I spent the morning with Alan Weaver and Robbie Willis, who work in fish passage for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. This time of year, their job consists heavily of sampling the anadromous fish that come up river to spawn in the James and Rappahannock rivers. For scientific purposes, sampling means going out on a boat with a generator and two probes that put electrical current into the water. The probes look like two big metal octopi attached to long bars, and they temporarily stun the fish long enough for them to be netted. That’s what Robbie and I did while Weaver drove the boat between Ancarrow’s Landing and just upriver of the Mayo Bridge. It was a blast, and needless to say, the anglers all around us took a keen interest in what we were doing.
Robbie Willis, of the DGIF, holds a flathead catfish on the James River near Mayo Bridge.
The goal was to record info like sex, length, weight and total numbers of fish like striped bass, blueback herring, alewife, hickory and American shad, all of which are here to spawn right now. But we also saw plenty of fish we didn’t sample. For instance: longnose gar, white perch and quillback. We also netted some blue catfish and flathead catfish for a study the DGIF has commissioned researchers at Virginia Tech to undertake that will look at the diet of catfish in Virginia rivers.
All in all, it was a great time on the water. The fact that we saw all this fish life, not to mention bird life (ospreys, Canada geese, cormorants, etc.) while in downtown Richmond makes you realize how good we have it here.
Willis holds a very nice striper.
Recording measurements of herring.
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Ralph White and the kids from Tuckahoe Montessori.
I spent the morning with Ralph White and 70 kids from Tuckahoe Montessori School at the quarry pond on Belle Isle. The story will be in tomorrow’s Times-Dispatch, but it seemed worth sharing now how cool it was to watch kids (ages 18 months to 9 years) get to experience the outdoors in such a hands-on way.
For three years Tuckahoe Montessori has been bringing its kids to Belle Isle to help White stock the quarry pond. It’s a great opportunity to touch, feel and see things like fish, snails and crayfish that they’re learning about in class.
And a note to Richmond’s anglers: White said he’s been doing school stockings like this for at least a decade. The quarry — 20-feet deep at its deepest point — has two cracks that allow water to come in from the James, but fish can’t escape. So you’ve basically got a 2-acre pond with a captive population of largemouth bass, perch, blue gill and some catfish. White says he heard one story a number of years back of a teenager catching an 8-pound bass out of there. Apochryphal? Who knows? It definitely makes me want to bring a rod down there and try my luck.
The quarry pond on Belle Isle.
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Credit: Lynda Richardson
Monday morning I got a call from Chris Hull, paddler and former president of the James River Outdoor Coalition. He said he and a fellow kayaker had seen a couple of Atlantic sturgeon in the James River from Mayo Bridge. To call this big news would be a severe understatement. These fish were once so plentiful in this area that Richmonders would spear them with pitchforks below Bosher’s Dam. But their population crashed here and elsewhere in the late 1800s due to overfishing. The females were prized for their eggs (caviar), and without eggs you get no succeeding generations. Considering the fish take 15-17 years to reach sexual maturity and only spawn every 3-5 years, it’s no surprise their stocks plummeted quickly and didn’t rebound.
But now they’re back. Not in the numbers they once were — not yet, anyway — but back, nevertheless. I went down to the Mayo Bridge around noon Wednesday and saw one, but by the time I ran back to my car and retrieved my camera, it was gone. On Monday evening I went back and found a crowd gathered. Mark Holmberg of CBS 6 was working on a sturgeon story. Mike Ostrander was there, as was his wife, Lynda Richardson, a freelance photographer. I stayed about 45 minutes without seeing another fish. After I left, Ostrander told me Ralph White and his wife Cricket showed up. Two minutes after that so did the sturgeon. Rex Springston and I wrote about this phenomenon in today’s T-D.
The pic above is the only one I know of that anyone has captured of a sturgeon in the fall line. Richardson took it from the bridge. The pic below is of a 9-footer caught by VCU researcher Matt Balazik in the James near Hopewell. It’s the largest one he’s caught and the one that proved — by releasing eggs when he pulled it up to the boat — that these federally endangered prehistoric beasts are spawning in the James in the fall.
If you have the time, go down to the Mayo Bridge and see if you can spot one. You won’t be disappointed.
This 9-foot sturgeon was released unharmed.
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Every now and again I’ll get emails from people lamenting the quality of the smallmouth bass fishing in the James River, specfically here in Richmond along the fall line. I always tell them, that while this isn’t the New River, the fish are out there — big ones, too.
I tell them that, but it’s easier to make my case when I can show them some visual evidence. So, here it is. Both of the below pics are of friends (Dave Vladimirou on the left, Mike Ostrander on the right) who have snagged beastly bass on the James in the fall line during the past month. I won’t give away where exactly they were or what they were using, but suffice it to say, their success had more to do with doggedness than any proprietary knowledge. The more you fish, the better chance you have to catch one of these. It’s that simple.
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A little over a week ago, I wrote a column in the T-D about smallmouth bass fishing the James in Richmond city limits. Well, on the same day the column came out, reader Bill Landrum hooked up with a sweet bronzeback, the kind that keeps all of us fishermen coming back to the mighty James at all hours of the day and night.
Here’s Landrum’s description of the day and the fish: I recently visited the James River with my daughter to do some canoeing. I also took my fishing rod, hoping I would catch some smallmouth. We put in at the Huguenot Bridge and not far upstream from there, I landed one of the biggest smallmouths that I have caught. I did not have a measuring device for length or weight, but some people I have shown this to thought it could be a citation, if not, close. It was such a beautiful fish! I released it after taking the picture, so it is back out there waiting to make another fisherman happy.
