May 12: Little Patuxent. I decided to bring my bike and ride down the other side of the river. There's a trail that leads all the way down to Savage Mill. However, as I found out, it "ends" at residence, and you actually have to go up a road a little ways before it comes back down to the Little Patuxent. I thought it ended where the Little Patuxent met the Middle Patuxent, but it looks to be just short. Might be easier to find a place near Savage Mill to park and walk down to where the rivers meet.
Anyway, I mainly used a Rebel crawfish crankbait and the smaller Chub's Hub in a minnow pattern. I caught one smallmouth with the crankbait -- hit the lure about 10 feet away and I saw it come out from 2-3 feet of water to get it. Fish jumped once, too! But it was a standard 8-9" fish. I had one good strike on the Chub's Hub and some small hits but couldn't reel anything in.
Water temp was around 70 degrees, so definitely I can see why topwater stuff has been getting some action.
May 22: Potomac River (McCoy's Ferry). Karen and I decided to go camping the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I got off work "early" and headed out while she was going to meet me later. I was pretty stoked because it would be the first time at McCoy's Ferry where the water levels were down to near where they were late last year when I finally "found" smallmouth.
Well the river was down but it was totally different. The weeds weren't that high so there weren't any small pools built up to keep the river from flowing normally. I caught a 10" smallmouth Friday night near where the stream goes into the river to the right of the boat ramp and then a smaller smallmouth -- both on the smaller Chub's Hub. The first fish popped the lure into the air before he actually got hooked! I also had numerous hits and then all of a sudden everything stopped. Nothing. The fish were really aggressive for about fifteen minutes and then that was it. When I went back Saturday morning after the sun was up, I could see into the water a lot better, and the area I had the action on was really shallow. Maybe 2 to 3 feet?
I also caught another 10-inch smallmouth (and had another hooked) at the spot by the tree, this time on a 2.75-inch tube bait on the Confidence Baits Draggin' Head. I love the feel of the nibble-nibble on the tube bait and then the fish takes it!
Saturday morning, I fished the same area and had one bite on the tube bait, and that was it. I wonder if the fish move into that area near the end of the day when the sun has shaded the area. There are a bunch of rocks but not a lot of cover, which is why I wonder if it gets better once the weeds have grown up. Thinking back to last year, there weren't any noticeable differences as to when I caught fish in this area. I may have to put this area on hold for a month or two until the weed beds have set in. Or maybe try to the left of the boat ramp. Or get a bike and explore a little more.
It's still fun to catch 10-inch smallmouth, but I can catch them in the Little Patuxent! So far, landed 21 smallmouth this year, a handful "legal" 12-inch fish and one 14-incher from Antietam. It would be nice to get one 16-plus soon!
May 29: Little Patuxent River. Went even further down the river, this time in the Crofton area off of Route 3 behind the infamous Walking Fish Pond. There wasn't a clear trail to the river but it was fairly easy after poking around for a bit.
I had just bought two Rapala Shadow Raps after watching one of the Lindner brothers fishing with them on TV over the weekend. Kind of a jerk bait with a little more action that's supposed to mimic a dying fish. I had one silver and one kind of a rainbow trout looking pattern. Hey, maybe the bass eat the stocked rainbows?
I found a pool just off of a fairly fast moving section of water. Made a few casts and saw a couple fish come up to the lure but turn away at the last second. After five or six casts, there was a hit! It felt like a good fish but was about 10 feet out in the murky water so I couldn't see it. I kept reeling and brought it to the surface. Dark on the back silvery on the sides -- it was a trout. Oh wait, it has whiskers -- it was a channel catfish. I was kind of bummed because I was hoping for a smallmouth but then it hit me -- this was my first catfish ever! It was around 12 to 13 inches. I whipped out my phone to take a picture, and it took me a few tries to get a good one because the fish was squirming around so much. I got him off the hook, and he barrel-rolled right down the bank into the water! Pretty funny. It's a catfish, and it could survive worse stuff.
