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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
However, most of them looked like this:
 |
| Small smallmouth from Paw Paw. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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.
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