Bear Creek Lake State Park

Tuesday, June 26, 2007, Bear Creek Lake State Park (60 miles west of Richmond, VA)

It’s over 90 degrees, no clouds, no wind, and 1:30 in the afternoon. There are rowboats and canoes and paddleboats here, but not one is in use. A beautiful, 40-acre remote lake nestled within deep woods, and it’s currently unused. The lake is on the little Willis River – a relatively unknown tributary of the James.

I rent a paddleboat for me and Tony, my Down Syndrome brother-in-law who is visiting for three weeks. He loves to fish from the bank, and hates being in a boat ever since I made the mistake of taking him to see the movie, “The Perfect Storm,” and then followed it by taking him in my little boat and getting caught in our own storm. But he’s begged to go in the paddleboat, and so we do. The folks here are accommodating and help Tony with his lifejacket and into his paddleboat seat.

I take two fishing rods – Tony’s with a finesse worm on which he’s caught his share of fish without any need for my assistance, and mine with a Senko. We launch and immediately Tony regresses to his boat-hating mentality. He holds on tight and has no interest in using his fishing rod. But we’ve paid the $6.30 fee for an hour in this paddler (as opposed to as much as $60 that I’ve personally seen charged at other public lakes around the nation), and so we’ll use it.

This lake is so fishy looking that I anticipate a strike on every cast, but it takes me a while to figure them out. In spite of the paddleboat’s very loud and squeaky locomotive gears, I learn that the bass are in the shoreline grass rather than in submerged and fallen trees. And I do mean SHORELINE grass. I can’t find any underwater grass beds, but the lake is high and some of the shorelines have a few inches of water in the grass. And where this slopes into the lake is were there are bass willing to hit the Senko. I catch 5 during our hour, including 2 that weigh a bit more than 3 pounds each. Only one is small – perhaps 11 inches.

We’re wet with sweat when we return (the rule requires that we wear those bulky orange lifejackets), but I’ve learned that this state park’s lake is loaded with good quality bass. Motto: find a bassy lake in the mid-summer heat and drift a Senko into and around cover and/or shade, and you’re likely to find some bass.