After a little while with no more hits, I move down and found a 30-foot log submerged in the water just around a point. Slow moving water, looked pretty fishy. The first cast with the Shadow Rap, I saw two fish come after the lure but turn away at the last section. They looked like smallmouth. More casts but didn't see anything. I switched to a plastic worm, Texas-rigged with a dropshot and got some nibbles but nothing else. Probably the little nibbler bass or sunfish
I moved further down and found an area where half the river was exposed to a sandbar. I walked out and while it was mushy, it wasn't like quicksand or anything. The river was really shallow at the edge but it got fairly deep beyond that. The current wasn't that strong, and there were some logs on the other side of the bank. My first cast with the Shadow Rap and I got I fish on! I started reeling, and it felt like a good fish. I was hoping it wasn't another catfish, but then it jumped, and I saw it was a smallmouth! "Please don't shake the hook," I was thinking. Kept reeling and beached it. Easily over a foot long! I fumbled around in my bag for the tape measure, unrolled it, it was 14.99 inches! Biggest smallmouth of the year so far. I took a picture, unhooked it after a minute or so (stupid treble hooks), and revived it in the shallow water at the end of the sandbar. The dumb fish swam out and did a u-turn and beached itself! I turned it around, it swam out again and turned around and beached itself again. Finally, the third time it got the message the deeper water was the other way.
Then I snagged the Shadow Rap on the next cast. I switched to the other one which was the "rainbow trout" pattern, and caught a failfish ... I mean, fallfish ... after a few casts. Then I snagged that Shadow Rap. I switched to the drop-shot, Texas-rig worm and snagged that, too! Three snags within 15 minutes, it was kind of hot, and I realized I forgot to bring the water I had brought with me in my small cooler, so I headed home.
The 15" smallmouth gives me hope that there are even bigger ones in the Little Patuxent. Maybe not in the Guilford Road area upriver but other areas where there's not much fishing pressure and closer to the Patuxent River.
May 30: Potomac River near Antietam Creek. Karen and I decided to go to Antietam campground for camping. We hadn't been there since the water in the river had gone down, so I wanted to see if it was any better than McCoy's Ferry and Fifteenmile Creek.
The first thing I noticed was that the water was really shallow. I brought my knee waders so I figured I could wade out to a good spot. I also brought my new-to-me Gary Fisher mountain bike that we picked up from Karen's brother on the way out. It's a no-brainer -- bring a bike and extend the range on the canal trail.
I went upriver and found a feeder stream (more like a trickle of water) with a trail that led easily to the river. It had a fairly big area of exposed rocks and grass and looked like it got a little deeper. I decided to try the Shadow Rap and after a couple casts got a hit! Reeled in and it was about a 12-inch channel catfish. So after going my whole life without catching a catfish, I now had two in two days. I didn't feel like cleaning one little catfish so I threw it back.
A few more casts later, I snagged this Shadow Rap, too! I was pissed. Three new $9 lures gone in two days. I had another Shadow Rap but didn't want to risk losing that one, too. I figured the water wasn't as deep as I thought further out, so I switched to a Rapala floating minnow hoping to mimic the Shadow Rap action. It didn't, and I started to wonder why I have so many various sizes of the floating minnows.
I tried a tube bait with the Draggin' Head for awhile and didn't get a thing. It was about 3 p.m., and I decided to come back a little later and try topwaters (reels had fluorocarbon and the monofilament and braided spools were back at the camp site).
I rode up the trail some more and tried to find a decent spot, but everything looked the same -- really shallow far out into the river.
Around 7 p.m. I headed back to the area where I caught the catfish earlier. I tried the smaller Chub's Hub for a bit and didn't get anything. I switched to a Rebel Pop-R -- which I had never fished with before -- and got a strike on the second cast. I set the hook, and the fish went airborne jumping three or four times before I got it all the way in. It was about a 10-inch smallmouth. Not big but a smallmouth on a topwater lure is still pretty cool. A couple casts later, I got another hit! This fish felt a little better, and it put on an aerial display, too. Reeled it in and let him "play" when he got about five feet away from me. It looked like a 12 incher, and he went swimming close to my left ... then came free. Oh well, it wasn't like the nice 16 incher I lost at McCoy's Ferry last year.
