Early summer solid May 17, 2002
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Midweek fishing held up for several more strong trips in the middle Potomac. The
Potomac flow is moderating and clearing slowly, though the high and dirty water is
probably part of our success story. The Shenandoah is clearer and lower but still in
an excellent spring state.
The fish weren't as compressed and accessible as they were in the weekend but still numerous and willing for spin anglers, though the aggressiveness of the bite was reduced by Thursday, when fish would mouth and drop lures or take with less violence and sensation than before. Many tail-grab situations led to a lower take-to-boat ratio as feeding activity slacked off, perhaps because the fish were fed up--many were visibly packed with forage. As the water clears, the fish are clearly reinhabiting the main-river structures and abandoning the bank holds they'd occupied during the high water.
Some spawning activity is still visible on the Potomac, with larger hen fish coming in with frayed tails and that harried mom-to-be look. A 20 inch 4 pound fish came from the Potomac in my boat Thursday that may have dropped eggs but still showed signs of bedding activity; the 21 inch fish I took in Brunswick on Wednesday was lanky and clearly spawned out with no visible wear-and-tear besides a wound from a heron or cormorant hit. Several other fish had similar dings and dents.
The most encouraging sign is the prevalence of beefy midrange fish in the 9- to 14-inch range. Many of them are as chunky as any Susky fish and they are hard-fighting and ornery. The 14-17 inch class is represented but not in perfect proportion, suggesting an explanation for the thinner fishing of the past two years. Enough really big fish are around to offset that, and by August the river should have a good density of very nice smallmouth.
Bottom-oriented lures worked best; the fly guys had a tough time of it. Tubes were the prime choice but not in the usual approach. A pause or hesitation with the lure in the bottom area was important to trigger strikes, and many of those strikes were subtle. A good sense of tension allowed our anglers to connect to many fish that gave no distinct indication of a strike. We saw a lot of upward-oriented feeding activity on what appears to be a tremendous base of baitfish, especially shiners. I took fish on Zoom Flukes and buzzbaits though the water temps and clarity won't really suggest a shift to those techniques for a few more days.
Wading is still out, both for temperature and level/clarity, but that time is soon. The river at 4 or 5 (HF gauge) is nothing to mess around with--witness the red fiberglass canoe that was pancaked around one of the 340 bridge piers near Sandy Hook yesterday.
Dave
High Water, Hot Fishing! May 14, 2002
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Half a dozen trips on our stretch of the Potomac yielded very strong fishing this past
week despite high water and changeable weather. John Hayes led the way with over 100 fish
on a trip last week, and Motes and Frondorf did equally well over the weekend. The
controlling question is: Where did all these fish come from?
The past two seasons were disappointing in any historical sense.
Though each had its strong points, and some excellent fishing and big fish occurred, the
consistent fun and productive mid-range of smallmouth seemed rare on our stretch. Well,
they're back. We caught a wide variety of fish from 6" up to 19" this past week,
with a normal distribution of sizes. The fish were vigorous, beautifully colored, and fat.
They were where they were supposed to be and they hit hard. Hoowa!
This despite very high water. We usually don't even
consider it when the river is above 5 at Harper's Ferry (not that we've had many chances
lately; recent rises to over 10' are nearly the first in a long time.) Frondorf and Motes
fished Saturday in water that approached 6. I did better than any trip in nearly two
years, and that with one experienced and one stone novice angler. On Sunday an experienced
client caught over 60 fish with five over 16", and that with thunderstorm delays and
an early stop. Furthermore we caught fish in the ugliest conditions. The 6' at HF is
entirely due to the Potomac, which was high and muddy while the Shenandoah has been only
moderately high and stained rather than dirty. We still caught good numbers and sizes of
fish in the Potomac in the lower Needles and the Big Holes by pushing up into the
flood-holds and bonking them on the head with tubes and pig-and-jigs, and in the wash-outs
by crossing the current seams with big light-colored spinnerbaits.
