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| Elizabeth River near Chesapeake, VA |
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| Hot Ditch of the Elizabeth River |
Although there is a
red drum winter fishery in the Elizabeth, the drum are far outnumbered by the
speckled trout, a close cousin of the weakfish that we catch on Long Island.
These speckled trout are a silvery, smaller relative of the weakfish with almost an identical body type. In certain areas of the Elizabeth, the biomass
of speckled trout can be as thick as the wintering stripers in the Housatonic
River in CT, especially in the cove southeast of the power plant. Otherwise,
the fish are spread out, but you can find schools of fish holding along the
edges of dropoffs in the main river. The Hot Ditch is a channel carved into the
estuary around the power plant where the water drops to 15' around 4' flats.
This area always holds fish even when there is no discharge. On the main river,
the specks held in good number around the mouths of coves, and inside the coves
themselves. I also marked fish feeding around the feeder creeks that emptied
into the Elizabeth, with an outgoing tide providing a smorgusborg of feeding
opportunities.
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| Main channel of the Elizabeth River. |
Now, for the report.
Day 1 - 12/29: In terms of weather and conditions, this was the end of a low
pressure system turning into a high pressure system and the morning after the
full moon. I launched from a side road between the two bridges on the Elizabeth
River at 8 am to cold, torrential rains. This coincided with the last two hours
of the flood. The air temp was 42 degrees and the water temp was 47
degrees. To my surprise, I was the only kayak on the river. Later that day,
there would be one other boat. To begin, I made my way from the feeder creek to
the main channel. As soon as the water dropped from 8' to 24', I marked specks
along the edges. The wind was blowing from the northeast at 17 knots.
Initially, I tried casting but the wind was moving me too fast, and even with
peddles, I couldn't hedge the wind enough to get a feel for my jig. As a
result, I decided to try a searching pattern and troll two rods with small
rapalas. Well, the wind tangled my lines on the troll, and I wasted about a
half hour re-rigging. After this, the wind and rain in the main river became to
much, so I decided to go try the Hot Ditch, where I had had some success with
spike trout in February, 2011.
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| First speckled trout of the trip - 17". |
On the way there, I
passed an island and had a solid hit. This encouraged me as I made my way to
the ditch. After trolling around The Ditch for a few minutes, I got a hit on my
rattlin rap - fish on! After a spirited fight, I got the fish to the boat
and saw that it was a nice speckled trout, so I grabbed the net. I landed
the fish and my first fish of the day was a nice 18" speckled
trout, which was larger than any trout I caught on my prior trip to Virginia.
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| Full colored, healthy Virginia speckled trout. |
So, I continued to
focus on this area by trolling - navigating the ditch by my GPS tracks.
Although I had a couple of other hits, the morning was slipping away fast and I
really wanted to fish the feeder creeds of the main river during outgoing tide.
As such, I moved back
to the main river around slack tide and started to troll along the western
shore to the feeder stream that empties into the river on the west side. . . .
although I got a few taps, I caught nothing . . . . and then saw a cove with
barges in it . . . . it looked interesting, so I crossed the river and went
into the cove. As soon as I got into the mouth of the cove, I started marking
fish, and the farther I went into the cove, the more fish I marked - they were
moving fast, but these were solid marks of speckled trout, so I decided to cast
some plastics at the school, since I was in the lee of the wind a bit. Despite
the good marks, I could not get the speckled trout to eat. By now, it was 11 am
and I barely had any time left, so I thought I would focus working the dropoffs
along the main river in 8' to 10', right at the dropoff.
