This morning, I fished over 3 hours around most of Weems Creek from the kayak. My goal today was to see if Weems had any pickerel this year (I have been unsuccessful at catching them in Weems for the past few winters).


The trip was a success. Another kayak angler (Ed) joined me -- each of us caught 5 pickerel, and Ed told me he had several other hookups that never made it to boatside. My first fish, caught less than 100 yds from the ramp on the third cast of the morning was among my smallest of the year. I measured it on the Hawg Trough at 10.5" -- a real hammer handle. My largest of the day was 18" -- not bragworthy, but still fun to catch.

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I plan to enter these into the new bragging rights leaderboards that I set up yesterday. If you have not seen these yet, take a look -- they are Sticky threads at the top of the SRRKC board.


We covered a lot of stretches of shoreline. We worked most of the way to the back of the creek and then all the way to the mouth. Some of the areas where I wanted to try were covered with skim ice. Although our kayaks could easily plow through the thin ice, we could not get a bait into the water through the ice and had to bypass those locations.


All the pickerel were caught in areas where I typically find perch during the summer. I guess that is not a big surprise -- if the shoreline has good habitat, some fish is likely to use it. Ed had one small zone where he caught several pickerel in a row. All of my fish were isolated fish caught far from each other.


I am really pleased that the pickerel are making a comeback in Weems. I anticipate that I will return to the Severn on Sat morning and explore a different tributary (possibly College Creek or Carrs Creek)