2015 Year In Review

A look back on this year, I have learned a lot whether hiring a guide or just by absorbing information watching fishing shows on TV or reading forums.  Fishing has replaced (at least temporarily ... maybe?) my hobby of autocrossing, so I dove into it this year.  I have lived near the Potomac River for almost 20 years, but this is the first time I decided to hit the river to try to hook into one of my favorite fish, the smallmouth bass.

14-inch Antietam smallmouth.

At the end of 2014, I caught a handful of smallmouth bass on the Potomac River using a Heddon Zara Puppy.  Other than that, I was pretty clueless on what lures and presentations to use.

In early April, I went out with Jeff Green at Shallow Water Fishing Adventures on the Potomac River.  Looking back, it probably wasn't a good idea because the river was still pretty high and cloudy because of the melting of winter snow.  Karen went, too, but the only fish caught by the three of us was one 10-inch smallmouth.  By me.  But Jeff showed us how to bounce tube baits off the bottom when searching for smallmouth.

A couple weeks later, what I learned paid off as I caught eight smallmouth bass on Antietam Creek, mostly using a tube bait on the bottom.  This was just fishing from shore -- no boat and not even wading.  The biggest was 14 inches with a few other in the 12-inch range.

A few weeks after that, I discovered the Little Patuxent River near my house.  No wasn't the first person to find the river.  It has been there for several years.  But I found that it contained smallmouth bass, too.  And it was by accident that it happened.  The Maryland DNR stocks the river with trout, and that's what I was fishing for when I went to the river armed with Rooster Tails.  I caught three rainbow trout before I caught sub-10-inch smallmouth.  Hmmm, if there are little smallmouth here, then there should be bigger ones, right?

Something bigger on the Little Patuxent -- 15" smallmouth.

I must have hit the river about 10 times over two months and caught a smallmouth bass every time.  I caught a 15-incher near a spot on the river where I parked in a strip mall by the "easy" access point.  Personal best day was catching six, including one measuring 15 inches and another at 12 inches.

From July onward, my only luck was on the Potomac.  The Little Patuxent ran clear, and the water was really shallow in most places.  While I love fishing the Potomac, it's at least an hour drive to the closest spot.

But the drive was worth it most of the time, whether just fishing for a few hours or spending the night on one of the campgrounds along the C&O Canal.

My biggest of the year -- 16 inches.

One Saturday-Sunday camping expedition at Paw Paw, I caught 19 smallmouth.  Then the following week, I caught 10 smallmouth upriver from the Antietam Creek Campground fishing for a few hours.  Of those 10 was my personal best smallmouth-- 16 inches.

I had some luck using Rapala Shadow Raps and various topwaters, but most of the fish were caught using some kind of plastic bait rigged weedless and bouncing it off the bottom.  Three- and four-inch Stik-O Worms from Bass Pro Shops, Gulp! Killer Crawlers, three inch tube baits in varying flavors.

I ended up catching more than 150 fish for the year.  Of those, 106 were smallmouth, and around 30 of them were perch when Karen and I went fishing on Lake Erie.  The rest: 14 sunfish (mostly redbreast sunfish), eight fallfish, five walleye, five rainbow trout, three channel catfish, two largemouth bass (one being about five pounds when I went fishing earlier in the year in Florida) and one crappie.

So it was definitely my most successful year fishing.  Ever.  My previous best was maybe 30 fish when I was a kid living across the street from Hanscom Park in Omaha, Neb.

For this year, while it would be nice to catch more than 150 fish again, I'm going to focus more on finding bigger fish.  While it's fun to catch a lot of fish in the 10-12 range, as I found last night reeling in all those little walleye, it will be more of a challenge to catch bigger fish.  Maybe a 20-inch smallmouth?  Or a big walleye?  Or hooking into an elusive muskie?

A good start to 2016

I figured I wouldn't do much fishing until March or April because of the impending cold weather.  Maybe hit up the Little Patuxent River when the Maryland DNR started stocking trout.  But after catching five walleye on the Potomac River to end last year, my fishing plans for the "offseason" have changed.  While the smallmouth bass are shacked up in deeper pools, the walleye have come out and are thriving in the colder water.

