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Ken Perrotte's outdoors column

Date published: 6/12/2008

WANT TO CATCH big largemouth bass in Northern Virginia? Then think small. Most of the region's reservoirs are small impoundments that hold some hefty fish.

At 2,100 acres, Occoquan Reservoir is considered large, and it led the regional survey of top waters. But Lake Anna, the region's largest reservoir at 9,600 acres, finished in the middle of the pack when Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologists sampled them over the past couple of years.

Pleasant and unpleasant surprises for Fredericksburg-area anglers were the ranking of Motts Reservoir as No. 4 on the list and the fact that nearby Hunting Run Reservoir, which had been touted as the land of the lunker bass, ranked 13th.

The rankings are based on electrofishing surveys. The electric current temporarily stuns the fish, allowing researchers to collect them and make quick biological assessments. These are later aggregated to allow broad comparisons of overall density of preferred fish--in this case, largemouth bass.

Fish longer than 15 inches were considered "preferred" for purposes of the study. The index "CPE-P" in the table stands for "catch per effort of preferred fish." This measure how many bass longer than 15 inches were collected by biologists during an hour of electrofishing.

Regional Fisheries biologist John Odenkirk explained that the term "RSD-P" stands for "relative stock density of preferred fish"--the proportion of bass in a population longer than 8 inches (stock size or "recruits") that are also at least 15 inches. Thus, this index describes the size structure of the population. The higher the number, the larger the percentage of the population that is composed of big fish and the more abundant big bass were during the one-hour sample (see table).

Most research has qualifiers attached, and the biologists note that you can't necessarily make "head-to-head" comparisons between big and small waters since catch rates at large reservoirs are usually lower. Either Occoquan is very good, or the researchers were very lucky and happened to electrofish the best honey holes.

Hunting Run, a new reservoir, has great potential, according to Odenkirk, but the problem right now is that there are too many small bass. He advises anglers there to catch and keep some of the fish below 16 inches to relieve stockpiling of smaller fish.

RESERVOIR RNK. YR. SIZE* COUNTY CPE-P RSD-P Occoquan 1 '07 2,100 Fairfax 39 52 Burke 2 '06 218 Fairfax 38 55 Mountain Run 3 '05 75 Culpeper 37 21 Motts 4 '08 160 Spotsylvania 32 35 Beaverdam Crk. 5 '08 350 Loudoun 28 47 Pelham 6 '05 255 Culpeper 28 41 Germantown 7 '08 109 Fauquier 23 17 Fairfax 8 '08 28 Fairfax 22 31 Anna 9 '08 9,600 Spotsylvania 21 36 Brittle 10 '06 77 Fauquier 21 26 Abel 11 '05 185 Stafford 20 24 Curtis 12 '05 91 Stafford 17 18 Hunting Run 13 '08 420 Spotsylvania 14 19 Orange 14 '08 24 Orange 14 12 Ni 15 '07 411 Spotsylvania 13 30 Breckinridge 16 '06 47 Stafford 12 9 Lunga 17 '05 477 Stafford 11 13 Smith 18 '07 250 Stafford 5 7 * in acres

Date published: 6/12/2008