Friday funday

A little Middle Patuxent largemouth bass.

With the fantastic weather that moved out the humidity, I hit the Middle Patuxent for a few hours today.

Did I mention the weather was fantastic?  I took two bottles of water with me, and usually that's my gauge on when I stop fishing -- once they're empty, I'm done.  By 6 p.m., I still had a full bottle of water.

One of three green sunfish.

Speaking of water, the river was crystal clear in most places.  When casting a lure, I could follow it all the way back and watch the fish hit it.  Which was kind of frustrating because there were a ton of bites, but the fish didn't really clamp on most of the time.  The fish would take a lure and head in another direction, and the lure would pop out of the fish's mouth after setting the hook.

The clear water also enabled me to spot several nice smallmouth in the 12- to 14-inch range, which are beasts on this skinny little river.  But when casting to them, they would either take off when the lure hit the water, or a handful of dink fish would swarm and peck at the lure.  There must have been a half-dozen nice smallmouth that put me on ignore mode.

Largemouth Rock.

I managed to land four smallmouth (one of those nicer ones was hooked but freed itself within feet of me), two largemouth bass and three green sunfish.  Nothing big at all, but it's always fun to catch a variety, unless it includes failfish.

Also, the largemouth were the first I've caught on the Middle Patuxent.  I had one hooked on a spinnerbait on the downriver side from a rock protruding out of the water, but the fish got away.  I moved up and cast the small spinnerbait to the upriver side of the rock and caught the first largemouth of the day.

Other than the spinnerbait, the rest of the fish were caught on Z-Man Finesse TRD Worms, Reaction Innovations Little Dippers, a little yellow curly-tailed grub and a "campground special" tube.

With the Z-Man worm and tube, it didn't seem the fish showed much interest in bouncing the lures off the bottom, so I tried dragging the plastic baits slowly through the mud.  It seemed to trigger a few more strikes, so something to keep in mind as an alternate tactic.

The topwater action was nonexistent -- only had one rise from a fish sniffing at a Heddon Zara Puppy.  The fish ignored everything on top otherwise.  The fish would be crusing, I'd toss a topwater, and they wouldn't even sniff at it.  Then I would throw a plastic bait, and it was party time.

How many hogs could a hogsucker suck if a hogsucker
could suck hogs?

Also, thanks to someone on a fishing forum, I was able to identify this fish to the right.  Nearly every trip to the Middle and Little Patuxent Rivers since last year, I've noticed these fish lurking around.   Initially, I thought they were yellow perch, but they had more of a carp-like body.  They weren't very big, but internet searches on the fish's description produced nothing.  Finally, I spotted one that hid under a couple leaves and was able to get a good picture.

It's a northern hogsucker.  Wikipedia makes no mention of it being edible or even if it's a good sport fish.