Briery Creek Lake, VA

Briery Creek Lake is an 845-acre lake that is owned by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and is within the Briery Creek Wildlife Management Area in Prince Edward County. The dam was completed in 1986 and the lake was open to fishing in 1989. In 1986 and 1987 the lake was stocked with Florida strain largemouth bass, northern strain largemouth bass, bluegill, redear sunfish (also known as shellcrackers), channel catfish, and crappie. Timber in the floodplain was left standing or felled and drumchopped resulting in an abundance of fish habitat. Biologists hoped that the presence of Florida-strain bass and the complex habitat would produce a high quality largemouth bass fishery.

Initially, the largemouth bass regulation was an 18-inch minimum length and two fish per day creel limit. Early production of largemouth bass was excellent and in 1991, this regulation was changed to a 12-15 inch protected slot limit (5 per day) to allow anglers to harvest the abundant smaller bass. Briery Creek Lake quickly began producing trophy largemouth bass and recognized as one of the state's premier bass fisheries. To help protect this fishery, the regulation was changed to a 14, 24 inch protected slot limit on January 1, 2001. The daily bag limit is still five bass per day, but only one may be longer than 24 inches.