Fishing Report From Cape Fair Marina

[Outdoor Girl]

As we all know the weather is hot and is going to get even warmer and the fish know it too. The bass and crappie have move deep during the day and early morning and late evening is a good time to be on the water. Night time fishing is now the time to go.

Black Bass: Day or night 10 inch plastic worms are one of the good go to lures along with plastic craws and creature baits. Early morning fishing with buzz baits and spinner baits is pretty good until the sun comes up. If you do fish during the day for bass, work the long sloping gravel points all the way out to 25 or 30 feet using drop shot rigs and Carolina rigs with 4 to 6 inch plastics. The big bass are suspending during the day and if you can find them with your graph, a spoon, swim bait, or deep diving crank bait may trigger a strike. The big night time bass are moving to the banks late to feed. Dark colored spinner baits run along the bank edge with get some good bites and work the flats with exposed brush will catch a bunch of “short” bass.

Crappie: Bring your floating night lights and some good crappie minnows and look for brush piles on the bottom and brush around private boat docks. The crappie will move in to feed and some good 10 inch or better crappies are biting. Crappie can be caught during the day if you fish deep (18 to 25 feet). Good old minnows fished straight down will do the job.

Catfish: We have some really nice big cats coming in and a lots baits and ways to catch them are working. Trot lines and especially limb lines baited with small perch or live goldfish are really taking some nice flatheads and channels. Cut baits slowly drifted along 45 degree sloping banks will catch channels during the hot part if the day. Even fishing from the banks with dough baits and stink baits is catching some good catfish. Jug fishing, foam doodles and old floating buckets baited with live bait during the day is a ball if you can keep the gar fish from stealing the bait. Worse yet is to hook one of these 3 or 4 foot toothy rascals and try to catch up to your jug.

Water Temperature and Color: Day time temps are in the upper 80’s and low 90’s and water color is a good clear green color. The thermo cline is around 25 to 28 feet and is pretty uniform all over the lake.

[techo]

Thanks for the detailed report again! I knew a girl could write a good report!

[Bill Babler]

Great reports. Good to have someone on that end. Hope there is not a lynching. That area of the lake has always been the most closed mouth on what is going on. Lots of locals and old river folks up there that keep fishing information pretty close to the vest. You will also notice that the guide chatter from the James is almost non-existant. Usually don't talk to much about the derby section of the lake. Kind of keep those LM quite.

We get someone up the Kings, and we will just about have this pond covered from end to end.

Good Luck

[exiledguide]

I agree, great report. I fished Indian creek during the flood in May with my bride, had one great day fishing, blown off the lake the other 3 days. Hope to spend time on the James arm come October.

[Champ188]

Really nice report indeed. Thanks for taking the time to write it up and for sharing.