Joseph Bryan Park

Joseph Bryan Park, also known as Bryan Park, is a public park in the city of Richmond, Virginia. The park was a memorial to Joseph Bryan, the founder and publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper. It was given to the city in 1910 by Belle Stewart Bryan and her family. The park is open daily without charge.

The ponds at Bryan Park provide anglers with some fishing opportunities. Both of these impoundments are located on Upham Brook which is a high flow through system that unfortunately dumps excessive amounts of silt and debris into the ponds. The ponds are approximately six acres in size and are separated only by a spillway. The lower pond has the name of Young’s Pond. The first pond will just be referred to as Upper Bryan Park Pond. Young’s Pond provides the better option for anglers to target the various fish species that are present. Young’s Pond has better shoreline access sites for anglers in comparison to the upper pond.

Upper Bryan Park Pond has some serious limitations with the massive amounts of silt that have washed in from the watershed. The dense emergent vegetation along the majority of the shoreline provides a lot of cover for fish, but impedes shoreline access for anglers. The 2019 electrofishing survey collected 8 fish species. The species diversity consisted of bluegill, pumpkinseed sunfish, warmouth sunfish, creek chubsucker, largemouth bass, eastern mosquitofish, brown bullhead, and fathead minnow. 

Bass anglers should spend the majority of their effort fishing the lower pond as Young’s Pond provides a stronger bass population than Upper Bryan Park Pond. On a positive note, largemouth bass relative weight value was a very respectable 105 in the Upper Bryan Park Pond. The relative weight value for bluegill was 122 for stock-sized fish and 118 for quality-sized fish. The relative weight value for pumpkinseed sunfish was 119. These high relative weight values reveal the fish to be in great body composition and finding plenty of available forage.