I had a couple more hits but didn't land anything. I moved about 20 feet downriver where I could cast to where there was a bulge of rocks where water was flowing over. I switched back to the Chub's Hub and got some hits. I had one smallmouth hooked, and it jumped one way out of the water while the lure went flying the other way. Then I had another one hooked and it jumped, too, and got itself unhooked. It looked like the nicest of the bunch, maybe 13 to 14 inches. Had some more hits and finally got one to stay on the hook. A couple jumps later and I had landed about a nine-inch smallmouth. I switched back to the Pop-R and got a couple more hits then hooked into a lunker eight-inch smallmouth.
Even though they were small, it was great having all the action on the topwater lures.
The next morning, I went out to the same area and didn't get anything with the topwaters. Not a rise or a strike or anything. It was like at McCoy's Ferry the week before where I caught three fish in one area at night then got nothing the next morning using the same lures
I biked the trail down river after that, not with fishing rods but just to maybe find something that looked a little better. Just past mile marker 69 were two trails that lead down to a dam of rocks, and after the dam it looked like deeper water, i.e. you couldn't see the bottom two or three out from shore. Only problem is that this is likely where EVERYBODY fishes from shore, like some of the trails I found upriver the day before where there were hippie communes bathing in the river or someone letting his dog splash around and scare away fish.
Just past mile marker 68, I found another trail that led down to where there were a few exposed rocks just out from shore. Next time I will go here and maybe try and catch a walleye as the sun is going down!
Total fish caught through May: 46 (27 smallmouth -- two at 15", one 14" and four 12", 6 bluegill, 5 rainbows, 3 failfish, 2 largemouth, 2 channel cats, 1 crappie).
June 3: Little Patuxent River (Guilford Road). It rained hard two days before, and it had been raining light but steady ever since. Driving over the river the day before, it was really high but checking americanwhitewater.org today, the water had gone way down. I drove over the river once and it did look like it was almost back to normal albeit very muddy.
I decided to hit the regular Guilford Road area and use a Rapala Shadow Rap and the Rebel Pop-R that had the smallmouth in a frenzy Saturday night. I didn't know what to expect since I had never fished the river in these conditions.
First stop was the "hot spot" which looks really fishy and have numerous rises at lures but never actually caught anything. Both lures didn't get any action. No bites, no rises that I could see, no nothing.
I moved down to another spot and after several casts with the Shadow Rap with no luck, I was wondering if the conditions weren't right for fishing. And then I got a hit! Started reeling, and the fish felt nice. It came to the surface, and it was a smallmouth. A couple jumps, and I finally got it to the edge of the shore and lifted it on the bank. Measured it at 12.5 inches!
With no more luck, I moved down river to another section. Very similar, just below some "rapids" and cast the Shadow Rap around where the faster water met with slower water. After a few casts, I got a hit. Another nice fish, and it came to the surface and jumped -- another smallmouth, and this one looked a little bigger! I reeled in the old Mitchell 300, and I was standing on the bank about two feet above the water. For a moment I wondered how to land this thing, but then I just hoisted it out of the water and on to the bank. Measured it at a tick over 15 iches! So that's three legal smallmouth in a row on the Little Patuxent going back to the 15-incher from Friday. I got to thinking, I have caught two 12-inch smallmouth and two 15-inchers on the Little Patuxent yet nothing of legal size on the big, bad Potomac River.
Anyway, I caught four more smallmouth but nothing over eight inches. Still fun to catch the little ones, like the one that as soon as it was hooked went firing out of the water like a missile from a submarine.
I caught eight smallmouth fishing Antietam Creek in April, but that was over two days. This might be my best day catching fish since ... I don't know when.
Obviously, I'm liking the Shadow Raps. Ten fish in less than a week with seven being smallmouth, and two were my biggest smallmouth of the year. I'm hoping that there's something bigger (and not a snakehead) lurking in the Little Patuxent.
And speaking of snakeheads, there have been reports on the Maryland DNR Angler's Log of people catching the invasive fish on the Little Patuxent. I'm surprised I haven't run into any.
Anyway, I mainly used a Rebel crawfish crankbait and the smaller Chub's Hub in a minnow pattern. I caught one smallmouth with the crankbait -- hit the lure about 10 feet away and I saw it come out from 2-3 feet of water to get it. Fish jumped once, too! But it was a standard 8-9" fish. I had one good strike on the Chub's Hub and some small hits but couldn't reel anything in.
