Non-Catching Still Better Than Work

Came down for a three day fishing trip at the tail end of a flood stage.  My tactic was to fish out of current areas in the hopes of finding fish that were seeking an escape from the strong currents in the river.  This strategy yielded me my biggest fish of the trip:

27.9#-37":

But it didn't yield much else for me, and neither did anything else that I tried.  I even got skunked one day.  I fished far and wide, in creeks, pits, secondary channels, and even the main river channel which was choked with grass and ripping currents.  I had trouble getting my boat on the trailer at Deep Bottom one day because the current was so strong.  So I ended up having to toss a line to a fellow fisherman on the dock to help guide my boat back onto the trailer.

My lines would look like this after only a few minutes in the main channel:

I still had a great time just being on the river.  I finally bought myself a portable grill for the boat, and it's one of the best things I've ever purchased for my boat.  I at least ate well every day.



I saw some pretty cool things while I was out on the river.  I ended up in a creek one day and my fish finder literally went black with striper.  They were busting all around me.  I didn't have any lures to cast at them, but I did put out a small eel that got no takers.  I also had the same thing happen to me in a pit, but this time it was carp, and lots of them breaking the surface all around me.  I couldn't find the catfish feeding like that though.

I ran across the "Baywatcher", which looks to be some type of large environmental awareness boat that takes school kids out on the James River for field trips to learn about the river ecosystem.  Every time I passed them, all the kids would come running to the side of the boat and wave.  Looks like they were having a blast.  I want to know, where were those field trips when I was a kid?  I would have killed to go out on a boat for a field trip.

Since the fishing was so poor, I leave you all with a nature shot! lol