It was a good day

I went out for a few hours on the Potomac near Antietam Creek Campground.  Karen and I camped there near the end of May, and I remember catching a few smallmouth on topwaters near dusk, but nothing else on anything.  After the success with the wacky worms last week on Paw Paw, I was pretty confident on catching fish.

During the week, I ordered chest waders on Amazon.  I've had a pair of chest waders I got from Bass Pro Shops five or six years ago, but they were a one-piece design and (most importantly) the boots had felt soles, which could no longer be used in Maryland.  Parasites and transporting invasive microscopic things.  The new waders were the "sock" style with the boots separate, and, wow, they are a whole lot lighter than the one-piece waders with the integrated boots.  They were also more breathable than the hip waders I had been using.

GoPro screenshot of a breaching smallmouth.

Anyway, about the fishing.  It was a good day.  I caught smallmouths on my first two casts.  They were both in the "8-10" window like last week.  But, hey, I had chest waders now and I could wander out further from shore.

I waded out a little further, caught another small smallmouth.  The water was extremely clear, more clear than when I was here the end of May.  I was hesitant to venture far from shore then because I couldn't see how deep it was.  Now I could see it wasn't very deep at all, although there were a few pockets where the water was up to my waist.

I caught a third fish, another little one.  Then I hooked a 12-inch fish that freed itself just a few feet from me.  I was disappointed at losing a decent-sized fish.  But about four casts later, I forgot about that 12-incher that got away.

A 16-inch Potomac smallmouth!

Most of the fish today hit differently than last week for whatever reason.  Last week, it was "poke-poke-poke" at the worm and eventually they took it.  This week, they all hit the lure hard.  And this fish to the right hit the lure HARD!  I thought I was snagged for a second, but there was something pulling back!  Started reeling, had to adjust the drag, fish pulled and I knew it was something bigger than what I had been catching.  I just hoped it wasn't a catfish!

Finally got a glimpse, and it was a NICE smallmouth.  It was real.  And it was spectacular.

I was about 40 or 50 feet from shore, so I was wondering how to land it.  No net.  I didn't want to just lift it out of the water by the fishing rod figuring the line would break.  But I reeled the fish alongside me after a couple minutes and just grabbed it by the lower jaw with no fuss.  I unhooked it, took the picture (with my hand shaking, so I'm surprised it was in focus), measured it just over 16 inches and let it go.

I ended up with 10 fish total on the day fishing for about three hours.  The next best size I landed was 11 inches.  But that 16-inch fish was my best smallmouth of the year and my first fish over 12 inches on the Potomac this year.  Previous bests was a 14-incher on the Antietam (maybe a three-fourths of a mile from this spot) and two 15-inchers on the Little Patuxent.  What's amazing is how this 16-inch smallmouth was in a total different class than the 15-inch smallmouth.  He didn't fight hard with amazing runs and jumps ... he was just a toad of a fish to reel in.  I think what helped me was that he ran into a small rock right by me, so he may have been dazed for a few seconds.

GoPro screen grab.

One fish I didn't land was a typical "8-10" smallmouth.  I saw three of them about 10 feet upriver from me.  One stopped behind a rock, and I threw the wacky worm up past him.  Started working the worm down, and that smallmouth that was just sitting there took off after the worm and picked it up.  It took a second for me to process what I just saw.  I set the hook, had the fish and started reeling him in, but the fish worked his way free after a few seconds.

So how about this, seven smallmouth two weeks ago, 19 smallmouth last weekend, and 10 today.  That's .... [counts  fingers  and toes] ... A LOT of fish.  Now this hobby is really making me forget that other hobby I'm taking a break from.

Paw Paw small smallmouth

I haven't caught a smallmouth bass on the Little Patuxent River in more than a month, and now I know why: All of them are on the Potomac River!  After catching seven last week in the Edward's Ferry area, I caught 19 (NINETEEN!!) over the past two days on the Paw Paw section of the Potomac.

However, most of them looked like this:

Small smallmouth from Paw Paw.

They were all in the eight- to 10-inch range.  All of them.  OK, one might have been pushing 11.  Maybe.

