Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Jeff English and I set out from Ashburn at 0600 to hit up Fletcher's.....1st time fly fishing for shad!

As we motored up to the Cove, one of the guys in a row boat motioned us over. He needed help. It seemed that his rock anchor was stuck and he needed a knife to cut the rope. We lent him one and they started to cut the line but I told them to hold on to the line and hand it to us so that I could free the rock using the power of my boat. We did so and they were very grateful as they could continue to fish.

Hmmmm....maybe this good deed will pay off!

We finally got to our spot with great anticipation and we found Doug Errett and David Policansky anchored up and catching fish! They have fly fished for shads for years and it was obvious.



Jeff was ready to catch 'em!



And he took the skunk off the boat with this stinky winter shad (gizzard, mud etc).....



....well, it was a fish on the boat even if not hooked ethically!

For us, the fishing was slow, time was a tickin'! So Jeff went to the spinning rod and hooked up with one of our target fish, a hickory!



Meanwhile, Doug and David were schooling us!





We must have seen them catch 50 shad, maybe more...even some Americans! It was sickening!

Finally, I hooked up....



....with this tiny white perch! But then...I got a nice hit and up comes this 11.5" white perch!





Now I could brag because the other guys had not caught a white perch.....nor were they interested in doing so!

We were about to make our 4th move to try to get some white perch on the bottom down river. But, the phone rang and I decided to answer it. It was John Nguyen, a friend of mine. He told us to move down to where he was as they were catching lots of shad on the fly.

He felt sorry for me is what it was. To get my number, he called Dan Davala at Orvis of Arlington who looked up an old email and gave him my number. For that kind of effort, I am grateful.

However, both Jeff and were even more grateful that the call paid off!!!

From 11:55 until 1:15, we hammered the hickories. We hooked over 30 and landed 24 or so. Incredible action!





While we wandered if the 1st 4 hours of fishing were just practice, Jeff never wavered in his attitude.



We were giddy as we ran back to Gravelly....what a great day!

A quick stop at the Italian Store put the exclamation point of a fine day of learning and fishing!