The fishes we need are everywhere around us

This "fishy" area should hold fish, right?  Places like this
haven't so far on the Upper Potomac.  But on the North Branch ...

Fishing has been tough on the Upper Potomac for some reason this year.  I've caught one smallmouth and one walleye out of five or six trips.

Yesterday, Karen and I made the trek even further up to the North Branch of the Potomac to a C&O Trail Campground site.  She wanted to bike down the C&O Trail while I just wanted to fish.

I was anxious for some kind of success considering how far this spot was from the furthest point I fished this year.  Antietam Creek is just between mile markers 69 and 70 on the trail, while this site is near mile marker 173.

First smallmouth.  I usually take a picture of the first fish -- no
matter the size -- just to have evidence that I caught something.

Yesterday, we got to the camp site and set everything up.  No squatters this time, so we didn't have to call a park ranger to deal with the riff-raff.

We camped here about four years ago, and I remembered the river right behind the camp site was barren of fish-holding structures.  No ripples, eddies, weedbeds or large rocks.  Just straight, almost feature-less water.  But there was a spot downriver that had all those fishy elements.

I suited up my waders and headed down the trail and soon spotted a rocky point protruding the water.  After climbing down the bank, I tied on a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper on the first rod, and on the other rod, my go-to topwater lure, a Heddon Zara Puppy.

After about 15 minutes, the first fish of the day was landed on a Little Dipper.  It was a dink but had a cool color pattern (see picture above).

The Little Dipper was getting a lot of interest, and I soon had a couple more dink smallmouth with a few other misses sprinkled in.  The Zara Puppy wasn't getting anything.

Moving down to a weedbed with tassels protruding from the water, I said to myself, "Self, I bet if you throw that Zara Puppy just on the edge of the weedbed, there's a smallmouth there, and it will smack that lure."

Plus-sizing with a Rapala X-Rap Prop and
Nichols spinnerbait.  It didn't really work out.

If anything positive lately, since I haven't actually been catching fish, my casting skills have progressively gotten better.

That Zara Puppy landed about a foot to the right of the weeds.  I twitched it a couple times, paused, then twitched it again.  And a smallmouth exploded completely out of the water attacking the lure.

And completely missed.

Heart spiked, but still calmly didn't set the hook waiting to NOT see the lure.  But it was still floating on the surface ... and then ... and then ... nothing. 

A few more casts to the same area and still the fish didn't strike.  Even switching rods and tossing the Reaction Innovations swimbait couldn't entice even a nibble.

Moving on to other spots, I caught another dink smallmouth here and another there.  Six total for the evening.

After the big blowup on the Zara Puppy, the other highlight in "the one that got away" was seeing a couple fish that looked to be slurping bait on the surface.  I fired a cast with the the swimbait right on top of one of them, and the fish hit the lure immediately.  But just seconds later, it got off.  It felt like a better smallmouth than the dinks I had been catching.

This morning, I wanted to plus-size the lures to maybe plus-size the fish.  I started off with a Nichols spinnerbait and a Rapala X-Rap Prop topwater lure.  The spinnerbait didn't get any bites, so I switched to a Rapala Shadow Rap ... and caught another dink smallmouth and a sunfish.  Plus-sizing with smallmouth bass doesn't seem to work, as I should have remembered from a few years ago at another spot a few miles down river.

Finally, something bigger than the dinks.

I had one fish hooked on the Rapala prop, but the fish was next to a weedbed, and it made a beeline among the vegetation and managed to unhook itself.  Then the Shadow Rap got snagged in the middle of the river, so I went back to the Reaction Innovations swimbait.  And caught two more dink smallmouth before finally getting a legal-sized one.

At the end of the day(s), it was 10 smallmouth and a sunfish in five- to six-hours fishing.  Much better by a longshot on the Potomac this year, even if the majority of the fish were dinks.

Interesting to compare the last time we were at this spot on the North Branch four years ago.  Back then, it was another overnight camping trip but in August, and I caught eight smallmouth bass, two sunfish and a fallfish.  Similar numbers to Friday and Saturday.  Yet still further down river on the Upper Potomac this year, the smallmouth fishing has been bleak.

Next Sunday, Karen and I will flush the Potomac fail with another trip with Susquehanna Smallmouth Solutions.  Then, almost exactly a month later, we will be fishing on Rainy Lake for northerns and smallmouths and (Oh my!) walleye.

Bonus walleye

The Potomac River has been tough so far this year.  I've caught one smallmouth and no other fish until today when I landed this 12-inch walleye.

The fish hit a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper, and I thought at first I had my second Potomac smallmouth of 2019.  However, walleye don't fight above their weight class like smallmouth bass, but they don't fight like fallfish or sunfish that seem to be resigned to their fate as soon as they're hooked. Based on the fight, I guessed the fish was in between those two spectrums.  But walleye are still a nice bonus since they aren't very common on the Upper Potomac.  They are tasty, too, but this one fell a few inches short of the legal 15-inch limit.  Good news for him!

Double bonus:  Catching the fish standing on the bank just as soon as two guys in a jet boat throttled down about 100 feet upriver.  

Which brings me to another thing about my failings (and Karen's, too) catching fish this year on the Potomac.  On the smallmouth bass forum I frequent, others have been reporting unusually low catches.  It's like the big rains from 2018 have scattered the fish, or that weather did something to truly impact fishing conditions this year.  I can only speculate whether it was a limited spawn last year, fish died off because of the fluctuating river level, or the fish found homes in the tributaries or ... something else.

