Posted on 10th Mar 2011 @ 5:17 PM

The first cooling has started to happen and the fish are responding accordingly. Water temp's are on the way down and the james river was between 73 to 75 degrees as of 9/19/09. The big cats are starting to prowl and we boated a 52 pound blue last saturday along with a 38 and 27 pound blue. The bite for me has been day time mostly with evening at dusk most productive and the tide moving either side of high. Shad & bream have been best fished live or cut on or near the bottom. The fish are moving around quite a bit right now and starting to school up, so look for schooled up big marks near or on the bottom around drop offs and along the edge of channels.

Recent trips have been good for citation catfish with 7 fish over 40 inches caught in 2 half day and 1 full day charters. These numbers don't include the other dozen catfish caught that were less than 28 pounds. I look for those number to increase with each trip and larger fish as the water continues to cool. The stripers have also started to become active and we are seeing birds working as the feeding stripers start to feed on top in the evening. Top water plugs and swim baits should produce some nice fish and the season opens in a couple weeks. Trolling bucktails and deep diving redfins can also produce results. Crappie are biting also and report that I got was that the docks in richmond had produced some nice silvers lately. Bass fishing continues to be good and I have caught a few smallmouth lately in the upper tidal portion of the james while bait fishing for bream fishing with a cork and worm. Croaker fishing is decent with fat fish being caught at the pumunkey rive bridge at westpoint. Cat fishing has been good also in the mattiponi river and on a recent charter Jerry sprouse of churchville va. was able to take a dozen nice size blue & channel cat's 4 to 15 pound home along with a dozen big croakers, plus we also released a trophy blue catfish.

The saltwater fishing has also started to heat up with some fish getting ready to move out any day. Cobia fishing has been great this summer and big schools should be a the tunnel and off va. beach in the next few days. Live bait or casting big bucktails will be the most productive when site casting to the schooled cobia.  Flounder fish has been off the charts lately and several big door mats from the cape charles,concrete ships and the ccbt complex and york spit areas. Puppy drum continue to be caught up the james river up to jamestown and from what I hear just about anywhere around the bay with some fish 24 to 27 inches being landed this past week. Speckle trout are starting to hit lures and a few fish have come from the mobjack and hole in the wall lately. I am looking forward to a great fall fishing season and can''t wait to drift some eels for giant rockfish in nov.& Dec. and hopefully best my 48 pound fish I landed in december 08.

If you have never hooked up a striper on a drift with live eel and had her take 200 plus yards off the reel then you need too, you will never forget it. Give us a call and set your striper or cat fishing trip today before the best dates are taken and it also makes a great xmas present. I will be offering trips off Va. beach for costal striper fishing from 1/1/10 thru march 10.