Extended weekend: Fishing on a Monday

Old bridge that crossed the Middle Patuxent.

After Karen and I got back on Sunday from spending the night in D.C. after the Washington Capitals Fail I went fishing on the Little Patuxent while Karen opted to stay home and get some work done. I got on the river around noon, and the sky was overcast.

I tried several lures with moderate success;

1. Swimbait: A few bites, no fish
2. Bass Pro Shops Stik-O worm: The one and only fish of the day
3. Campground Tubes: Nothing.  They killed it on the Susquehanna, though.
4. Hubs Chub: No fish but a few bites.

Dink smallmouth on the Little Patuxent.

With the Hubs Chub, or in fact any topwater lure, a bird in the bush is worth  one in hand ... that's how that saying goes, right?

Two fish took a swipe at the Hubs Chub and then another I thought for sure clamped on.  I didn't hook anything, but the adrenaline rush of fish attacking a topwater lure is good substitute for catching nothing.

Something that triggered the first big bite on the Hubs Chub came after casting close to the other side of the river -- a cut bank with a few downed trees and limbs.  Letting the lure float down, I twitched it intermittently but didn't reel in much of the slack line.  That seemed to keep the lure more in preferable areas rather than pulling it back straight across the river.

Today I hit the Middle Patuxent River after work and before storms were expected to roll through.  If you remember from last year, I fished the Middle Patuxent right at its confluence with the Little Patuxent.  That was my first time fishing the river in several years,  Before that, I fished the river for trout, and I had been scanning Google Earth trying to figure out where that was.  All I remember was that there was an area to pull off the side of a main road, and there was a dirt trail that led down to the river.

I thought I had found the spot and went there today.

It wasn't the same spot.

The area I went to today, there's a road that ends about an eighth mile uphill from the river.  But where the road ends, a paved path continues past barriers down to the river.  There are the remains of an old bridge, so the road must have gone all the way across the river at one time.

Even though it wasn't the spot I was looking for, it didn't discourage me from fishing.  The water was running fairly clear, and I decided to try the Hubs Chub since it was getting interest yesterday on the Little Patuxent.  And it had similar "success" early on today -- lots of failed attacks from what I assumed were sunfish.

The river was a lot shallower and easier to wade than the Little Patuxent, and I waded downstream stopping at a few pools and rocky areas.  Still the same hesitant strikes on the topwater lure.  I also had a Z-Man TRD Finesse Worm on another rod, but that lure wasn't getting any interest.

Twelve inches on top.

Finally I came to a spot that just screamed smallmouth -- circling water in a pool just below a rocky section, and a huge -- at least 10 feet long -- rock protruding from the opposite bank.

I fired the Hubs Chub at the rock, and it hit squarely on the flat surface and plopped down on the water.  I twitched the black lure a couple times and had a not-a-sunfish strike.  Waited a second to make sure the fish actually got the lure, and when I couldn't see it on the surface, I set the hook.  Yup, a smallmouth bass was on the other end, and I successfully landed it.  Measured around 12.5 inches.  My first fish on top this year, so no doubt I will exhaust my efforts with topwater stuff on every trip until October or so.

I fished that pool for a little bit longer but couldn't get any more interest from the fish.  At this point, it seemed like the wind was picking up, and I wanted to get back to my truck before the rain started.  I waded upriver and stopped at a downed tree that was partially submerged in the water.  It looked like the tree had been there awhile as there weren't any branches on it.  This area featured slow flowing water without much cover except for the tree, and I usually don't find smallmouth in sections like this.

Big fish of the day, measuring right at 14 inches.
If you look closely at its ... ass ... it looks like a string.
But I think it's milting, which means this is a male.

But I cast out the Hubs Chub anyway, right on top of the tree.  And a smallmouth came up from the depths to investigate ... and then two more appeared.  They seemed to shrug off interest from the topwater lure, so I switched to the rod with the Z-Man worm.  I cast beyond the tree and hopped it over to where I saw the fish.  And a fish came out and hit the worm.  Set the hook, and could see it fighting below the surface.  It was an angry one -- gills flaring as it shook its head below the surface trying to get free.  I landed it and it measured at 14 inches -- my biggest non-Susquehanna smallmouth of the year so far.

Thankfully there was a red circle indicating where
the fish were hiding.

I let the brown fish go and cast the worm back to the same spot.  Hey, I saw two other smallmouth, and I wanted all of them! 

After a couple casts, I caught a redbreast sunfish, albeit one of a decent size.  Probably a keeper but it seems pointless to keep one sunfish to make two fish-nugget filets.

I moved upriver and started fishing at the base of the downed tree and managed to catch a dink smallmouth.  That was it for the day as I made it back to the Lightning before the lightning.

Still not bad in a new area -- four fish with two being legal-size smallmouth.  The Middle Patuxent is the same width in most parts as the Little Patuxent -- it's really easy to stand on one side and pepper spots casting lures to the opposite bank.