Water temp was around 70 degrees, so definitely I can see why topwater stuff has been getting some action.
May 22: Potomac River (McCoy's Ferry). Karen and I decided to go camping the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I got off work "early" and headed out while she was going to meet me later. I was pretty stoked because it would be the first time at McCoy's Ferry where the water levels were down to near where they were late last year when I finally "found" smallmouth.
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| Small smallmouth. |
I also caught another 10-inch smallmouth (and had another hooked) at the spot by the tree, this time on a 2.75-inch tube bait on the Confidence Baits Draggin' Head. I love the feel of the nibble-nibble on the tube bait and then the fish takes it!
Saturday morning, I fished the same area and had one bite on the tube bait, and that was it. I wonder if the fish move into that area near the end of the day when the sun has shaded the area. There are a bunch of rocks but not a lot of cover, which is why I wonder if it gets better once the weeds have grown up. Thinking back to last year, there weren't any noticeable differences as to when I caught fish in this area. I may have to put this area on hold for a month or two until the weed beds have set in. Or maybe try to the left of the boat ramp. Or get a bike and explore a little more.
It's still fun to catch 10-inch smallmouth, but I can catch them in the Little Patuxent! So far, landed 21 smallmouth this year, a handful "legal" 12-inch fish and one 14-incher from Antietam. It would be nice to get one 16-plus soon!
May 29: Little Patuxent River. Went even further down the river, this time in the Crofton area off of Route 3 behind the infamous Walking Fish Pond. There wasn't a clear trail to the river but it was fairly easy after poking around for a bit.
I had just bought two Rapala Shadow Raps after watching one of the Lindner brothers fishing with them on TV over the weekend. Kind of a jerk bait with a little more action that's supposed to mimic a dying fish. I had one silver and one kind of a rainbow trout looking pattern. Hey, maybe the bass eat the stocked rainbows?
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| A trout ... with whiskers. |
After a little while with no more hits, I move down and found a 30-foot log submerged in the water just around a point. Slow moving water, looked pretty fishy. The first cast with the Shadow Rap, I saw two fish come after the lure but turn away at the last section. They looked like smallmouth. More casts but didn't see anything. I switched to a plastic worm, Texas-rigged with a dropshot and got some nibbles but nothing else. Probably the little nibbler bass or sunfish
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| Biggest smallmouth of the year -- barely 15 inches. |
Then I snagged the Shadow Rap on the next cast. I switched to the other one which was the "rainbow trout" pattern, and caught a failfish ... I mean, fallfish ... after a few casts. Then I snagged that Shadow Rap. I switched to the drop-shot, Texas-rig worm and snagged that, too! Three snags within 15 minutes, it was kind of hot, and I realized I forgot to bring the water I had brought with me in my small cooler, so I headed home.
The 15" smallmouth gives me hope that there are even bigger ones in the Little Patuxent. Maybe not in the Guilford Road area upriver but other areas where there's not much fishing pressure and closer to the Patuxent River.
May 30: Potomac River near Antietam Creek. Karen and I decided to go to Antietam campground for camping. We hadn't been there since the water in the river had gone down, so I wanted to see if it was any better than McCoy's Ferry and Fifteenmile Creek.
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| Upriver a couple miles. |
I went upriver and found a feeder stream (more like a trickle of water) with a trail that led easily to the river. It had a fairly big area of exposed rocks and grass and looked like it got a little deeper. I decided to try the Shadow Rap and after a couple casts got a hit! Reeled in and it was about a 12-inch channel catfish. So after going my whole life without catching a catfish, I now had two in two days. I didn't feel like cleaning one little catfish so I threw it back.
A few more casts later, I snagged this Shadow Rap, too! I was pissed. Three new $9 lures gone in two days. I had another Shadow Rap but didn't want to risk losing that one, too. I figured the water wasn't as deep as I thought further out, so I switched to a Rapala floating minnow hoping to mimic the Shadow Rap action. It didn't, and I started to wonder why I have so many various sizes of the floating minnows.
