Salmo trutta
08-04-2009, 10:08 AM
We were fishing the Potomac yesterday in Washington DC waters. I had a friend visiting and wanted to show him around some. Knowing full well that we weren’t getting in on the early bite and therefore there probably wouldn’t be a bite. So be it. We had a wedding to go to on Friday and that combined with the Saturday’s activities, we were both still a little slow.
We had 83-84 degree water temperature in the middle of the River. We tried Fort McNair hoping for schoolie stripers, ran down to Alexandria looking for smallmouth. There we found some at the power plant but the water temp there was 88 degrees! We had one nice smallmouth at the outflow but lost it as we were lifting it into the water.
Ran across the river to the poop plant. There was muddy water in the main stem but gin clear at the outflow, minus the small specs of toilet paper or what ever else it was. Water temp was down to 80 here. Then we saw them. Tons of fish. Okay, nothing new right? But there were three fish in particular laying on the bottom in 11 feet of water hugging the wing dam placed at a 45 dgree angle to the current of the discharge. These fish were massive. Yes, water magnifies things but the first thing my well experienced fishing friend said was… “There’s a 20 pound largemouth down there”!! Yea, I thought. It’s a striper. No, it really was a largemouth. Massive as can be but 20 pounds? More like 10, like the one in the BPS tank, maybe even bigger and there were three of them but one was clearly bigger than the others. Put it this way, there were a good number of large carp and quilbacks down there and this Largemouth was bigger than all of them.
Of course we tried everything. Drop shot rigs with as light as 6 pound line and three inch sluggos, to giant swim baits to jigging spoons, gulp to wacky worms. I’ll admit, I’m not much of a LM bass fishermen and knew full well that these fish have seen every trick in the book. But that was something else to see that many fish and fish of that caliber so close to home. It almost made me want to pick up and start LM bass fishing again.
We had 83-84 degree water temperature in the middle of the River. We tried Fort McNair hoping for schoolie stripers, ran down to Alexandria looking for smallmouth. There we found some at the power plant but the water temp there was 88 degrees! We had one nice smallmouth at the outflow but lost it as we were lifting it into the water.
Ran across the river to the poop plant. There was muddy water in the main stem but gin clear at the outflow, minus the small specs of toilet paper or what ever else it was. Water temp was down to 80 here. Then we saw them. Tons of fish. Okay, nothing new right? But there were three fish in particular laying on the bottom in 11 feet of water hugging the wing dam placed at a 45 dgree angle to the current of the discharge. These fish were massive. Yes, water magnifies things but the first thing my well experienced fishing friend said was… “There’s a 20 pound largemouth down there”!! Yea, I thought. It’s a striper. No, it really was a largemouth. Massive as can be but 20 pounds? More like 10, like the one in the BPS tank, maybe even bigger and there were three of them but one was clearly bigger than the others. Put it this way, there were a good number of large carp and quilbacks down there and this Largemouth was bigger than all of them.
Of course we tried everything. Drop shot rigs with as light as 6 pound line and three inch sluggos, to giant swim baits to jigging spoons, gulp to wacky worms. I’ll admit, I’m not much of a LM bass fishermen and knew full well that these fish have seen every trick in the book. But that was something else to see that many fish and fish of that caliber so close to home. It almost made me want to pick up and start LM bass fishing again.