Lake Brittle, Gardy’s Millpond, Powhatan Ponds, Keokee Lake, Lake Shenandoah... The number of lakes that offer great fishing in Virginia is substantial, from 3-acre Phelps Pond in Fauquier County to 50,000-acre Buggs Island Lake. Now trusted outdoorsman Bob Gooch has written the only comprehensive book on the state’s still-water fishing.

Virginia has only two natural lakes but numerous impounded still waters that offer exceptional and diverse fishing. Thirty-two of these lakes are owned by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and managed specifically for fishing. The managers stock the lakes’ waters and monitor the various fish populations, adjusting fishing regulations as needed to ensure the desired balance of numbers and species. Other multipurpose lakes such as Buggs Island Lake, a flood-control reservoir, can also be fished, and these lakes are all listed in the last chapter.

Anglers can visit nearly any of lakes covered in this guide for warm-water fishing for largemouth bass and bluegills. Many offer both black and white crappie, bullhead and channel catfish, chain and redfin pickerel, and fliers. And if your sights are set on pumpkinseed, smallmouth bass, or muskellunge, this guide will direct you to the lakes with those harder-to-find fish – as well as a host of others, such as redear and redbreast sunfish, walleye, warmouth, yellow perch, even white bass.

Ranging from the Northern Neck and the Northwest Mountains and Valley to Southside and Southwest Virginia to the Upper Piedmont and Coastal Plain, the book covers fifty-six lakes, one by one, illustrating many of them with maps. The bottom line: If it swims in Virginia still water, Bob Gooch can tell you where to find it.