Taylor streched out and hooped the 6 3/4 pounder. We ended up catching one more good fish to get us into 1st place and big fish! Awesome night!
