Furlough Fishin 7-15-2013

Conor with 1st Bass of the Day

Conor and I were looking to target large-mouth so we loaded up Clifford and hit the water on a Potomac feeder recommended by Scott at 0900.  It took us about 25 minutes to find the channel Scott had noted and then we paddled upstream for another 20-min or so as the creek began to feel more like a wooded river and less like a tidally influenced feeder.  In retrospect we should have continued upstream even further as that's where the best fishing turned out to be, but the tide was flowing out and the paddle upstream as the creek narrowed was no joke. Our furthest point up-stream was marked by a large tree trunk spanning the creek from right to left 2/3 of the way across the river and an old duck blind just beyond it. 

Yellow Perch!

The creek here was sandy and curvacious with good channeling and holes along the banks.  We immediately caught +13 inch bass for 30-minutes or so as we were in a hot area. This hot area last about 150 yards and then petered out as the stream widened and swallowed.  We continued to pick up the odd fish and Conor caught a yellow-perch to boot.  Thorough the day we had success on a yellow-jacket popper in size-8 fished off a 5-weight, a white popper in size 6 fished off my 6wt and a yellow beetle-spin fished on an ultra light spinning rod.  Along the way we saw numerous marauding bass in the hydrilla, ospreys and bald eagles.  We were off the water by 1300.  All and all a good day but me lesson was to go upstream even further!

What Orvis guys do when they're not working...

John and I were both off today so we did what you'd expect Orvis guys to do.... we went fishing.

John had his Access 9' 5wt.

.... it worked well.

Using mostly Booglebug Poppers, and occasionally adding on a Woolly Bugger as a dropper, both largemouth bass and scrappy bluegills put plenty of bend in the rod.

John with a nice largemouth

In one particular stretch, John pulled out 6 bass on 8 casts!

I had some decent luck as well using my Access 9'6 wt.

A size# 4 blue popper seemed to work best.  The bass were holding in classic "fishy"water --- in & around logjams, undercut banks, weed edges, deeper runs.....







Between the two of us.... more than 25 bass and 35 panfish were caught.... and released. 

Largemouth with attitude!

Kanes Creek Scouting Trip 8 July

Entrance to Kanes Creek

Scott was fishing Pohick Creek with John today so I tried to match the water (as he described it) in Pohick Creek and found Kanes Creek off Belmont Bay.  The put-in is at the 'car-top-launch' in Mason Neck State Park. I put in rigged up with 6wt and turned immediately to the left for the 1/2 mile paddle to Kanes Creek.  The tide was heading out at enough of a clip to sway the aquatic grasses and the sun was high at 0930.  There was decent structure on the Mason Neck Side and I only through in a couple times as I was trying to get to wadeable headwaters of Kanes Creek. Unfortunately the further I paddled up the creek the heavier and higher the hydrilla came and the canoe started slow in the weed.  With the tide still heading out I was fearful of heading too far up the proverbial

Bald Eagles Nest in Kanes Creek

creek as I didn't know if I could get back out. The furthermost I got up the creek was about 3/4 of a mile to twins signs saying, "No Trespassing, Sensitive Wildlife Management Area" as I headed out of the creek I called Duber to see if he had any suggestions as Scott indicated that he had fished here before.  He said that he had had success on the Mason Neck side of the mouth hitting the structure along the bank. I did the same and saw several large bass in cuts in the hydrilla and several monster snakehead but the sun was high and the fish were not interested in my size 6 white, black or blue poppers.  As I floated with the tide out of the creek I ran into one nice Large mouth who was happy to play.  It was a good scout trip, but with the heavy, choking weeds this was not the wadeable water I had hoped for.

