Occoquan is best N.Va. reservoir

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John Odenkirk, the Virginia fisheries biologist who became a familiar face and voice to tens of thousands of television viewers and newspaper readers during the first years of northern snakehead discoveries in the tidal Potomac River, doesn't worry about only the latest alien invaders in our waters. He also cares deeply about the reproduction of local bass populations and the successes realized by recreational anglers.

Odenkirk and other district fisheries biologists have sampled all the major reservoirs in Northern Virginia from the spring of 2003 to the present. The samples were conducted with boat electrofishing gear targeting largemouth bass. Since so many anglers consider a 15-incher a "preferred" specimen, the following contains information about such bass.

Odenkirk and his fellow scientists looked for RSD-P (relative stock density of preferred fish) which is the proportion of bass in a population of fish longer than eight inches. Then there's CPE-P, which stands for "catch per effort of preferred fish." It's a measure of how many bass over 15 inches are collected by the state boat as the biologists do a "set unit of effort," which translates to one hour of electrofishing. The higher the number, the more abundant big bass were during the sample.

So which one is the top Northern Virginia reservoir, meaning that it produced the most 15-inch bass a catch effort?

It's Occoquan Reservoir in Fairfax County; followed by Burke Lake, also in Fairfax; and Hunting Run in Spotsylvania. Mountain Run in Culpeper and Motts Run in Spotsylvania placed fourth and fifth, respectively.

Lake Orange on Orange County was sixth on the list, followed by Pelham Reservoir in Culpeper, and the largest of all, Lake Anna in Spotsylvania, was eighth. In ninth place was Lake Brittle in Fauquier, and right behind it were Stafford County's Lake Abel and Lake Curtis.

Where will you fish next? I'm thinking Occoquan Reservoir.

Potomac will be a zoo -- The tidal Potomac River will be a busy place June 14 to June 17, when the Wal-Mart FLW bass tournament group will have one of its regular-season events, bringing 400 anglers to Charles County's Smallwood State Park boat ramps. You will have 200 boats charging out of the Mattawoman Creek, some heading south, some north and some staying inside the Mattawoman. The winning bass pro will receive $125,000 and the winning co-angler $25,000.

Tournament pro David Dudley of Virginia is all atwitter about visiting the Potomac because of the river's rich supply of largemouth bass, but many of us who live in Charles County kind of wished Dudley and his fellow anglers would try to win those big bucks on the James River or, better yet, somewhere in Kentucky, where the FLW is headquartered. Imagine some of us locals wanting to go fishing out of Smallwood during the first two days of the competition and being told we can't launch right now because the money anglers have top priority. Yeah, right. We paid for the park and the marina, they use it and we're supposed to hush up and stand back.