Virginia's saltwater story runs through the Chesapeake Bay mouth: the 17-mile Bridge-Tunnel is the East Coast's greatest artificial reef, with trophy stripers in winter, red drum in spring and cobia all summer, plus inlet creeks that fish year-round at Virginia Beach.
Reports current for Friday, September 4
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
Where the Chesapeake meets the Atlantic: the CBBT's 17 miles of structure and a genuine shot at a 50-inch striper.
Virginia’s striper capital: Smith Mountain’s 500 miles of shoreline stack linesides, muskie and a bass fishery that hosts the pros.
The two-sided lake: public-side stripers and crappie, warm-side winter bass, an hour from Richmond.
Buggs Island: 50,000 acres straddling two states, where striper history was made and crappie fill livewells all winter.
Virginia's fall line legend: trophy blue cats in the tidal river, smallmouth above Richmond and urban class-IV rapids splitting the two worlds.
Virginia's fall-line freedom river: dam-free since 2004, running smallmouth riffles past Fredericksburg into striper tidewater.
The New River's Virginia pool: striper genetics from the river that made them famous, walleye rebuilding and bluff-lined bass water.
History’s fishing hole: the York’s deep channel and oyster edges feed stripers and specks between Yorktown’s bluffs.
One of the world’s oldest rivers, and one of America’s best smallmouth floats: the New runs north through Appalachia full of bronze.
The valley’s smallmouth highway: the Shenandoah’s riffle-and-ledge water floats past Blue Ridge farmland full of bronzebacks.
Tidewater Virginia’s bass factory: Chickahominy Lake stacks largemouth and crappie in cypress-lined blackwater.
Northern Virginia’s bass water: Occoquan holds largemouth, crappie and catfish twenty minutes from the Beltway.
Blue Ridge foothills water: Philpott holds smallmouth, walleye and stocked trout in clear mountain-fed depths.
Virginia’s mountain lake: Moomaw holds trout, smallmouth and landlocked memories in national forest water.
Virginia’s trophy tailwater: the Jackson runs big browns below Gathright, with an access history worth knowing.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: October.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia Beach | Coastal | Virginia Beach | modeled | Apr |
| Smith Mountain Lake | Reservoir | Franklin | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Anna | Reservoir | Louisa | USGS | Mar |
| Kerr Lake (Buggs Island) | Reservoir | Mecklenburg | USGS | Mar |
| James River | River | Henrico | USGS | May |
| Rappahannock River | River | Spotsylvania | USGS | May |
| Claytor Lake | Reservoir | Pulaski | modeled | Mar |
| York River | Coastal | Gloucester | modeled | Apr |
| New River | River | Pulaski | USGS | May |
| Shenandoah River | River | Warren | USGS | May |
| Chickahominy Lake | Reservoir | Charles City | USGS | Mar |
| Occoquan Reservoir | Reservoir | Fairfax | USGS | Mar |
| Philpott Lake | Reservoir | Henry | modeled | May |
| Lake Moomaw | Reservoir | Bath | modeled | May |
| Jackson River | River | Alleghany | USGS | Apr |
Virginia arranges its fishing in bands: brook-trout headwaters in the Blue Ridge (the Shenandoah's native char streams), a smallmouth heartland on the James, New and Shenandoah rivers (float-fishing culture at its finest), big-bass reservoirs like Anna and Buggs Island, and the Chesapeake's mouth at Virginia Beach with the CBBT's structure empire. The state's smallmouth rivers alone would justify the license.
April-June: shad and herring runs, river smallmouth waking, mountain brookies on dries. Summer: topwater river floats (the James at dawn is a joy), cobia and spadefish on the bay. Fall: Anna's stripers school, the rivers' best smallmouth feeding, speckled trout in the inlets. Winter: the CBBT's trophy striper windows and stocked-trout streams in the valleys.
The late-fall and winter windows, under tightly-managed season dates: check current VMRC regulations before planning: the windows move year to year.