Mr. Whiskers returns and you will never guess what happened to him

"oh hai! my name iz mr wiskers!"

Sitting by the campfire on Saturday night at along Potomac River, Karen said, "You haven't caught a catfish in awhile."

Pondering that for a bit, I couldn't remember the last time Mr. Whiskers found me. Probably our 2020 road trip where we fished Lewis and Clark Lake (Missouri River) on the Nebraska-South Dakota border. (I don't write this blog for its tens of views -- I write it so I can "remember" stuff like this.)

This is foreshadowing.

Sunday morning, waking bright and early, ambling down from our campsite to wade in the Potomac River, before I even stepped foot in the water, I spotted a wee catfish cruising around a rock.

More foreshadowing.

After about 45 minutes casting a Cabela's swimbait and a River2Sea Whopper Plopper, I didn't have a bite. But my persistence rewarded me with a hard strike after firing the swimbait toward a dark formation of submerged rocks in the middle of the river. This was an actual smallmouth bass that looked to be around 12 inches.

Smallmouth bass clearing the area before Mr. Whiskers showed up.

With only one other bite the entire time, I glanced at the fish watch and saw it had been almost two hours since dipping my toes in the river. Figuring maybe only another five or 10 minutes before heading back to the campsite, I made a few more casts. Again making long casts with the swimbait near the middle of the river, something grabbed on. The fish wallowed on the surface, and I could see that distinctive dorsal fin -- catfish.

It was a good "eatin' size" so I decided to do just that -- keep it for fileting! Catfish is among my favorite freshwater fish to eat. Walleye > perch > catfish. Although I haven't had crappie or sunfish for a long, long time.

This was also in the general area where a catfish stole a Whopper Plopper a few years ago. Who needs chicken livers when you can use swimbaits and topwater lures?!

That catfish and the smallmouth weren't the only fish I caught over the weekend. 

After arriving at the campsite on Saturday, I went upriver and caught a 12-inch smallmouth on the same flavor of Cabela's swimbait that would land Mr. Whiskers and another 12-inch smallmouth the next day. However, a smallmouth that was around 16 inches missed a picture-taking opportunity when the line snapped just as I was about ready to "lip" the fish. The fish put up a good tussle and had briefly burrowed into the rocky bottom, and the line frayed at the knot. "Snap!" and the fish was gone.

First fish of the weekend, a 12-inch smallmouth bass.

I also had a few more misses Saturday, but those fish merely unhooked themselves.

The Whopper Plopper yielded a couple blowups (which I think was the same fish) Saturday at dusk. My gut told me topwaters would be killing it since the river was so low and clear, but the fish thought otherwise.

Next up is our annual roadtrip with a date set again with RainyDaze Guide Service on Rainy Lake bordering Minnesota and Canada. We fished with them first in 2019 and then again in 2021. They have been posting pictures on their Facebook page of beast walleye and northern pike, so hopefully there are some left when we get there!

Bonus content:

Nah, you guys can have that spot.

Mr. Whiskers was rewarded as dinner.

Sunrise on the Potomac.

Two-foot long rainbows are actually pretty big

 

First fish of the year, a monster rainbow trout!

I was not expecting my first fishing trip of the year involving a monster rainbow trout, but here we are.

I decided to hit the Little Patuxent River this morning in the usual stretch and try out Bass Pro Shops Mean-Eye Swimmers (2-1/4") for the first time as well as a new two-piece Daiwa Tatula XT spinning rod (maybe the best $100 rod on the market).

First time using BPS Mean-Eye Swimmers.

As I was wandering down the river, a little movement to my right near the water caught my eye. It was a large, dark animal that I thought for a split second was a dog. As I turned my head to get a better look, the creature ambled down to the water, and I could clearly see a flat tail -- a beaver! I saw what I am sure was a mink a few years ago on the Little Patuxent, but never a beaver.

The black blob in the center is the beaver paddling
away to mess around at Metzger's Field

I made a stop upriver from my usual hot spot and made some casts with the Mean Eye Swimmer. It has a more subtle action compared to the Reaction Innovations Little Dipper I usually use for swimbaits. Just the rear tail paddled in the water as opposed to the oscillations Little Dippers produce.

On the fifth or sixth cast, I tossed the Mean Eye (shad pattern) near a rock protruding from the surface, turned the handle on the reel two or three times and WHAM! Wake me up before you go go, a big fish was on! It thrashed to the surface, and I could tell it was too long to be a smallmouth bass. Maybe a carp?

As I reeled in some more and the fish again came to the surface, I saw the horizontal pink band running down the fish's side -- a rainbow trout! This wasn't a little dink; this fish was BIG.

I was standing on the river bank about two to three feet above the water and came to a realization -- what was I going to do? This fish was probably five pounds, and I couldn't just heave it from the water. So I slid down the bank into the water. I didn't have a net, and the trout was a little too big to scoop with one hand while holding my rod in the other.

I held the rod tip up so the fish's head was out of the water, took a picture, then removed the swimbait -- thankfully it wasn't deeply embedded in the top of its mouth. The fish then rolled belly up, so I grabbed the fish's tail and turned it over. After pulling and pushing the fish a few times to get water flowing through the gills, I released my grip, and the trout slowly swam away.

I was stoked/shocked/whatever for about five minutes just trying to process what happened. I didn't measure the fish but eye-balled it with the Daiwa rod next to it as I was trying to revive it. When I got home, I pulled out a tape measurer -- the trout was 24 inches at least. Easily the biggest fish I'd caught on this river eclipsing the 16-inch smallmouth from five years ago.

This trout likely didn't grow this size in the Little Patuxent. When Maryland DNR stocks trout around the state early in the year, they release trout in varying sizes with a few trophy sized fish in the mix. So this rainbow likely grew up in a hatchery before being released to the wild. It feels a little like cheating -- I'd rather catch another 16-inch smallmouth again from its legit home turf.

After colleting myself, I moved down through a couple more spots. Finally caught a run-of-the-mill Little Patuxent smallmouth on the same Mean Eye swimbait that tricked the trout. A few casts later, had another one hooked -- likely in the 10- to 12-inch range -- that clamped the lure just as it hit the water.  Then it did an SDR (short distance release) just before I could pull it out of the river. Both smallmouth were in the same general area, tailwaters behind a rather fast flow through a rocky section.

Now that's more like it -- a cookie cutter smallmouth.

My other rod had a Heddon Zara Puppy tied on, and it wasn't getting any action.

Nothing other than a couple nibbles on the Mean Eyes before I donated them to the river. Switched over to the usual Reaction Innovations Little Dipper and had a couple sniffs at that, but I think they were timid sunfish.

The Mean Eyes are $3.50, so it sucks to lose them, as opposed to a Little Dipper swimbait, which comes in a pack of 10 for $7 or so. The Mean Eyes are a little more durable plastic, though, so as long as you don't snag them, they'd last longer than a Little Dipper. They each behave differently, so it's almost an apples-to-oranges comparison anyway.

The Daiwa Tatula XT rod seemed to do the trick. It's fairly light and had good sensitivity through the rod as the swimbaits skimmed rocks or the river bottom. Or hooked fish! Definitely a bargain at $99 (and I used a $25 gift card from Susquehanna Fishing Tackle that Karen got me for Christmas, so the rod was even less).

In addition to the beaver, I also saw three separate hatchling turtles -- that appeared to be snappers based on their long tails and knobby shells -- swimming in the water. I had never seen turtles in the Little Patuxent either.

Little Little Patuxent turtle.