Well so far this year I have logged about 300 hours in at the rivers and all I have to show for it is 2 snapping turtles, I huge carp and a decent bullhead. I am using the same tactics, bait and lures as I always have and by this time last year I had over 20 bass, and 30 channel cats. 7/6/2012 4:31:28 PM

Just updated my profile pic with a nice shot of a big Shenandoah Smallie I caught a few weeks back. After reading an article on the NAFC website about Smallie top-water tactics, I decided to give this new technique a try. In the article, which you can find here...http://www.fishingclub.com/magazine/articles/articletype/articleview/articleid/3049 , Guide Doug Teel talks about how to frustrate big Smallies into coming up and crushing top-water baits. So I hit the Shenandoah River out of Front Royal, VA, with my buddy Jeremy. We had been on the water for about 10 minutes before the first fish hit. Just like Doug says, I threw the bait into slow flat current and allowed it to drift over fishy ledges and tossed the plug into fishy eddies and let it sit there, which is more difficult to do than one would think. The first fish to hit the bait struck so hard that my line broke before I could even set the hook - I believe this was a freak occurrence since the line broke just below the kn 10/16/2011 4:34:03 PM

in retirement mode, 26yrs in the army is enough, time to finally get some fishing done. 7/12/2012 7:42:59 PM