Opportunistic Fisherman

Been busy but managed to get out on the water quite a bit lately.

First,

Friday, June 13, 2014 John C and I hit the Potomac in DC. We received an insane amount of rain over the last few days basically decimating the Potomac river watershed. But I had a plan and an idea that parts of DC would still be fishable. There was a wall of mud mid channel but gravelly point at the boat ramp looked great. The Main river had zero visibility. Looked for mulberry trees but the ones I thought would be good were not ripe yet? When others are almost done? No carp but found clear water in the Anacostia River and one other place and bailed striped bass almost every cast up to 22 inches. Most about 18". Good fun in the final hour. There's still fishable water when the main river is brown poo!

Took a break from fishing on Saturday. I think… Gabe, my oldest left for boy scout summer camp.

Sunday was father’s day and I convinced my wife and son to go on a float trip with me. Except the local waters were too high and muddy but I thought Antietam Creek might be fishable with the USGS graph reading in the neighborhood of 350 cfs I think it was. This was an exploratory trip. We put in at Devils Back Bone and floated down to the Burnside Bridge take out. The bridge where over 600 men died on in a single day during the civil war. The picture shows the bridge in the back ground. One would think there would be a better way to flank the Confederate solders at the top of the ridge than run everyone through the pinch point to certain death. The history was worth the trip even. The float was over 8 miles and we didn’t start till mid day afternoon time. The water was a little turbid but somewhat fishable still. Ryan caught two fish at the put in at Devils Back bone. The same area that is heavily stocked with trout in season. He caught a rock bass and a fall fish in short order. I thought the rest of the trip would be excellent. The creek is full of life. Mayfly nymphs and stone fly nymphs paint every rock in the riffles. Water temps were in the low 60's. Perfect. Rather prolific stream. It should be dynamite right? Well we didn’t catch too many fish but with 8 miles to cover on a canoe and a wife who wanted to get home asap and only wanted to read her book in the front of the canoe meant I had to do most of the maneuvering. It was still a good time. It was remote as could be with very few people on the river. I thought I heard banjos a few times. Mayflies hatched most of the day, some fish responded too. We caught a few small bass and even a small brown trout. Stream bred maybe, miles from the stocked section.

The next day my wife took Ryan to the beach. That meant I had a few days alone to work and fish of course. On Monday after work I wanted to hit the bay bridge pilings. Fought the worse traffic imaginable getting over Severn river. Finally hit the water at 6pm. No current!! Thought tide chart showed strong incoming at 730? Well at 730. It turned on. Bailed mostly 17" fish on the pilings. Found better grade of fish suspended on deeper pilings. Probably caught ten over 20", best 24". Jigging 7 inch white zoom flukes on 3/4oz head did the trick. The bite really came on at sunset. Decent close by fishing… close as when there isn’t any traffic. I didn’t see my bed till after 11pm because I washed the boat afterwards. First time this spring. It was growing things inside it.

Tuesday… June 17, 2014 I hit the Potomac again with John C. This time we opted for somewhere closer to home. The temperatures broke heat records all over the place. The sweat just poured out of us. The kind of miserable Washingtonian summer heat with air thick enough to cut with a knife was upon us. Probably my least favorite time of year. Possibly the worse time of year to go fishing too except this is when most people want to go. So be it. It’s better than sitting on the couch. What we found was one of the thickest, most numerous sulphur mayfly hatch I have probably ever seen! Tens of thousands of bugs filled the air. We literally had hundreds laying on us while we drove the boat. It was almost dark and we still had to wear sunglasses or else we'd go blind! There were so many bugs on the water Id say there were 5 bugs per square foot from Virginia to MD! Pretty spectacular. We were after carp under mulberry trees and had a tough time. We located three trees in close proximity to each other hanging over the water. Probably the same tree where last year John had an excellent day on giant carp munching on berries and willingly taking dry flies. The water is still very off color and more swift than we'd like. Didn't see any carp and only a few rises. I'd suspect the fishing might be better once the water comes down a hair and clears a little. We did have one giant blow up from a musky in an area where I’ve scored before. This tiny scheduled spot is under the radar, tucked away where no one would notice it. But it’s also a mine field of woody debris. The last few years a log had completely cut off access unless you were in a kayak or a very low gunnel boat in low water. But this tree has since washed away. But there are other trees just as large littering the deep slow water making it nearly impossible to cast, yet alone pull a fish out of the area. To make maters worse, the down trees back up a lot of other floating debris such as leaves, sticks, and other lure fouling crap. There are not nearly the numbers down here as there are up river so any encounter with the top predator is always a welcome surprise. The lure I was using mimics a wood duck chick. It has a prop on the rear like an out board and sounds almost similar. I saw one female wood duck the other day with 14 chicks!!! Yes 14. Big bass and musky will cut that to less than half in a week or two. Throwing big top water to heart stopping surface explosions is about as good as it gets. We each took turns casting, respectively allowing the other to get a cast in the same sequence as each other. But this one time maybe John pushed me just right into position. The top raider was turning through the mine field between two enormous down trees when the fish hit. It was like an alligator with gold and bronze sides smashing the lure. No question it was what we were after. I had a rod capable of throwing a cinder block so I stood a good chance of heaving the musky over the tree that was just a foot under the surface. Or so I thought. The fish thrashed once and turned. Just then the top treble hook of the lure gets caught in the darn tree. The fish rolled and was gone. Just like that. John was next up to bat. He was working a surface walk the dog type lure and another surface strike. Then almost simultaneously another surface swirl happened three feet or more from his lure. It was the same fish except that was its tail! The fish was that big that it made the two swirls at the same time as it turned around. This fish is no joke. It was the only fish we encountered all evening but wow was it well worth it. Till next time.

Tight lines,

Jon Griffiths