Judging by the
appearance of the larger fish, the Potomac fish haven't spawned yet, though it may be that
they got that job over with during the warm weather in March and early April. The fish
below the 340 seem to be divided; the larger fish are slim and postspawn-looking, though
we didn't see any with the usual spawning signs. Many of the mid- to smaller-range adult
fish have clearly not spawned yet. We caught excellent numbers of 10 to 15 inch fish, and
all were chunky and energetic.
Below the confluence the fishing was very strong in all the usual
areas, despite water clarity and height. This is not surprising given the fact that high
and muddy water is generally much more problematic to anglers than fish but in light of
the thin fishing we've had in the past two seasons it is very gratifying. Dark tubes were
the primary tool but any lure, including the buzzbait, would take fish. As usual bottom
character was important--find the chunk rock, find the fish--and bank areas were
productive around current holds and wood when the water was up. By Sunday when the water
fell over a foot the fish had fallen back into more traditional and more mid-river haunts
but it plumb don't matter. They're there and the usual process of probe and think will
produce fish for anybody who works at it.
Ironically we saw a lot of anglers missing the bite entirely by
overreacting to the conditions on Saturday and Sunday. My client took a 19" and an
18" in nice little pockets while jetboats full of tournament-drunk patch-boys took
turns hammering the big obvious holes right next door. They'd roar into the pocket and
tube it for a few minutes, take a dink or two, and roar on to the next one. Having plenty
of water to run in makes you neglect to read the water as carefully. They were probably
pushing the good fish out to the secondary spots where we found them with careful
bottom-probing cross-current casts.
As fields and forests green up and aquatic vegetation
spreads, the water will clear faster. The big water has flushed the bottom substrates and
rearranged the drift timber and blown out two years' worth of spluge (and may have stocked
our stretch with a bunch of upstream-bred bass). They're rowdy and heavy and spunky and
with water temps nudging 70 they're going to want flies very very soon. Time to go!
Dave
April Toughness 4/22/02
Several float trips on our and other stretches in the past weeks have been hit-or-miss, with the anticipation level far above the success level (and the river levels, too). Most recently Frondorf, Larkin, Motes, and friend Richard Wyly clawed down the Shenandoah to White House stretch of the 'doah in tough cold and headwinds and a painfully low river. Smaller smallmouth and the largemouths common in that stretch (and one beautiful but, alas, puny muskie) were the payoff. Most smallies came on the fly on CK Baitfish and the CK Crayfish fly whose name escapes me now--Richard, remind me. Larger smallmouth were very hinky and not visible in the ultra-clear and ultra-low conditions, though later in the day Wyly took a slender 16-incher and a few other grownup fish came in one stretch. Fish were hunkered down in deep creases and shoreline slots and were very hesitant to present themselves.
The Potomac popped up to over 9' for a while and, we hope, sluiced out a lot of the winter (and fall and summer and spring) smuch that has accumulated in the clear, low conditions that have obtained for about as long as we can remember. Hayes and Motes fished in big wind on 3/21 and, despite good conditions and tolerable (mid-50's) water temperatures caught only six or eight smallmouth (and the obligatory carp or two). One of John's fish was a beautiful stout 19" fish that pressed three pounds and will add half-a-pound in three weeks. Dark tubes and jig-and-pigs in 1/4 in black/blue and darker greens and browns--typical April techniques--were the terminal ticket. Gravels and mid-river structure was where most fish came but the day was the very front of a sharp rise and a cold front with some ungodly wind so it's anybody's guess why totals were so low. Could just be the Potomac's typical slow start.
First Blood on the Fly 3/7/02
Butch Murphy took several smallies and a big largemouth on dark heavily weighted clousers last Thursday while fishing from the sled with John Hayes. The pair fished from Brunswick up to the Confluence. Fish hit well on clousers, mostly green, and tubes. Johnny also took another big carp on a tube.