By now, the tide was
dropping fast, and I left the cove and headed north . . . . after a minute or
two - I get a hard hit - WHAM - feels like I am stuck . . . . but I'm not -
fish on again! This time, I could tell it was a really big fish, and I had
trouble moving the fish initially - for the first couple of minutes, the fight
was a tug of war that felt like the fish was winning - I didn't make much
headway, and a couple of times, I just couldn't move the fish on my medium
weight mojo - the fish felt heavy! After this, the trout came to the surface and
started to shake its head out of the water - and I saw her - she looked big! I
dropped my rod into the water to stop her from throwing the hook, and she went
down again . . . . . but my yak had moved away from the edges and out
into the main channel . . . . so she went down deep and the fight became
verticle - she made a couple of drag screaming runs down towards the bottom,
but I continued to fight her and then the fish went under the kayak . . . . and
I was afraid she would get tangled in my mirage drive, so I got my back up and
made her feel the hooks, but the fish was determined, and made a couple of good
runs before it surfaced . . . . so she finally surfaced, and then . . . . I got
really nervous because specks have the same mouth as weakfish, and you have to
make sure to keep the tension on your line when you attempt netting . . . . I
did this, but fumbled the net backwards, and got her in, and brought her up! I
was stoked! With the way this fish fought, I really thought this was a 30"
class fish, but it turned out to be a solid 25". |
| 25" speckled trout. |
Later, I weighed the
fish at Ocean's East 2 Bait & Tackle in Virginia Beach. It weighed 5.25 lbs
which qualified for a State of Virginia Trophy Citation. The citation was
witnessed by Kayak Kevin Whitley, which made it even more special.
After I caught the
fish, I headed back in at 11:30 am. Luckily, there was one other boat out there
with me that took a picture of me with the fish. Although none of these
pictures was good, at least I got something!
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| Virginia Citation Trout - 5.25 lbs - Trophy Size |
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| Total catch for the day - 2 keeper speckled trout - 25" and 18" respectively. Not bad for a yankee!! |
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| To qualify for a speckled trout citation in Virginia, the fish must weight at least 5 lbs. For a catch & release citation, the fish must be at least 24". |
Day 2
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| An unexpected surprise from the Elizabeth River |
The second day, I met
up with my old KFA-NY buddy Dennis Wise. Dennis and I fished often together
from 2010 until he moved to Virginia Beach in the late summer of 2011. Dennis taught me some
really productive patterns in his home waters of Reynolds Channel / Jones Inlet
/ South Oyster Bay. We had fished stripers hard on both the north shore and
south shore of Long Island, and even broke through ice to catch stripers on the
Housatonic River in Connecticut once. It was really great to hang out with him
and fish with him for some exotics around his new home in Virginia. We had
always talked fishing our home waters, but it was awesome to talk strategy with
him about speckled trout in his new home.
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| Dennis Wise |
Dennis and I got to
Chesapeake Yachts pre-dawn . . . . . a high pressure system had moved in since
the previous day and the wind was blowing to 20 knots . . . . by the end of the
morning, it would become a tide on wind situation where the wind was blowing
almost consistently at 30 knots. This would make it almost unfishable from our
kayaks later in the morning. The conditions were compounded by the fact that a
severe cold front was also moving into lower Chesapeake Bay.
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| First Virginia Redfish |
But, the beginning of
the morning was somewhat still. One of our other brethren from KFA-NY, Gene
Kenney had nailed a few nice redfish fishing the pilings of the interstate the
prior week, so we headed out towards the Ditch to begin our morning. Dennis
planned to present some scented soft plastics to the redfish around the pilings
and oyster bars below the Ditch, I was looking to troll the edges of the Ditch
itself for speckled trout. So, we temporarily went our separate ways.
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| Under-slot redfish from the Elizabeth River, VA |
On my first troll
towards the power plant, my rod bent and I thought that I had a nice trout -
very solid fight, with good pull . . . . got it next to the boat and I saw a
different body shape, scales, and the "spot" on the tail . . . . it
was a red drum! I netted the fish and subsequently measured a 16" redfish.
This was special, since it was my first redfish since 2008 and my first
Virginia redfish.
