Cold fronts suck

So the recent drop in temperature really hurt the fishing.  Or at least it did for me this weekend.  I knew it would be tough but wasn't sure how tough.  The water temps in the Potomac last week were in the mid 50's.  That's usually April temps.  But then we get hit with snow, and cold, mid winter conditions and the water temps have slowly dropped to 44 now according to USGS.  That kind of change isn't good.  If it were a steady 44, sure no problem.  We were on the upper Potomac yesterday looking for musky and walleye.  Even had live bait and completely skunked.  Here's another scenic picture that usually only gets shared when there are no fish.  I mean zero fish.  We took it on the chin yesterday.  Fished for nearly 10 hours with nothing to show for it.  Put in a lot of driving trying to find better water conditions as the river was slightly murky from rains up river earlier in the week.  But the water clarity significantly improved as we were there.  That wasn't the reason, the cold was.  But why no walleye?  I think partially because I kept switching from musky to walleye and didn't concentrate well enough on one species but also because of the sudden drop in temperature.  I thought a few days of steady cold would be considered "stable" in the fish's minds but that didn't happen. 

John did catch a steering wheel from an old boat or possibly even a bus.  When he hooked it I even grabbed the net as it was kind of "swimming".  Well, when you try and drag a 20" steering wheel up to the surface it's going to spin some.  That got us both excited for sure.  No picture of the steering wheel but John did keep it for some reason and I was tripping over it all day. 

I also got out on Saturday afternoon but only for about 20 minutes.  It was mostly a recon trip to see if the herring were still around and they were not.  I mean no where.  Not in the big holes in the tributaries, not the riffles, nothing.  They must have dropped back into the river and taken up refuge in the deeper water.  But if they try and hide there, so will the predators.  It has me thinking there could be some decent fishing if you look deep enough. 

Anyway, I hit up a warm water discharge for about 20 minutes with the fly rod.  I caught one of the largest crappie I've ever seen.  14 inches of true giant deformed looking crappie, on a 3wt fly rod even.  Good fun.  Might have to do that again.