Usually at this campground, there is very little boat traffic through the river.  There might be one or two fishing boats, but more tubers and non-fishing kayakers than anybody else.  This morning, I was awakened at 6:15 a.m. by two jet boats heading upriver.  When I started fishing an hour later, there was a guy in a kayak fishing just behind our camp site.  Then (I'm pretty sure) one of those jet boats that went through an hour before came down and started fishing the bank behind the campsite.  Then the other one came down about 20 minutes later (and those two guys got to see me catch the walleye).

Several other boats went up and down the river before we broke camp.  Again, this is a stretch that usually has very little boat traffic, but my take is other fishermen are frustrated and are exploring new/forgotten/overlooked spots to get something going.

Karen and I will be going even further up the Potomac next week, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the fishing fares up there.

Turning it up to 11

Smallmouth that made an aerial assault.

I've been to the Upper Potomac five times since I last posted here.  Why haven't I blogged anything about those trips?  Because I caught a grand total of one fish.  Not one fish each trip -- one fish PERIOD.

The river level has declined steadily, and I fished in areas where that held fish before, so it should have been a recipe for success.  But only had that one smallmouth bass to show for it.  This time of year should be prime time for smallmouth on the Upper Potomac, but for whatever reason, it hasn't been.

So this morning I decided to stay closer to home -- you know, drive 20 minutes to fish instead of an hour plus.

Since it was early in the morning, the call of topwater action was reverberating in my head, so I tied on a Heddon Zara Puppy.  On my other rod, I tied on a Z-Man Finesse TRD worm just to go with something different -- offer something on top and something on the bottom.

The first spot I tried, I caught a fallfish on the Zara Puppy.  The oversized minnow actually hit the lure pretty good, but then it gave up fighting like all fallfish seem to do.  No pictures of fallfish.

Redbreast sunfish.  They don't fight at all,
but at least they are prettier than fallfish.

I moved to a spot that always seems to have fish activity -- either I catch something or at least get a few bites.  First cast with the Zara Puppy, it hit just short of the opposite bank, and I brought it back below some exposed rocks.

With the Zara Puppy and similar topwater lures, I always seem to trigger strikes by working the lure for a few seconds -- maybe three to five twitches with the rod -- and then letting the lure sit.  Sometimes I count to five before activating the lure again.  The fish love to hit during that pause, whether it be a bass or a sunfish.  I rarely get them just chasing the lure while it's in motion.

About when the lure reached the middle of the river, a smallmouth bass attacked and launched out of the water trying to grab the Zara Puppy.  It didn't get hooked, and the fish made another pass a second or two later.  I patiently waited as my heart rate went up before setting the hook, but I saw the lure still floating on the surface.  I worked the lure back without any further activity.

Immediately, I fired another cast to the same spot and brought the lure back on the same route across the water.  In the same strike zone as the previous attack, the smallmouth came out of hiding again and smacked the lure.  This time, the front treble hook penetrated the fish's lower lip, and it stayed on.  The fish made a couple more jumps before I finally hoisted it out of the water -- a nice 12- to 13-incher, a lunker for this water.

Green sunfish.  They don't get much bigger.

At this point, I basically forgot about the Z-Man worm.  If fish are biting topwater lures, there's really no point trying anything else!

I managed to catch two more (smaller) smallmouth, a redbreast sunfish and another fallfish in this spot.

Moving on to another flow that I re-discovered earlier this year, I again had a blowup on the first cast with the Zara Puppy targeting a small pocket between two rocks protruding on the opposite shore.  No hookup, and this time the fish didn't make any further assaults.

However, a little while later, I caught another smallmouth on the Zara Puppy and a green sunfish on the Z-Man worm.

I crossed the river and moved down to another area that always seems to hold at least one active fish.  It's a small pool in between two rocky runs with a lot of submerged rocks.  The smallmouth I've caught here have never been very big, IIRC.  Sure enough, I managed to catch two smallmouth with one being a dink and another really tiny.  The little one had to be from the spawn last year and was going for breakfast, lunch and dinner in one sitting snacking on a Z-Man worm.

You gonna come at me, bro?!

I was keeping track of the fish I had caught and realized I was up to 10 fish for the day!  I don't think I've ever been in double digits on this river.  After just one fish on the five Potomac trips, it was good to feel the tugs on the fishing rods.

Moving back up to the previous spot where I had the big blowup, I switched to a Heddon Torpedo -- which is a topwater lure similar in shape to its Zara Puppy brother, but it has a propeller on the back.

I had a few follows and swipes then snagged the lure on a rock on the other side of the river.  So I tied on a Heddon Tiny Torpedo that I've probably had for 30 years.  It's similar to the Torpedo, just a size down.

And snagged it, too, on the other side of the river.  Both lures were probably three feet apart.

Heddon Torpedo, Tiny Torpedo and Zara Puppy.

So I tried the Z-Man worm and got some fish biting in the middle of the river.  They looked like ... fallfish.  But you never know, maybe a smallmouth bass is in the pack.

After a few casts, I was hopping the worm on the bottom and saw a flash of white as the fish took off with the lure.  It took me a split second to process what was happening -- "Hey, that fish has my lure!"  I set the hook and the fight of shame began -- another submissive fallfish.  It was actually decent size compared to the others I caught.

This fish made it 11 for the day.

It was also almost 11 a.m. and the clouds had gone away, so it was starting to warm up.  I waded across the river, retrieved my two snagged Torpedos back and called it a day.