Fishing Ashburn's Beaverdam Reservoir

My dad was in town this last weekend, and he, my brother and I were going to have a few hours to kill in Ashburn, VA. But what to do? Why fishing, of course! According to this article there are two especially good places to fish in Ashburn: Beaverdam Reservoir and the Upper Potomac. The reservoir was closer to where we needed to be, so we thought we'd give it a try.

We picked up 18 nightcrawlers from Dicks Sporing Goods the day before and with a minimal amount of tackle, made our way out to the the reservoir. As we approached, the two lane road turned into a one lane (yet, bidirectional) dirt road. And before we knew it, we were at a boat dock on a massive lake-like body of water. The day had started off gray and down pouring. Yet, by the time we got out of the car we had wished we brought less rain gear and more sun screen. The day turned out to be hot and sunny, dang near perfect.

We started off by fishing off of a boat dock near where Reservoir Road ends. My dad and brother quickly caught a few small sunfish. And then we walked a road to a trail and fished a few shady spots.

I was using my hiking/ultralight fishing kit for most of the day, which consists of a bunch of fishing line wrapped around a small cylindrical container. I was able to pull in a number (5?) of the small sunfish using it, and it was actually quite fun. To mix things up, I also wrapped some fishing line around a Bud Light can and gave that setup a try. That combined with more weight at the end of the line gave me a larger casting distance.

My dad and brother both had big strikes on their lines, but they weren't able to pull in anything larger than the itty bitty ones that I was catching in close to the shore. Despite attempts to use fancy tackle, all the fish were interested in were the worms we had brought with us.

All in all, it was a fantastic success.