I tried a tube bait with the Draggin' Head for awhile and didn't get a thing. It was about 3 p.m., and I decided to come back a little later and try topwaters (reels had fluorocarbon and the monofilament and braided spools were back at the camp site).
I rode up the trail some more and tried to find a decent spot, but everything looked the same -- really shallow far out into the river.
Around 7 p.m. I headed back to the area where I caught the catfish earlier. I tried the smaller Chub's Hub for a bit and didn't get anything. I switched to a Rebel Pop-R -- which I had never fished with before -- and got a strike on the second cast. I set the hook, and the fish went airborne jumping three or four times before I got it all the way in. It was about a 10-inch smallmouth. Not big but a smallmouth on a topwater lure is still pretty cool. A couple casts later, I got another hit! This fish felt a little better, and it put on an aerial display, too. Reeled it in and let him "play" when he got about five feet away from me. It looked like a 12 incher, and he went swimming close to my left ... then came free. Oh well, it wasn't like the nice 16 incher I lost at McCoy's Ferry last year.
I had a couple more hits but didn't land anything. I moved about 20 feet downriver where I could cast to where there was a bulge of rocks where water was flowing over. I switched back to the Chub's Hub and got some hits. I had one smallmouth hooked, and it jumped one way out of the water while the lure went flying the other way. Then I had another one hooked and it jumped, too, and got itself unhooked. It looked like the nicest of the bunch, maybe 13 to 14 inches. Had some more hits and finally got one to stay on the hook. A couple jumps later and I had landed about a nine-inch smallmouth. I switched back to the Pop-R and got a couple more hits then hooked into a lunker eight-inch smallmouth.
Even though they were small, it was great having all the action on the topwater lures.
The next morning, I went out to the same area and didn't get anything with the topwaters. Not a rise or a strike or anything. It was like at McCoy's Ferry the week before where I caught three fish in one area at night then got nothing the next morning using the same lures
I biked the trail down river after that, not with fishing rods but just to maybe find something that looked a little better. Just past mile marker 69 were two trails that lead down to a dam of rocks, and after the dam it looked like deeper water, i.e. you couldn't see the bottom two or three out from shore. Only problem is that this is likely where EVERYBODY fishes from shore, like some of the trails I found upriver the day before where there were hippie communes bathing in the river or someone letting his dog splash around and scare away fish.
Just past mile marker 68, I found another trail that led down to where there were a few exposed rocks just out from shore. Next time I will go here and maybe try and catch a walleye as the sun is going down!
Total fish caught through May: 46 (27 smallmouth -- two at 15", one 14" and four 12", 6 bluegill, 5 rainbows, 3 failfish, 2 largemouth, 2 channel cats, 1 crappie).
June 3: Little Patuxent River (Guilford Road). It rained hard two days before, and it had been raining light but steady ever since. Driving over the river the day before, it was really high but checking americanwhitewater.org today, the water had gone way down. I drove over the river once and it did look like it was almost back to normal albeit very muddy.
I decided to hit the regular Guilford Road area and use a Rapala Shadow Rap and the Rebel Pop-R that had the smallmouth in a frenzy Saturday night. I didn't know what to expect since I had never fished the river in these conditions.
First stop was the "hot spot" which looks really fishy and have numerous rises at lures but never actually caught anything. Both lures didn't get any action. No bites, no rises that I could see, no nothing.
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| 12.5-inch smallmouth. |
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| Smallmouth measuring just over 15 inches. |
Anyway, I caught four more smallmouth but nothing over eight inches. Still fun to catch the little ones, like the one that as soon as it was hooked went firing out of the water like a missile from a submarine.I caught eight smallmouth fishing Antietam Creek in April, but that was over two days. This might be my best day catching fish since ... I don't know when.
Obviously, I'm liking the Shadow Raps. Ten fish in less than a week with seven being smallmouth, and two were my biggest smallmouth of the year. I'm hoping that there's something bigger (and not a snakehead) lurking in the Little Patuxent.
And speaking of snakeheads, there have been reports on the Maryland DNR Angler's Log of people catching the invasive fish on the Little Patuxent. I'm surprised I haven't run into any.
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