By Molly Kirk/DWR
Photos by Andrew Clark
The Clark family was just about done with their day of fishing on the James River just below the Benjamin Harrison Bridge in Prince George County on April 20. “We’d been out for three or four hours, and we’d caught some small catfish, but nothing impressive” said Andrew Clark. Clark was out on the family boat with his wife and three children. “But we talked mom into just one more drift.”
As they drifted downstream, all of a sudden the rod belonging to Clark’s 8-year-old son, Mason, started screaming off the reel with a large striped bass on the hook. “Mason jumped on the rod, and it was way too big for him to try to take out of the rod holder, so he cranked on it, cranked on it, peeled off, and cranked on it some more, and finally got the fish to the boat,” Andrew said. “We netted it and did a quick picture, but we knew that it was probably a female, maybe breeding that time of year, so we made sure that we got it back in really quickly. We revived it a little bit, and it swam off nicely, so hopefully it survived the experience. We had a lot of fun!”
The Clarks enjoy fishing as a family, and Mason went on his first offshore fishing trip this summer. The Online Angler Recognition Program at the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) is a fun way for them to track their accomplishments. They submitted Mason’s striper, which measured 39.25 inches and qualified as a citation fish.
“I’ve been submitting fish to the trophy fish program for about 20 years,” Andrew said. “The kids were helping me hang my certificates on the wall, and there was a gap between 2016 and 2018. They asked me, ‘Dad, what happened?’ and I told them, ‘Y’all happened!’ But now that they’re old enough, it’s starting to be an activity that we can all enjoy together. My grandfather took me fishing when I was 4 or 5 years old, and throughout my life it’s been something that I’ve enjoyed, and it’s a great thing to kind of pass down to the next generation.”