Saturday afternoon, Karen and I got to the campsite around 3 p.m. and set up our tent.  She wanted to bike up the C&O Canal Towpath to the scary Paw Paw Tunnel, and of course I wanted to find smallmouth.  There was an easy river access point right by our campsite, so I put on my waders and headed down.

I never know what to expect at these Potomac campsites.  Fifteen Mile Creek was really shallow (didn't bring my waders).  McCoy's Ferry and Antietam have a good mix of semi-deep pools and shallow water.

This area of the Potomac looked fairly shallow initially but got a little deeper about 10- to 15-feet out from shore ... but really flat.  The water was really clear, and I could easily see the bottom.  I waded out and found a large submerged rock to stand on and cast out a three-inch Wacky Worm.  After a few casts, I caught the smallmouth in the above picture.  Actually, no, that was the second smallmouth I caught.  The first one looked exactly like it.

Over the next couple hours, I waded downriver using the Wacky Worm and a white Chatterbait.  I got the Chatterbait snagged three or four times but managed to free it each time.  But didn't get any hits on it.  But the Wacky Worm was getting hits and catching fish.  I ended up land five smallmouth.  Again, all in the eight- to 10-inch range.  But they were still fun to catch.  They bit hard thinking that maybe I had a decent fish, and as I started reeling them in realized they weren't that big.

It was getting close to dusk so I headed back to camp to get something to eat.  Karen and I cooked up bratwurst and had leftover DuClaw potato chips.

I figured it was time for some topwater action, so I rigged up two rods with topwater lures -- one with a black four-inch Chub's Hub and another with No. 7 Rapala Skitter Pop in a frog pattern.

And caught nothing.  There was zero interest in the larger Chub's Hub but had five strikes at the smaller Rapala.  But nothing managed to latch on to the two treble hooks on the lure.

I headed back to camp kind of discouraged.  It was still light out, so I decided to switch over to a four-inch Wacky Worm.  One-inch bigger than the size I had caught the five smallmouth in earlier.  Bigger bait = bigger fish, right?

Wrong.

Bigger bait = smaller fish.

I caught three more smallmouth on the four-inch Wacky Worm and I swear they were the smallest fish of the day.

Still, eight fish total for the day fishing off and on for about five hours.  And no failfish or catfish or sunfish.

This morning, I got up around 6:15 and got ready to hit the river again.  Yesterday, I waded downriver from the access point, and I decided to try upriver from the access point.  If you look at my first picture, you can see a bridge that spans the river.  It's a rail bridge that is no longer in use.  I wanted to start from there, but as I walked along the bank, the water was noticeably deeper and couldn't wade up there.  Then there were some downed trees maybe 100 yards from the bridge.  So I started from there.

First cast using a smaller Chub's Hub and got a fish hooked.  Reeled it in and was a typical 8-10 smallmouth that I got yesterday.

What did it look like?  Like this one:

Second cast, second fish.

Which was actually the second fish I caught.  On the second cast.  Five strikes last night on topwaters and no fish but two smallmouth on the first two casts the next day.

But that was it for topwater activity.  I got nothing -- no strikes or anything -- the rest of the time.  I went back to the four-inch Wacky Worm and caught more 8-10 smallmouth.  Every single one of them.  You would think there would be something in the legal 12-inch range or larger among them, but I couldn't find them.  Strange.  They have to be out there.  Somewhere.

Number 10!  Which looked a lot like number 11.

Anyway, I caught seven on the Wacky Worm this time -- nine total -- then later just before we left, caught two more.  That put me at 11 for the day, so with the eight yesterday, it was 19 total for the weekend!

It was really fun to catch all of them but still kind of frustrating to catch nothing of decent size.  There has to be a hot spot or something out there where the big ones are hiding.  Maybe deeper pools -- water level around this area seemed to be fairly even, no big pools or huge rocks in the deeper water.  But like I mentioned, the Potomac seems to have a different "feel" at every campsite we've been to, and even the Edward's Ferry area is considerably different.  Maybe a big fish is just around the next bend.

Here's a picture of what I used this weekend.  Bass Pro Shops three-inch variation of the Wacky Worm, Gary Yamamoto four-inch worms, and a smaller Chub's Hub topwater lure, all on Mitchell 300 reels.  One of the rods is a $40 Ugly Stik and the other is a Johnny Morris rod that was a couple bucks more than the Ugly Stik.  But it is reely nice and lightweight, so that's what you pay for on a high dollar rod.  But the cheap Ugly Stik caught the most this weekend, so there's that.

