We visited our inlaws this past week and my brother inlaw (Eric) took me kayak fishing for largemouth. We went to Sandy River Reservoir near Farmville, VA about 20 minutes from the more popular Briery Creek Lake. We fished from daylight to early afternoon and had a blast. Together we boated about 40 fish with several 17-18"ers as the largest. The lake had a huge stump field which offered a ton of structure and really interesting fishing experience. We were at a huge advantage being in kayaks since we were able to fish areas the boaters couldn't get to.
I've done very little bass fishing outside of the neighborhood ponds and I was a little out of my element so I'm glad Eric was able to offer some advice. There were a lot of similarities to inshore saltwater minus the tides and bigger fish
. The fish were caught shallow (5' or less) all day in shady spots with structure.
I couple notable experiences... one fish got tangled in tree roots so I stuck my arm in there until I eventually felt him and managed to pull him out (all I could think about was losing my finger to a turtle). The other was Eric landed a nice 17.5"er next to a fallen tree about 20 yards in front of me. About 5 minutes later I was at the same spot and made a cast hoping more fish would be there and landed a nice 17.5"er. He got suspicious and asked me if it had a sore on its right side and sure enough it did. Can't say I remember ever catching the same fish as another guy 5 minutes apart.
First of the day on topwater
Eric with a 17"er
Me paddling around the stumps
Wondering how I'm going to get this thing out
Proof that I got him out
