Going against the Flo

Fished the Little Patuxent for a little over two hours on Tuesday.  Mainly wanted to get out and do something with the possibility of Hurricane Florence or its remnants hitting this area by the weekend.

A guy on a fishing forum fabricated a homemade batch of small propeller lures and asked for some guinea pigs to try them out and provide feedback. Ideally they would be for lighter presentations.  I volunteered and got a couple mailed last week.  They are really small (not going to provide details other than that since I'm not sure of his intentions ... like if wants to make a fortune off them). 

I tied one on to my medium-light setup -- seven-foot ML St. Croix AvidX rod, Pflueger Supreme reel and six-pound Hi-Seas Triple Fish fluorocarbon.

Hold fish closer to the camera to they look bigger.

Despite the light weight, the lures cast through the air with excellent distance.  I managed to catch two tiny smallmouth, and another one freed itself while being hoisted out of the water.

Usually the pesky redbreast sunfish nibble (and sometimes bite) regular "smallmouth lures" like Z-Man worms and swimbaits, and I was hoping this little prop bait would catch a few so I could bring some home to introduce them to a frying pan.  That's why they're called panfish, right?  But no such luck.

While the smallmouth bass were sub-dink size (maybe six inches), it was encouraging considering the rains that have blown up the Little Patuxent and other little rivers in the area.  The closest gauge on Tuesday measured three feet -- close to normal -- but it was over seven feet a few days before that.  Survival of the fittest -- I'm guessing the smallmouth have been around here since just after their first introduction on the Potomac, and they will continue to find a way to survive.

I was also trying out a new (to me) jerkbait -- a Yo-Zuri 3DB.  Buying new lures is almost as fun as actually fishing!

Unfortunately with the cloudiness of the water, it was almost impossible to tell what kind of action the lure had. One smallmouth hammered the lure -- it was hooked for a moment then shook free near the surface.  It looked like a fish in the 12- to 14-inch range.

If the Potomac ever gets back to normal, I intend to compare some of the jerkbaits I have like this Yo-Zuri and the Rapala Shadow Rap ... and a few others acquired during the offseason but haven't even used yet, like the Rapala RipStop, Megaba$$ Vi$ion, and Lucky Craft Pointer.  The shallow-running jerkbaits dive down as much as four feet, and I'm hesitant to cast them in the skinny, shallow Maryland rivers because they are more prone to getting snagged.

Jerkbait comparison coming soon?  From left to right:
Y-Zuri 3DB, Megabass Vision 110, Rapala Rip Stop,
Rapala X-Rap and Lucky Craft Pointer.

Fishpalooza

Mother Nature threatened but stayed away.

Karen and I fished the Susquehanna River yesterday with Jason Shay of Susquehanna Smallmouth Solutions.  Mother F'ing Nature stabilized her wrath as far as dumping rain or unleashing miserable heat and humidity for just one day.  But it looks like she is going to fire a final (hopefully?) summer blast of heat over the next week.

Monitoring the gauges all week, the Susquehanna hovered around 4.4 feet at Harrisburg.  No crazy rains or anything either, so it looked like Sunday would be a nice day for fishing.

Jason and me with a double --
fishpalooza!

After getting to the boat ramp at 6:30 a.m. and hopping into Jason's jet-prop boat, Karen and I armed ourselves with a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper, a spinnerbait, and a Whopper Plopper on each of our rods.  For the first few hours, we were switching between them and couldn't get anything consistent from the fish.  Except the Whopper Plopper churning across the surface wasn't working, even though the river just screamed "TOPWATER!!!+11," especially early on, but the smallmouth didn't cooperate.

It looked like rain was going to hit us early after jetting upriver, but all we got was misting for a short time.

At the first spot, Karen caught a dink smallmouth on the swimbait, and I got a 14-incher a little later on the swimbait, too.  Jason swore he was only going to throw some flavor of Double J Twisted Tackle spinnerbait from start to finish even as Karen and I got those two early fish on the Reaction Innovations swimbaits.

We caught a few more here and there.  I had two more smallmouth bass that looked to be a solid 17 inches.  (Just about every fish today we caught had a chunky belly.)

Karen with one of her fish.

But nothing consistent.  After a few fish, the bite went cold.  At one point, I went almost an hour or so between even getting a hit, but Karen and Jason caught a few but weren't exactly ripping fish into the boat either.  Like I've said before, this is why it's called "fishing" and not "catching."

Maybe around noon, we were drifting among underwater shelves.  Rock formations that protruded up through the water creating trenches barely visible below the surface.  And we went into a mini-spree of smallmouth activity. 

After getting some snags on a swimbait, I tried a Nichols spinnerbait in a crawdad flavor.  The lure (which I bought at Smallmouth Saturday upon Jason's recommendation) wasn't a revelation, but a few smallmouth hammered it like a freight train.

Trying to fish out (get it?)
my crawdad-flavored
Nichols spinnerbait from a
small mouth.

At that point, the fish were hanging around the shelves, and we peppered every single one with casts.  Again, nothing consistent, but when one of us got a fish, they put up a great fight.  One smallmouth Karen hooked, I could see the fish shaking its head and trying to burrow down in the rocky river floor.  It was angry!

I guestimate we landed 25-30 smallmouth bass (no other species) between the three of us.  I had eight, but nothing under 14 inches, and three were around 17 inches.

We saw turtles sunning on rocks, geese and ducks and other waterfowl, including a merlin or small hawk trying to prey on small birds.  Not a lot of fishing pressure from other boats on the river.

The weather was much more bearable than when we fished the river with Jason on July 1, and while we didn't light it up with quantity, the smallmouth were better quality than two months ago.

The funniest thing, as we were pulling up to the boat ramp at the end of the day, there was a guy "swimming" in the water.  Jason said something about, "Oh this is the guy on house arrest."  As he throttled the boat to the ramp, this guy - shirtless, wearing swim trunks -- walked up the boat ramp, and he had a bracelet around an ankle.  Then some other guy showed up out of nowhere with no shirt and swim trunks -- AND HE ALSO HAD A BRACELET AROUND HIS ANKLE!!!  Then when the boat was loaded on the trailer, another shirtless guy showed up with a bracelet around his ankle.  I kept thinking of the "Bracelet Buddies" episode of "Friends."

A perfect storm for catching fish.