With the warm weather this weekend, you just had to FISH! With the project list growing, I had to pacify the Basswife by doing some stuff in the morning but my son came down and rescued me. We left the house at around 1 PM and headed south for Quantico for a quick couple of hours on Breckinridge.
Quantico runs their licenses from Jan – Dec, so we had to stop at the game check station and buy them for this year. Big doin’s there – they laminate them this year. To get a license on Quantico, you do not need to be in the military. Bring your Virginia license and 10 bucks and you are ready to go for a number of good bass lakes on the base.
After getting the license, we took the short ride up to Breckinridge and were pleased to see only one other truck in the parking lot. This is a small lake and about 4 boats is all it can handle. The other truck was pretty impressive – an F150 with about a 1 foot lift. In my mind, I could hear the Basswife commenting about not being able to get into that thing wearing a skirt.
Anyway, we loaded the basscanoe and headed out as shown on the map. After hitting my favorite spot on the lake with no luck, I moved to the southern shoreline and immediately picked up fish in about 20 feet of water. They were hanging between 12 and 18 feet in a big pack. The PiranhaMAX 30 was also picking up fuzzy grey clouds of stuff which I assumed were bait fish (the dang instructions for that thing give NO guidance on how to interprete the display).
We threw everything we had – crankbaits, spinner baits, GULP flavored worms, YUM flavored crawfish and came up empty. The fish were there – we found a big school of them on the other side of the point and bombarded them with EVERYTHING – even the “bite lite” lure! No luck. The other boat had the same fate. Those guys said they were out for a while and, like us, had not had a hit.
But, it was a glorious day as you can see from the pictures below. Air temp was around 70 and the water was a frosty 45. Sadly, nothing was moving. As I am already anxious to try fly fishing, I note above that the VDGIF does stock the runoff from the dam. There is no real holdover as the creek turns into a spa in the summer – so I’ll have to watch for the stocking report and try my hand here
Pressure: Since this is eletric motor only and very shallow draft to get into the lake at the launch, the only guys who come here are those with flat bottom boats or canoes. I have never felt pressured here.
Getting there: Take the exit 148 off I95, go right. A few miles after the Marine checkpoint, turn right following the signs to Camp Upshur. A mile or so after the turn, you will see a marked road “New Breckinridge”. Turn right on that and follow it to the end.
Unless stated otherwise, this article was authored by Steve Moore