Six in one, half dozen in the other

Loved watching people fishing up ahead of this ripple, and they weren't catching a thing.

This is a late writeup from fishing a couple weeks ago, but as they say, better late than never!

I mainly write this stuff so I can keep track of my fishing prowess not to generate single digits of views!

Anyway, Karen and I returned to 15 Mile Creek Campground. Last time I had some luck near the boat ramp, which had not really happened before.

First fish of the weekend, and they were all this size.

My preferred spot is tough to get through either by wading or venturing through thick vegetation (usually easier early or later in the year), so I decided to try again.

Also, I was pretty sure I saw a small muskie last time, so you never know.

I caught six fish over a couple hours each day, and every fish was about the same size -- around 10 inches -- and caught on Reaction Innovations Little Dippers. I should have taken a picture of every fish to see if I tricked the same one twice, that's how alike they were.

One from Sunday morning that may or may not have been caught before.

I cast the lure out and let it drift in the current, which was rolling pretty good. It was really shallow, but the speed kept the lures from snagging -- I don't think I lost a single one.

Sunset on the Potomac.

Cast away: Nibbles and bites and swipes on Rainy Lake

Switching to casting, my biggest smallmouth, about 15 inches.

It's that time of year again where I recap a fishing excursion from our annual "road trip." You know, Karen takes off about a week before me in the Crosstrek then I fly out and meet her someplace out west.

This year we decided to head into Canada. I have been to Canada before but have never actually set foot in the country. Of course, those prior trips were fishing in Canada-U.S. border waters, so I didn't even need a passport.

I really wanted to fish in a Canadian lake that didn't straddle the U.S. border but struggled to find a guide. Using the usual searches on fishingbooker.com and even Google, there didn't seem to be anyone who guided in Canada other than on The Great Lakes. Which in most cases meant "charter" fishing with six-plus people. I've done that before, and it really doesn't appeal to me.

We could have just stayed at a "resort" at a Canadian lake and rented a boat, but then we would have had to haul our fishing gear. And of course we would have to guess where the fish were.

Karen suggested going back to Rainy Lake with Rainydaze Guide Service like we did last year, 2021 and 2019. It's like hitting the easy button, so I booked a trip for Aug. 4.

Like last year, we ended up with Jeff Plath as our guide. He has his own guiding business but lives in the same neighborhood as Chris Granrud, who owns Rainydaze, and will fill in from time to time.

Once again we stayed at The Thunderbird Lodge, so like an Uber fishing service, Jeff met us at their dock Sunday morning.

You will notice a pattern if you've read my previous Rainy Lake fishing blogs. We start off finding walleye and other fish mingling in about 30 feet of water and drop minnows and/or leeches on jigheads to hover off the bottom. According to the modern combination depth finders and live scopes that show fish, we are ALWAYS on top of fish. But sometimes they don't cooperate.

As usual, we again found fish sitting on the lake floor, but they weren't in much mood to snack on tasty minnows or leaches. Karen and I landed a few fish -- walleye, a tiny sauger and even some dink smallmouth bass -- but we only had a couple eater-sized walleye to show for it after a few hours.

The Garmin thingie showed fish, but it was another thing to get them to bite.

When talking with Jeff over the phone a few days prior, I mentioned wanting to target smallmouth bass. Around 11 a.m., we moved from 30 feet of open water to hugging the rocky shoreline to try and catch them ol' brown fish.

Talking with Jeff throughout the morning about other clients, I think he might have been reluctant to change gears and fish for smallmouth. A lot of his clients just want to catch walleye, and some really aren't that good of fishermen -- they can't actually cast lures. They are more comfortable dropping lines over the side of the boat.

While Karen and I can't drop a lure in a postage-stamp-sized spot with consistent precision, we aren't slouches!

Jeff rigged a rubber swimbait on my line and a spinner that looked like a Rooster Tail on Karen's line, and we peppered she shore in a small cove. Almost instantly, we had action. 

Nibbles and bites and swipes.

We had some excitement with smallmouth bass and a few northern pike. They weren't huge, but it was better than sitting floating in the water watching walleye on the scope ignore our baits.

Karen caught her first northern pike!

Karen caught her first northern pike. 

From my time stationed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, these are one of my favorite fish to catch. They have teeth! And they are actually good eating but get a bad reputation because of their "Y" bones in the meaty part of filets.

Karen snagged the little spinner in a tree, and then Jeff rigged her fishing rod up for swimbaits, too.