Today I ventured back up to Dam 4 on the Potomac River to target walleye. I tried fishing on New Year's Day in the same area, but the water was way too high and flowing too fast after recent rains.  Normally, the river is just under five feet as measured from a gauge just north in Hancock.  But last week it was just under eight feet!  I didn't even think to check the level of the river before I went out last week. 

This time, I monitored the gauge throughout the week and saw the river level steadily dropped.  There was a call for rain on Saturday, so since I freed myself from work early today, I decided to hit the river again.  As I drove up I-70, the temperature display on the Lightning went from 40 to 34 degrees.  Water temp when I got there was just over 30.

First fish of the year!

And man was the water COLD!  On Christmas Eve, I waded out until the water was just over my knees (wearing non-insulated hip waders).  I could tolerate the cold temperature for 10 to 15 minutes.  Today I tried the same thing and made two casts before heading back to shallower water.  My plan was to fish just below the dam like on Christmas Eve and toss a Rapala Shadow Rap out toward deeper water, but that wasn't happening this time.  (I did order insulated waders using a couple Bass Pro Shops gift cards I got for Christmas, so maybe they will be here next week.)

I wandered down to the same section I caught my first Potomac walleye about a month ago.  Again using the Rapala Shadow Rap, the second cast, I got a hit.  Reeled it in and it was -- go figure -- a walleye!  First fish of the year.  It was about 12 inches, and I unhooked it and let it go.

A few casts later, it felt like I had a hit, but it was a really quick stop and release.  I figured maybe it wasn't a fish but the lure briefly snagging on a rock.

My expert analysis determined that the lure didn't snag a rock:

Scales snagged on hook.

Scales from whatever fish snagged on one of the treble hooks.  Either the fish hit and missed and got the business end of a treble hook, or the Rapala ran into a fish.

After a little while and not much action, I went further down river looking for similar spots -- a slow, deep pool of water bordering a faster channel.  My theory is the fish hang out in the pools and feed on baitfish or whatever meal that gets churned up by the faster water.

There were a couple promising areas, but I didn't get any bites.  I walked along the towpath and saw some deep sections but by this point, the bank was too steep to walk down.  Maybe with those insulated waders I can get in the water further upstream and wade down to those sections?

Further downstream I found a natural dam and a few fields of larger rocks that I definitely want to hit during warmer weather for smallmouth.

By this time it was around 4 p.m., and I turned around to head back to the spot where I caught the first walleye of the day.  Karen gave me a St. Croix fishing rod for Christmas that I was anxious to try out.  It's a lighter weight rod that I want to use for working jigs on the bottom for smallmouth bass.  I lucked into my first Potomac walleye using a Charlie Brewer Spider Jighead with a three-inch Gulp! Killer Crawler, so maybe this would work again.

Yeah, it worked.

Walleye landed on my new St. Croix rod.

The walleye were tearing this up!  One that I caught was 13 inches but most were 12 inches or smaller (mostly smaller), but still fun to catch. One walleye struck the jig just as it hit the water! I finally lost the worm and switched back to the rod with the Shadow Rap, and the walleye tore this up, too!   I counted eight total walleye and even one fallfish, so I was at nine walleye at this point. 

The skies were overcast and getting darker, so I went back up to the dam.  There's a point along the rocky bank below the dam where you can climb down (gingerly!) about 15 feet and get close to the water.  There was slow moving water along the shore that bordered faster water.  It looked like a good spot but I didn't get anything.  No action on the Shadow Rap.  Nothing on the Killer Crawler.

It was now around 5 p.m. and I scrambled back down river to the spot where I had caught all the fish before.  I caught three more walleye -- I think one on the Gulp! Crawler and two on the Shadow Rap -- so that made 12 total for the day plus the one fallfish!  Still nothing with size, but I'm hoping to find some decent fish once I can venture out a little further with the insulated waders.

The fish seemed to respond to really slow presentation.  With the jig, I popped it once on the bottom and let it sit for a few seconds.  Same with the Shadow Rap -- jerked it once, waited for a few seconds then jerked it again.  Most of the hits were really light.  In fact the hardest hit was from the fallfish!