Fishing & Exploring the Great Dismal Swamp

You guys ready to go to the Great Dismal Swamp? Yeah! I found a hole. Okay. You grab your hook. Well it's about 10 o'clock at night and Becca's upstairs in the hotel putting the kids down and I'm just tightening up the boat so none of my rods disappear. Put up the camera and get this boy to bed and I'll see you guys in the morning. You guys ready for the Great Dismal Swamp? No! Our fishing trip has hit a little bit of a snag. The boys have discovered Saturday morning cartoons. You guys want to go fishing or you just want to sit and watch cartoons all day? Yeah. I'm a teenager for real. Oh, the boys are trying to torment mommy with thoughts of the future. Are you guys ready? Yeah! Yeah, let's do this! Welcome to the Great Dismal Swamp. Your destination is on the left. This is cool. Well guys, we're here. We're in the Great Dismal Swamp. I see a paper turtle. We're here. Lake Drummond. Well here we are guys. Lake Drummond. One of two natural lakes here in Virginia. Every other lake here in Virginia is a reservoir. Man-made. Alright, so I've got a little problem with the boat ramp here. This is a really shallow boat ramp. And so I backed up as far as I dare get my car. And it's not quite deep enough to float the boat. So I'm just trying to push it off. Because I know once I get it off, it's much easier to get back on because I've got the winch. Check it out guys. I'm here at the boat ramp and this guy's got this modular kayak. Man, this thing's sweet. Look at this. Look at that. It just goes together. Oh, that is sweet. It comes in three pieces and it's tandem, right? Yeah, or it can come in two and you can go solo. Oh, so you just remove the middle section and just put the back end. Yeah, you just have to buy the center section so you can put really as many as you want. And the company's .65? Is that the company or the model? No, that's the company. It's called like the Martini. Those look like good seats too. Nice boat. But we're just barely floating. Alright, we're sitting in diddly squat feet of water. And we're going to see if we can do this without destroying my prop. If you don't know what you're doing, do it slowly. I've got about a foot and a half, two feet of water underneath my pontoons here. So look how brown the water is. There we go. The water temperature is 76 and like two feet. It's a lovely day though, isn't it? This lake is really fascinating. It's pretty large, very acidic and shallow. And there's not much going on. And I've seen a few things jump here and there. But I'm not really seeing much of anything on the fish finder. But there's supposed to be panfish, gar and bowfin and some small catfish in here. So we're going to see what we can find. The absolute deepest part of this lake is six feet deep. So I could literally walk across this entire lake. Well, this place is a little bit of a time machine. This is what from about D.C. down to Florida looked like along the East Coast. It was lowland swamp, cypress forests. Yeah, this is it. And we're getting to fish for actual native species. We got four freaking feet of water here. Look at this. And we're getting a lot of structure on the bottom. Some of this flooded timber. Oh, this is pretty. This is what I was hoping for. Hold still. You have a massive bug on your throat. Let me get him off. There you go. He's not a horrible one. Well, it's kind of near the middle of the day. So the panfish are going to be close into the shelter. So I'm going to snuggle right in here to the trees. And we're going to drop some anchor, OK? So we're going to go ahead and drop some bobbers with worms and see if we can catch some panfish. Then we'll chunk up a few of those and see if we can't catch some bowfin and gar. Well, I'm pretty excited. It's not often I get to go fishing with my wife. So I've busted out her pink little ultralight here. OK. Hold it. Nice little bullhead right there. First fish of the day. Didn't take very long. That's a good omen. OK. Look at that. I was unhooking him and a rusted piece of a fish hook came out of his mouth. Oh. I jerked. There we go. Another bullhead. Another native species here in Virginia. This lake right here is one of the only places in Virginia that I know of that only has native species. There isn't a single non-native species here, which is really interesting if you think about it. Because, you know, I like carp fishing and everyone's like, oh, carp, they're not native here. They're invasive. Well, pretty much every fish that we target is not native around here in Virginia. I mean, bullheads, gar, bowfin, pumpkin seed, bluegill. Those are our native species. Well, we've been here about 30 minutes and we're fishing four rods with worms. Now, if we get on the bottom, we're hitting bullheads pretty quick. But under bobbers, we're not getting diddly squats. You know, I can't remember the last time I fished with worms under a bobber and didn't get a bluegill really quick. So, we'll kind of see. We might have to try some different spots. This is an unusual lake. You feeling better, buddy? Here you go. Oh, bullhead. Okay, guys. I really want to catch a bowfin and some gar and I'm going to need some bait to do that. So, I've got to find some panfish. And this place is full of bullheads, no panfish. So, we're going to move on, explore this lake a little bit more. This place is really amazing. Look at this. Look at these cypress trees. Look at that. Isn't that cool? Well, we're just here at another spot, drifting along, seeing if we can't pick up a bite. Well, every time I reel in my bait, something's taking bites out of the worm. I mean, there's something little out there. This is a number 12 hook and it's too big. But, there's probably some minnows or something out there hitting this. Look at that little crappie. Pretty fish. Alright, this is the entrance to the Eastern Canal, which you can see is only accessible by kayak or canoe. But, we're going to post up right here and see if we can't catch something. We just caught that little black crappie right here. So, we're going to try it and see if we can't catch something else. Check this out. It's a little baby bullhead. But, when I was reeling him up, about a 24-inch catfish came up and followed him. So, I'm going to go put this back and see if we can't catch something bigger. Here he comes, up and over. Yeah. Oh, another bullhead. I believe these are black bullheads. Alright, another black bullhead. Little tiny bullhead. Oh, oh. It's a bluegill! Check this out. This is a channel catfish. It's got a forked tail. Oh, he is stunted. Well, the kids are a little bit hot, hungry, and fussy, so we're going to call it and go home. But, we caught a bunch of black bullheads, a bluegill, a channel cat, and a black crappie. So, not too bad. And, we just had a great time. I'm logging back up. Got the trailer in as deep as it goes. As you can see, the trailer is not underwater. Did you have fun? Yeah. That was pretty visible. What? Hi, Shady. Cool. Oh, there is a snake on the road, and I really want to look at it. Look at that. He vibrates his tail. There you go. Yeah, stay away from the road, buddy. That was so cool. I'm glad I stopped and looked at him. Well, guys, did you enjoy your ice cream? Yeah. Well, thanks for watching, guys. We hope you enjoyed our video. We had a great time, and thanks for coming along with us. If you want to see more great videos from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, don't forget to... Click subscribe. Click subscribe. Yeah, that's right. If you liked this video, don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, where we have hundreds of videos just like this. And don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning. 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