Small smallmouths are better than no smallmouths

At the beginning of April, Karen and I went out on the Potomac River with Jeff Greene of Shallow Water Fishing Adventures in search of smallmouth bass.  I was really excited to be going out with a guide who knew the river.  We launched from Edward's Ferry on the Maryland side.  Unfortunately, the weather and the river didn't cooperate.  It was a nice day but cold, and the river was still kind of high from the winter runoff.  Between the three of us, I caught the only fish, a 10-inch smallmouth.  I think Jeff felt bad for our bad luck, so he gave me a "free fishing trip card" to use later in the year.

The trip wasn't a total loss.  We mainly used three-inch tube baits, and even though we didn't have much luck, I got some and used them with pretty good success a few weeks later at Antietam Creek.

About a month ago, I e-mailed Jeff about the July 4 weekend, but he said he was booked.  His next available date was July 10, so I went for that day.

In the upcoming weeks fishing on the Little Patuxent, I had little success.  Actually no success.  Some bites but no fish.  I was thinking maybe the changing season would mean a change of lures, and I could learn something from Jeff.  In the days leading up to July 10, I kept an eye on the water levels for Edward's Ferry.  There was a spike of water up to 12 feet around June 29 after some heavy rain storms, but since then, the water levels were gradually going down.  The forecast called for thunderstorms on Thursday, but they never materialized.  So things were looking good for Friday!

Weekday fishing on the Potomac, and nobody else in sight!

I got to the boat ramp around 6:45 a.m., and Jeff was already there.  He put the boat in the water, I hopped in, and we were off!

The first spot, Jeff tied on a Heddon popper topwater lure for me while he used a small buzz bait.  The good thing about getting a guide, you get to use all his stuff!  Although it would have been nice to use some of my Mitchell reels, I'd rather default to the pro for lure and line selection.

Anyway, neither of us had much luck with the topwater lures.  Not a hit, not a boil.  Jeff was lamenting all the rain we had been having -- the river was a little higher than he said it usually was this time of year (5.75 feet by the American Whitewater web site), and visibility was less than a foot in most plaes.

We switched over to three-inch Wacky Worms, which I had never used before.  They were rigged on a small weedless jighead, very similar to what I've used for larger "Texas rigged" plastic worms, albeit without a sliding bullet sinker.  Jeff showed me what to do with them -- very similar to the tube jigs but they could be fished a little faster.  Jerk, retrieve slack line, jerk again, etc.  Or slow things down and leave the worm sitting on the bottom for a couple seconds.

First fish and biggest of the day -- 12 inches

And ... success!  I started off catching a 12-inch smallmouth and caught several more -- but nothing bigger throughout the day.

We also tried white Chatterbaits and caught a few smallmouth.  Again, another lure I never used before.  They are kind of a cross between a spinnerbait and a buzzbait.  The little blade vibrates, but the lure runs under the surface. We had numerous hits with this lure and most of the time you could see the fish hitting the lure.  But most times the fish would grab it and let it go.  Very frustrating.  Jeff had even hooked up trailer hooks, the fish were like magic and wouldn't actually get hooked most of the time.  Very frustrating.

I ended up landing seven smallmouth and two panfish, like this dufus that thought he was a bass. I think both were redbreast sunfish.  I think Jeff caught a dozen or so smallmouth and one dumb panfish.  No fish over 12 inches for him either.  But it was a beautiful day on the water -- didn't see anybody else out on the water -- and compared to the first trip in April, a whole lot more successful.  More than 20 fish between us, and a whole lot more nibbles and bites and fish that did the no-hands easy release beside the boat.

A couple of funny things.  Carp are often seen jumping in this part of the river.  You hear a splash behind you and see the water boiling and think "smallmouth!"  But Jeff said they are carp.  At one point, a carp jumped within inches next to the boat!  Jeff nearly fell into the water because it splashed right behind him.  Also, as I was reeling in one of the smaller smallmouth, I got it next to the boat, and his smallmouth buddy was chasing after him!  "Hey dude, where you going?  Let me go with you!"