So, I continued to
troll the same route. With my back to the wind, I started to jig the rapala as
I trolled . . . and hooked up again. With the wind at my back, I turned
the kayak, but the momentum of the boat made for a nice fight, and I netted A
little later, trolling with my back to the wind, I landed a second trout, this
time, a 16" fish that I released - again on the rapala.
On this trip, the
trout took my rapala at with various presentations - often it would be sinking
after the cast, or it would be taken as I jigged the rapala as I trolled, but
it was never hit if I just trolled straight, and most of my hits were on the
ledges, or trolling through schools that I marked on my fishfinder. The common
denominator seemed to be that they would hit at the time the lure moved from
stationary to a forward moving, rattling target.
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| First speckled trout of the day - a keeper at 15.5" but this fish was released to fight another day. |
After checking my
rapala for debris, I casted again, and let the rapala sink . . . . as soon as
it started moving, I hooked up and caught a nice 17" speckled trout, as I
caught and landed this fish, I was lucky enough to have Dennis move into the
area, who had just caught a nice redfish by the bridge. He was nice enough to
take a couple of pictures of me with the speck.
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| 18" speckled trout caught in the Hot Ditch |
On this day, I
focused around the Ditch. It was too snotty to fish the main channel of the
Elizabeth and I also wanted to hit Frustration Cove with Dennis, who had a few
friends from Pirates of Lynnhaven dunking minnows with the bobber brigade. So
when the wind became too biting, we left the Ditch and hit Frustration Cove . .
. . frustration if you are fishing artificials, but usually quite productive
fishing livies.
I trolled along the edges of the channel on the way out to the Cove, using an erratic motion, and caught another nice trout, that gave me a good fight. After landing it, it measured at about 18".
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| 3rd speckled trout of the morning - caught and released. |
Needless to say, I
got the best marks of the trip on my fishfinder at Frustration Cove - literally
a big biomass of fish moving around the bottom 5' of the water column, and the
cove is about 20' - these fish were really moving around fast, but in tight
schools. I hit into a couple of fish . . . . but it was unclear if they were
biting or I was hitting them with my jig.
We didn't catch
anything back there, and Dennis and I wanted to at least try the main river, so
we left, and with wind and tide at our backs . . . . it was a fast ride out
to the main channel of the Elizabeth . After we arrived, we dealt with
whitecaps, did a quick troll, and went back to the launch - with wind against tide,
it was tough.
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| Final speckled trout of morning. |
I totaled 4 speckled
trout from 15" - 18" that day and 1 under-slot redfish. Great for
three hours of fishing on a brutally cold and windy day.
The water around the
Ditch was about 5 degrees warmer than the main channel or Frustration Cove.
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| Dennis Wise fishing in Frustration Cove |
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| Those are the marks in Frustration Cove - those are speckled trout you see on the screen. At times, the schools 5' thick. |
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| These were my two largest trout of the day. I caught four keeper speckled trout that morning but only kept the two largest 18" trout. |
Day 3
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| Only speckled trout of the last day and final fish of the trip |
Got to the launch to
24 degree air temps, with another high pressure system. The water temp was
lowered to 41 degrees in the main channel, and about 45 degrees at the Ditch .
. . . main channel was unproductive with only a couple of hits - I got a
16" trout at the Ditch on a rapala - no more fish the rest of the morning
at quit at 11 am after an 8 am launch - less wind but brutally cold and the
front shut off the bite.
Special thanks to Dennis Wise and Marty Mood, who really guided me in understanding some of the nuances of this fishery.
This was one of the most rewarding fishing trips of the year, and a great way to end 2012. The citation speckled trout was one of my proudest accomplishments of season. The area around lower Chesapeake Bay is an amazing fishery - everything from speckled trout, to redfish, to stripers, to sheepshead. A kayak is a great way to explore this fishery, and each season offers something different. Plus, there is enough fishable water down there that you can explore new areas for years.
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| A frigid Virginia. |
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