Two nice rains have added to our hopes; .3 inches fell in the Shepherdstown area, but the river didn't react at all...still painfully low for this time of year, which will accelerate and endanger the spawn. Spring will come early this year!
First Blood 2/25/02 Back to Main Page
Picture this: you're hammering downriver at about 25 knots relative to the rocks. The air is about 40 degrees; the sun is bright, you have the scent of smallies on your fingers. Of course, you're terrified because the water's only about six inches deep and you're sitting in the front seat of a raft that looks like it's one step away from the Midnight Death boats the Navy Seals use to get ashore in hostile places, which it is. If the boat comes to a sudden stop, which seems likely, your position as hood ornament is ideal for maximum ejection distance. Ahead is the Sawbuck, the ledge that stretches seamlessly across the river above Lander. The pilot of this contraption is John Hayes, son of admirals and for all I know a distant relation of John Paul Jones. He looks like John Paul Jones at this moment, cigar in his teeth, WWI flying ace smile on his lips, as he hauls the boat in wide slipping arcs with the steering stick, occasionally tinkering with the jack plate to coax another half-inch of clearance or another half-knot of speed out of the engine.
A jet boat is only a jet boat when it's up on a plane. If it's not on a plane it's a sluggish, inefficient, very expensive bin full of kinetic energy. This however is not actually a jet boat--it's a jet raft, which is an entirely different thing. We hammer toward the Sawbuck, which from this angle is beginning to look like the rocky shore of a pond. We got up it this morning, but running upstream is a different matter; you have the current holding you back relative to the rocks, which makes it easy to stay planing and pick your line. Downstream you have to put the hammer down and pick your line on the fly, with bad light because you've stayed out too late and the increased difficulty of picking a line through the rocks from the upstream angle. Did I mention that the river is at historic lows? Did I mention that twenty knots of NW blew a few more critical inches out of the stretch?
A jet raft, in this case, is a pretty amazing boat. The pontoon-style setup, with complicated sponsons and lifting bodies on the tubes, actually funnels and compresses the water under the engine shoe to give added clearance. The tubes give the boat a wide footprint and displace very little water, so up on a plane we need maybe five inches before contact. The good news is that the tubes are slick and flexible so even contact is no tragedy; the boat will skid over wet rock, though the shoe of the jet takes a beating. So our jet raft, with its big blonde hood ornament, comes zooming down the river toward the Sawbuck.
The hood ornament can't see any hope for a clean passage and, for the thirtieth time this day, says a prayer and puckers another notch. But John is John Paul Jones and he tweaks his controls a bit and slews us around a ledge, corners off through a gap, cuts it back again like a slalom skier, and hits the skinniest of slots at about twenty-five miles an hour. The boat shimmies a bit, the lower unit clunks briefly, but we lose no speed as we're through and he cranks it down again. I look back at Mark Frondorf in the back seat and we both shake our heads. Hoo-yah. Kings of the river.
We covered a good twelve miles of river, from Point of Rocks to Miller's hole. We found willing bass in exactly one place and caught six or eight stout fish to seventeen inches on tubes. John foul-hooked one sucker and one catfish--the rough fish are packed into the low-water holes. And I fair-hooked and landed a carp that boat-estimated at 25 pounds and towed us all over Miller's hole. All fish came on tubes fished slowly in current edges near wintering holes. Water temperature was in the high thirties and low forties all day; sky high blue, wind brisk NW to light NE by afternoon.
Longer photoperiod and warmer temperatures should stimulate movement onto feeding flats from winter holes in the next weeks. Fish are likely to be stressed from the low water though the fish we caught were uniformly stout and active with no signs of sores or other trouble. River levels are critically low and water quality is probably badly compromised by depletion and by proportions of input and outgo to flow, most notably the recent debacle with the Hagerstown treatment plant. We badly need a scouring high-water event, preferably over 10 feet. Pray for rain.
Dave Motes