Mainely Mackerel

After having been largely skunked on our charter Henry (in particular) was not ready to give up the ghost and the prospect of landing a striper within a stones throw of our cottage was to much. Henry rented an 18' Whaler for the day on July 3rd and we hit the water at 0600 with some tips from locals as to where to target.  After some failed casting and scouting...eureka the fish finder lit up with fish just as the York River opened into the Atlantic. Henry caught the first Mackeral on a 6" minnow w dual trebles. The lure was about half the size of the fish! We decided that action with these feisty fellas was much better than casting practice and fished them for about two hours. After another fish on his medium heavy inshore spinning rod Henry ditched it and joined me and fished primarily with my TFO 11.5 6/7 switch. I had added 15' of 90 grain sinking line so it took the tandem clouser rig I right down into the fish.
We steered circuits over the fish at  idle speed so the flies settled about 2' under the water in a slow troll. I used an old Orvis streamline 904 8wt with a shorter 60 grain sink tip and it did the job just fine.
Between the two of us we probably caught 30 mackerel and only stopped as lunch and family called. Later that day Henry did catch a 28" striper on a 6" white sluggo thrown into a bait-all just off shore from our Cape Nettick cottage. He was thrilled and Izzy and Liz were with him for the catch. One of my lessons learned for next year was to bring more rods to account for larger stripers and smaller mackerel. A 5 at would have made those mackerel (tuna family) feel like monsters.

Summer Bassin' on Poppers

After having some success the previous day and with knee surgery 6 days on the horizon, I jumped at the chance to do some more bass fishing with my friend Ryan this morning.  We started wading about 8:30 a.m. and were soon into lots of fish.  Ryan was using an Orvis Clearwater 865-4 and I had an Orvis Access 906-4 SW in hand.  We were both using poppers -- size #6 white for Ryan and size #4 blue for me.  It really didn't seem to matter as the fish were aggressive.

We caught lots of small largemouth bass in the  7-10 inch range.  Though small in stature, they fought and jumped like citation size bucketmouths. 
We also landed a few dozen feisty and beefy bluegills that really could put a bend in both our 5 and 6 wt rods.

The fish were lying in all suspected locations.... logjams, undercut banks,  deep runs.  It's nice when you think a fish should be in a certain spot, make the perfect cast, and are rewarded with a hookup. 

... that happened a lot today.

These bass were the first Ryan had caught on a fly rod.  It was pretty exciting watch him quickly pick up the casting and the techniques needed to hook up and land these fish.

..... as I like to do, when it was time to pack it in and call it a morning, we both had to catch a fish on our last cast. 

I saved my best for last. 

All told, we caught well over 50 fish today with about 20-25 largemouth bass between the two of us.

A Good Day!

Stripers or lack thereof!

Conor, Henry and I met Capt Dave Guerard at Wells Harbor on June 26th for our annual striper charter. The tides were at their astronomical extreme and we had to jump out of the boat to lift it out of the harbor at low tide.

Leaving the harbor between the two jetties we immediately saw striper working bait about 10 feet off the southern jetty. I hooked up on my 4th cast and Henry quickly thereafter. The fish were smallish, about 20 inches and we thought we were in for many more so we worked them quickly and didn't take great pictures. Little did we know that these would be our only stripers for the day. My hookup came on a 7 inch pencil popper and Henry's on a 6 inch sluggo. After leaving the channel we proceeded to hit structure and rips up the lemme bunk and back with only a few follows and sightings. We has a great time but of course were disappointed not to have had better luck. I was particularly disappointed that conor did not get on any fish. 

Big bass at Pohick Bay

Whenever you have the proverbial "fish on" on your first cast, often times it's a bad omen, and you can go hours waiting for that next strike.  I've been down that road too many times.  But when you have "fish on"after the 2nd and 3rd casts... it usually means you've found something and an awesome day is in the making.  Such was my outing on Pohick Bay this morning.

Using size #4 poppers, I was targeting big bass. Over the course of about 3 hours, I brought to hand about 10 largemouth -- all well over 2 pounds.

There's one behemoth with a blue #4 popper that I never brought to hand, but suspect he was north of 5 pounds.



I shot some video, but it resembles a fly fishing video meets the Blair Witch Project.  More work to do on that front.

Not the same fish !