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| Never caught one of these before you will never guess what it was read below to find out! Or just hover your pointer over the picture for the tl;dr answer. |
First outing of the season and not exactly worth writing home about. Or blogging from home. Or something. But temps were in the low 70s, sunny and clear, so at least the weather was nice.
Went to my secret spot on the Little Patuxent. For some reason, fish have been hard to come by the past couple years here. One of the first times fishing this spot, I landed a 15-inch smallmouth and think of that on every visit. Probably have had a few instances of four or five fish in just a couple hours, too.
But not today. Although I ended up with only one fish, it was a rarity and the first ever of its species I have caught.
The river looked like its usual self in this section. Low and murky. Other areas of the Little Patuxent are really clear but it's never like that here.
I switched between the usual suspects -- Z-Man TRD Finesse worms on 1/10th ounce jigheads, Reaction Innovations Little Dippers on the home-grown eBay special jigheads, and a Heddon Zara Puppy -- all in assorted flavors except for the Zara Puppy which was of course the usual bull frog pattern.
There were some followers on the Little Dipper swimbaits but small fish from what I saw. Like would rather not even handle those fish because the danger of them stabbing me with their dorsal fins outweighs the glory of catching a fish.
Zero interest at all in the Zara Puppy. Not even a nice topwater blowup to get the heart pumping.
I had a bite on a Z-man worm but the fish didn't get hooked. Then finally a fish did clamp on. As I was reeling in, noticed the silver coloring and thought it was a failfish. But then the body didn't look right. Maybe a really pale smallmouth? None of the above -- it looked to be a white perch, which I don't think I have ever caught. Poking around on the interwebs, they are common in the Chesapeake Bay, so not out of the ordinary to catch one on an indirect tributary.
I know the Patuxent River has chain pickerel and keep hoping to catch one on the Little Patuxent.
