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Rediscovering River Bronze (Guest Article)
by Travis Tisdale

What a way to start summer vacation! We pounced out of the back of my dad's pick-up early on the first Monday following the last day of school. When you're 12 years old, life is perfect as you are just old enough to do things like fish on your own, but not quite ready to spend your summer bagging groceries. My cousin, Richard, and I planned on starting our summer off right by spending a day on the river.

My dad has always been and still is for the most part a live bait fisherman. Growing up on a poor tobacco farm in very rural Virginia, fishing involved a cane pole and whatever you could catch, trap, or dig up as bait. My first fishing experiences almost always involved a float and something alive dangling underneath. So as we unloaded our gear and prepared for our walk down river, we began to wonder whether or not we'd make it to our hole before dad picked us up after work. We had a big minnow bucket, a couple of cartons of night crawlers, and a basket of crickets to go along with our tackle boxes, poles, fish bucket, and cooler of enough sodas and food to last a week. If you're going to walk a mile or so down river, you certainly do not want to run out of bait if the fish are biting or go hungry.

We were fishing the Nottaway River at a spot called "The Round House Hole". Being in the flatlands just west of Richmond, most of our fishing was on the many farm ponds and lakes in the area. The rivers are mostly small, slow moving, and shallow. But the Round House Hole was different. The best way to desrcibe it is to say it was shaped like a capital "C." Water dropped about 10 feet into the top of the C into a nice pool that, when looking upstream, began to move to the left slowly. It gradually picked up speed as it swung way around until it was a pretty swift little rapid that then dumped into a large hole at the bottom of the C. This hole was very deep and stretched much farther than we could reach with our casts. The river straightened out at the very bottom of the C and was a slow riffle with lots of large rocks spaced just about perfect for hopping from spot to spot. In the middle of the C was the most snake-infested pile of rocks that I have ever encountered, which kept up fishing instead of dozing.

After the long hike, we immediately raced to the first pool with worms and crickets. This was a hotspot for red-throats, and on this day, the fish did not disappoint. After the bites slowed down, we moved over into the current where we drifted our hooks down into the swiftest water, watching red-throats and red-eyes drag our corks under. We then moved right up against the rocks overlooking the bottom part of the hole with minnows for crappie and an occasional largemouth. After making a large dent in our bucket, we would try different parts of the hole with different bait catching more of the same along with a few catfish by bottom fishing with night crawlers. The morning flew by, but the afternoon slowed as we had fished the hole hard and began to spend a little more time talking and less time casting.

As the afternoon wore on, we began to notice fish jumping in the riffles around the rocks at the far end of the hole. We assumed they were largemouths and decided that we needed to figure out how to get closer to them which would be a challenge as thick woods and large rocks surrounded the river and snakes lurked behind every bush. We decided the easiest way to get there would be to first wade the rapid which be very difficult if toting anything more than a pole.

My cousin checked his dad's tackle box and came up with a couple of broken-backed minnows that we could tie on which would keep us from carrying worms and minnow buckets with us downstream. So with a pole in one hand and the other free, we stumbled through the rapid, across to some rocks on the far side of the river, back into the edge of the hole, up the bank around another rock, and then finally to the far end of the hole.

Richard threw his minnow out first and immediately started whooping and hollering as a beautiful 12 inch bronze fish seemingly walked all of the way across the river to him.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I dunno. Some sorta bass I guess" I replied.

"Should we keep him?"

"Nah. It might be a size limit on him. Plus we got enough fish already. How'd ya catch him?" I needed to know.

"Just threw out by a rock and he nailed it as soon as it hit the water."

So I just threw out by a rock and my minnow got nailed, too. We hopped back and forth from rock to rock, catching many of these awesome fighters until the sun began to get a little low and we decided that we'd better head back. I can't remember how many we caught, but I'd guess 10 or 15 though it seemed like 30. They were all about 12 or 13 inches long and they all seemed to stay out of the water as much as in the water once we hooked them.

We had to rush back to our gear and rush back to the highway to keep from being too late for our pick-up time. We talked all about our fish though it didn't seem like anybody was very impressed since they were only about a foot long and we did not bring them home.

What's really strange is that as much fun as I had catching these fish, I did not attempt to catch another one until 1991. My friends and I went to Scottsville on the James River and floated one day, also in June, also celebrating another summer break - this one from college - and we caught many fish though the bigger ones were only about 14 inches long. We had no real clue what we were doing other than enjoying a great day on the water. But this time something stuck - after a move out of the flatlands and into the hills about 5 years ago, I decided to give these guys another try. I now live about an hour and a half from the James and have become addicted to bronze. I have a new baby boy in my life that keeps me very busy and off of the water much more than I'd like, but I still find time to get waist deep every now and again.

I've been fishing almost exclusively for smallies for about 3 years, and I'm at the stage where I'm beginning to catch good fish more often than not, though I'm still clueless some days. But I'm getting there, and I still enjoy catching those 12-13 inchers, whooping and hollering like a 12 year old every time they come out of the water!!!