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.