I was using a Rebel Crawfish crank bait (yellow in color) that was a somewhat shallow diver. I believe that I saw a rock with a deeper hole on the opposite side from me and cast beyond it. The water was smooth with no ripples. When it first hit, I thought it was a small fish – until it pulled against the drag! The odd thing is it never broke water. I thought I had a catfish because it kept diving – and was one of the longest fights I have had in a while.
That is one good looking fish, Bill. And if anyone else reading this has had a similar experience — with the pics prove it — in a Central Virginia body of water recently, send ’em my way. I’d love to hear the tale.
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Credit: Jesse Peters/Backlight
In today’s T-D I offer my take on what it could mean for Richmond to win Outside Magazine’s “Best Town Ever” contest. This year the focus of the contest is on cities with a strong relationship with the river (or rivers) running through them. Outside teamed up with the non-profit advocacy group American Rivers to whittle a list of 80 or so cities/towns down to the 10 finalists. In addition to Richmond, the other finalists are Nevada City, Calif., Hood River, Ore., Nashville, Tenn., Asheville, N.C., Ithaca, N.Y., Milwaukee, Boise, Idaho, Missoula, Mont., and Durango, Colo.
Voting is being conducted on Facebook through July 10. You can vote once a day, every day. You can also post comments and upload your favorite pictures, which is just as important as voting since “enthusiasm” is a component of the final decision. The winning city will be featured on the front of the October issue of Outside — the magazine’s 35th anniversary issue.
As of this writing, Richmond was way out in the lead in both votes (close to 2,000) and enthusiasm (363 comments, dozens upon dozens of pics). Nevada City, Calif. is currently in second with 450 votes. It would be pretty cool to see the River City get some credit for being the incredible outdoor recreation destination it already is.
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B.A.S.S. pro Mike Iaconelli was fourth in last year's Northern Open
The 2012 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Northern Open is coming back to Richmond. The three-day competition begins tomorrow (June 14), and runs through Saturday, out of Osborne Park and Boat Landing in Henrico on the James River.
Fishing fans are invited to watch the morning launches from Osborne Park located at 9530 Osborne Turnpike in Henrico. Take-off time is set for 6 a.m. Weigh-ins on the first two days will be at Osborne Park beginning at 2 p.m. The final weigh-ins will be at the Bass Pro Shops location in Ashland at 11550 Lakeridge Parkway. The Wounded Warrior live weigh-in will be at 1:45 p.m. and the final weigh-in at 3 p.m. There is no admission charge for any Bassmaster event.
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Big news for local anglers and hunters. This has been rumored about for a couple of years. From a Gander Mountain press release:
Gander Mountain has announced that it has entered into a transaction pursuant to which Green Top Sporting Goods will relocate to Gander Mountain’s 67,000 square foot store located in NorthCross Center at 10150 Lakeridge Pkwy, Ashland, VA, and Gander Mountain will exit the Richmond market.
Gander Mountain will continue to operate at the location through July 2012 and will be offering meaningful discounts and promotions during the next two months.
Current employees were recently notified of the change and certain employees have been offered bonus payments to stay through July. All employees were encouraged to apply for open positions at other Gander Mountain locations if they are able to relocate.
“Green Top Sporting Goods was looking to expand and offered Gander Mountain a unique opportunity to redeploy assets to its previously announced expansion plans in a cost-effective manner,” said Eric Jacobsen, executive vice president for Gander Mountain. Terms and conditions of the transaction are confidential.
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A Back Bay marsh, as seen from False Cape SP
That’s the question posed in my column in today’s Times-Dipatch. I went down to Back Bay earlier this week to witness the stocking of 125,000 fingerling bass. It’s the first of three consecutive years of such stockings.
As I write in the column, Back Bay in the 1970s and early 1980s was considered one of the top bass fisheries in the entire United States. The reason was the explosion of a non-native aquatic vegetation called Eurasian watermilfoil. It provided such good habitat for the bass that they could escape predators and grow quickly. But when the grass mysteriously disappeared in the ’80s, the bass died off with it. Now, the grass is coming back, though no one is positive exactly why, and the DGIF figures they’ll see if they can jumpstart a fishery that was once the pride of Virginia bass anglers.
As an aside, the Back Bay area is one of the coolest, though least-known, places in the state. Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge is a stopover point on the Atlantic flyway for thousands of migratory birds. To its south, False Cape State Park is a spectacularly empty stretch of beach, dunes and marsh — 4,000 acres of it. If you ever get the chance to explore the area, jump on it.
False Cape State Park
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By Andrew Chase, Richmond native and self-described “insane fishing addict”
A fog horn sounds. Only the passengers and crew of the boat are present to hear the sound. The paddle roars through the water, finally docking in Memphis after a night of ferrying passengers across the river. If one could see through the thick fog, they would see a massive brown river slowly rolling through the land, perhaps even an alligator gar surfacing for air or “rolling”. The year is 1880, and the boat is on the Mississippi River, prior to most of the damming, pollution, species introductions and habitat destruction. This is a catfish river, the natural habitat where our American catfishes grow to mammoth size. It is still this way to an extent, though things have changed tremendously.
Today one of America’s top catfish rivers, the James, has only known the fish for 40 years. For better or for worse, the blue and
flathead catfish are here to stay. The James is in interesting river. Starting its journey as a collection of cool, clear trout streams in western Virginia’s mountains and finally emptying into The Chesapeake Bay as a massive tidal river. The falls of the James is a seven-mile stretch in which the river drops 105 feet in elevation, producing the best urban whitewater in the country. Thankfully the James River Park System maintains over 500 acres of river access, attracting over 500,000 visitors a year.
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