Always a good sign of fish activity is to end up with battered, useless swimbaits.

I tussled with a few smallmouth and hooked a couple small pike but didn't land them.

Thanks to that change of plans, Karen and I boated 20-25 fish between us.

Here are some bonus pics:

Like the little walleye I caught last year, I caught a matching sauger.

After fishing, we crossed the border the next day and entered Canada at Fort Frances and got on the Trans Canada Highway. We drove from there to camp in Thunder Bay on the western side of Lake Superior. Then we drove some more and had overnight camping stays in Sault Ste. Marie, Mobert, Massey and Severn before finally crossing the border in Buffalo, N.Y. 

We camped at some provincial parks that were on lakes, but they had limited access to shore fishing. I threw a line here and there anyway but didn't catch anything.

After we got back into the U.S., we camped at a KOA near Houghton, N.Y., that had a small fishing pond. I fished that night and enticed a few fish to take a run at a white Zara Puppy before finally hooking this crappie:

Bonus crappie caught in the KOA/Houghton pond.

Thinking of what we can do next year. Snake River in Idaho/Washington? Maybe Maine? Look harder for guide service on a Canadian lake? Really throw a change-up and fly fish for trout somewhere? Rainy Lake is beautiful, walleye are tasty, but I'm not sure if I'm up to the monotony of fishing for them.

For more pictures from the road trip, click here for my Flickr album.

Sweaty smallmouth: Beating the heat on the Potomac

This rocky area was teeming with life. Crayfish, clams and toe-nibbling baitfish.

On a rare two-night camping trip along the Potomac River over the weekend, I caught five smallmouth bass on a Zoom Swimmin Super Fluke Jr., and one on a Z-Man Finesse TRD worm. I did not land a single fish on a topwater lure despite it seeming like ideal topwater conditions.

So what am I absolutely tying on a rod on my next river fishing adventure?

A topwater lure!

Despite the miserably hot weather, Karen and I camped over the weekend along the Potomac River at one of the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park sites. I fished for eight to nine hours over that time, and Karen even tossed a line in the river for a few hours.

The first fish of the weekend caught on a Z-Man worm.

There was about an hour on Saturday morning where the smallmouth bass were in a frenzy over the ol' Heddon Zara Puppy. Two fish hooked and at least eight blowups.

But I didn't land a single fish. Billy Westmoreland titled his book on smallmouth bass "Them Ol' Brown Fish." I've called them the Roy Jones Jr. of fish. I've also called them the Houdini fish because they can magically escape tough situations.

It's frustrating to a point but still topwater action is still heart stopping and adrenaline pumping all at the same time!

The best stretch of actually catching fish was Saturday afternoon. I figured the fish might feel like I felt and wanted to hang out in the shade. So I waded near the bank and cast toward the edge of the shadows of the trees. The Super Fluke Jr. was the ticket -- landing four fish, albeit only one was in the 12-inch range.

First fish from Saturday after the morning topwater frenzy.

Sunday morning, hoping to duplicate the feeling from the morning before, only one fish sniffed the Zara Puppy, and I managed to land one leaping 10-incher on the Zoom swimbait.

It's weird how that works. The topwater lure brings the most excitement, and the other fish I actually caught are almost forgettable.

It was mostly sunny all weekend with a few patches of puffy clouds. Temps were 95-plus, and water was a tick over 80 degrees.

Next up is likely fishing again with Rainydaze Guide Service. I might sneak in something locally between now and then. But the sister site will have more updates with autocrosses over the next three weekends, punctuated by the UMI Autocross Challenge July 25 to 27.

Sunset on the Potomac River.

The campfire looked like the eyes of a monster trying to rise from the ground.

Karen's first fish from the weekend, caught on a Whopper Plopper.

This was clinging to my hat on Saturday morning -- a grapevine beetle. I named it Paul. It clung to the hat after I put it on and then fled somewhere along the line.

This however wasn't allowed to flee. It's an invasive spotted lantern fly, and we killed a dozen or so this weekend.

Tiny Bass and the Great Zoom Swimbait Experiment

First fish on Saturday. It was little.

Karen and I Crosstrek'ed over the weekend to camp at 15 Mile Creek along the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park, and I fished Saturday night and Sunday morning on the Potomac River. I had decent action catching eight smallmouth bass.

