Ferris Bueller's Day Of Dinks

BFOD -- Big Fish of the Day! An 11" 
smallmouth bass!  OK, maybe it was 10.5 inches.
Or 10.  But it was HUGE!

I haven't been fishing much the last year or so because I'm trying to get my autocross Camaro running.  It actually runs and makes #Merica noises but hasn't been reliable, even failing while trying to load it on the trailer the Friday night before an autocross. Even routine maintenance on the tow vehicle has been a chore.  Work the past couple of months has been a huge grind stapled to a desk answering phones, so like Ferris Bueller, since life moves pretty fast, I took a "sick" day for fishing this Friday morning.  No phones.  No people.  No stupid cars.

FFOD: First fish of the day, a surprise
largemouth bass.  This seems to be
the ideal size on the little Maryland 
rivers -- nothing over 10 inches.

Weighing the options, I decided on the Patapsco River, which I haven't fished in [searches blog] five years.  Parking in this area on the weekend is usually sketchy, but since it was a Friday, I was hoping it wouldn't be a problem.

Sure enough, easy pickings.  And of course nobody else was fishing.  

It looked to be ideal topwater time, but the trusty Zara Puppy didn't get much attention at all today.  The other trusty lure -- Reaction Innovations Little Dipper*-- had the little smallies swing batter batter batter swing.  

The water was really clear and low.  I basically waded up the middle of the river casting to spots close to shore on both sides.  A protruding rock here, shaded area from over-hanging trees there, some fast ripples.  Fish to the left of me, fish to the right, here I am stuck in the middle.

One previous time I was in this section [searches blog, can't find a writeup], I had encounters with some meaty smallmouth, but not this time.  I landed six smallmouth bass and one largemouth, and they were all of the dink variety.  Really soft bite on the swimbait.  One smallmouth might have been 11 inches.  Maybe.  Didn't even see any big fish but a lot of small bass were cruising the water, and had three or four fish that got off before pulling them out of the water..

I'm pretty sure I haven't fished here since at least the last flood that devastated the area and since the Bloede Dam was removed, so I'm not sure if the smallmouth population is in a recovery mode or what.  The terrain seemed a lot like the Middle Patuxent River -- flat water and not many hiding areas -- so maybe it is what it is.

* Seriously, follow this link, choose whatever of the 31 flavors of swimbaits you like and fish them.