On Friday, I picked up a pack of Zoom Swimmin Super Fluke Jr. plastic swimbaits to try for the first time after reading about them in a book on smallmouth bass river/creek fishing. They look similar to Reaction Innovation Little Dippers but don't have catchy names for their colors like "Dirty Sanchez" or "Money Shot."

Instead, the Zoom swimbait color I picked was albino. Not sexy albino, not cocaine albino. Just albino.

Swimbait comparison, the Reaction Innovations Little Dipper in sungill pattern on top, and the Zoom Swimmin Super Fluke Jr. in albino on the bottom.

The Zoom baits are a little lighter than the Little Dippers. They can't cast as far using the same eBay special jigheads I rig with the Little Dippers, but it's not a huge difference in distance -- maybe a couple feet. However, since they are lighter, they don't sink as fast in the water and can be fished up in the flow, which was ideal in this section of the rocky bottomed Potomac.

I managed three little smallmouth on Saturday night (and two other hookups).

And by "little," I mean. 

Little. 

The first fish stretched to six inches. The second fish maybe measured eight inches. The third fish felt better, but when it jumped out of the water I could see it was also a dink smallmouth bass.

These were caught just downriver from the boat ramp, a sec
tion I usually don't fish because the water is too low. However, the river looked to be slightly higher than normal (four feet going by the Hancock gauge reading from Saturday ... it's 3.4 feet now as I'm typing this), so I decided to give it a shot.

Sunday morning, I ambled down the C&O towpath to my usual hotspot on this part of the Potomac, which was around a bend from where I fished Saturday night. This area has a ton of rocks with four protruding above the surface. Here, I caught five more smallmouth with the biggest being 12-plus inches. One fish was caught on a Little Dipper but the "big" fish and the rest were on the Zoom swimbaits.

Releasing the "big" smallmouth:

Fish number four was interesting. I wanted to snap a couple "scenic" river pictures and tucked my fishing rod under my arm as I got my camera out. The Zoom swimbait was dangling behind the rod by about a foot. As I was setting up the shot, I felt something tug on the rod -- sure enough, a dink smallmouth bass was looking for something to eat.

The Swimmin' Super Fluke Jr. isn't going to replace the Little Dipper for me, but I will definitely add it to the arsenal. They worked best casting downriver and slooooowwwwwwllllllyyyyyy reeling them in. Or firing straight across and letting the current do the work of drifting downriver.

A picture of the big smallmouth.

No shutout on Super Bowl Sunday!

Smallmouth No. 2 for 2024 caught on a Z-Man Finesse TRD worm.

Karen and I went camping for her birthday this weekend, and I managed to catch one smallmouth bass -- about 12 inches. Got it this morning just behind our campsite on a Z-Man Finesse TRD worm bouncing it on the bottom.

Skies were overcast, and it in fact started to rain lightly before I caught the fish. The water temp was around 50, and the Shepardstown gauge was just under four feet.

I tried a swimbait, too, with no luck. I think I might have had a sunfish nibble, so other than that, the smallmouth bass was the only action of the day.

I fished a little last night but we got to the campground just after the sun had gone down. I can barely see anything in daylight, so I only fished for 10 to 15 minutes.

Looking back on my blog posts (other than for the tens of viewers, I write stuff so I can remember shit), the earliest smallmouth bass I've caught looks like Feb. 25 back in 2017. And this year, I've already caught two. The smallmouth action usually doesn't start until late March.

Here's a short video I captured using my Olympus Tough TG-6 while releasing the fish:

First fish of 2024 on the first cast!

A chunky smallmouth bass on the first cast of 2024!

I got on the 2024 scoreboard early with a Potomac River smallmouth bass on my first cast on Jan. 1. The fish slurped up a Z-Man Finesse TRD Worm that I was working s-l-o-w-l-y on the river bottom. 

On the cast, the worm got snagged initially on a rock or something, but I managed to free it. About 30 seconds later, it felt like I had another snag, but the fish started moving.

The fish was caught with a Mitchell reel made in 1964.

Snags were the story of the rest of my time on the river, though. I had numerous snags and ended up losing five or so lures. I tried a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper to avoid bouncing the bottom but got nothing on that.

The water was a little high -- about four feet going by the Shepherdstown gauge -- and water and air temperatures were both around 45 degrees.

I used a couple rods with classic Mitchell 300 reels, and the one that caught the smallmouth was made in 1964 (serial number 567XX64). So 60 years later, the reel is still catching fish!