Mattawoman Meet & Greet

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On June 8th, I attended the June Meet & Greet for the MKF group.  This time I took my friend JC along to give him some relaxing time on the water after some major changes he went through, including a move with his wife.  The weather for the scheduled M&G did not look promising, but we went anyway - after all, weather forecasters don't have a good track record for predicting the weather correctly. 

JC by the launch area.  
This creek is one of my favorite places, for its scenery.

We arrived at Slavin's ramp early in the morning and saw plenty of other kayakers from the group unloading.  We quickly unloaded and hit the water, eager to get into some nice snakeheads.  Well, the excitement kind of wore off after the first several hours of not catching anything.  I did catch a feisty 13 inch largemouth bass while trolling a white chatterbait, but that was it for most of the morning.

My only bass of the day.

The water was pretty high from the rain a couple days earlier, so there were a lot of submerged areas in the lily pads that I could explore.  I even got so bored I thought I'd try fishing while standing up in my kayak.  I was pleasantly surprised by the stability of my 10 foot Wilderness Systems Tarpon 100.  I did spend a good bit of energy and mental power trying to keep my balance instead of fishing, so it wasn't too effective...but it was nice to get off of the seat for a while.  I am liking my Tarpon 100 more and more each time I go out with it - it's light, it's easy to maneuver, has decent speed, and now I can add its stability to the list of advantages.  Now if I can just figure out how to keep it still in current and wind while fishing it'll be perfect.

It was neat to see drops of water on top of the lily pads.  
They looked like sparkling gems from a distance.

Lunch was schedule for noon at Grinder's Seafood, so I stopped my snakehead hunt around 10AM, and anchored up to do some catfishing.  I got to meet a new MKF'er, Jeremy, as I fished next to him.  He was actually the only one to catch a snakehead in the group that I fished with that morning.  I soaked some cooked shrimp in the water while we chatted some, and pulled in several catfish of various species - channel, blue, and some other catfish with an abnormally large head.  A little while later, I met up with JC and we raced back in to beat the rain that started.  We lost.  The forecasted rain finally came, and we were drenched by the time we got back in.

JC and I didn't catch our targeted fish, but we still caught fish.  I caught a largemouth bass and several catfish, while JC ended the day with a channel catfish and a largemouth bass.  We quickly packed up and went to Grinder's for some good food and fun storytelling with the group. It's always a fun time hanging out with the fishing buddies at MKF.

Susquehanna Flats

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After I had my successful trip to the Susquehanna Flats last year, I told my friend Trey that he had to come and join me this year to catch some Chesapeake Bay Rockfish.  He's more of a freshwater angler, typically hooking up with Largemouth Bass in the local lakes by his home in western Virginia.  He has never fished for Striped Bass before, and I wanted to share the fun and excitement of reeling one in with him.

The calm Susky Flats

So for a whole year, we waited in eager anticipation for catch and release season to open on the Flats.  We  had a couple schedule conflicts in the beginning of the season, but finally settled on a date when both of us were free to make a trip to Havre de Grace to fish.  The year-long wait was finally over. Unfortunately, the weeks leading up to the trip only yielded poor reports of Rockfish in the Susquehanna Flats, and I was losing confidence that we would actually hook up with any Rockfish.  I let my friend know about the reports, and suggested some other alternatives like fishing for Catfish, or maybe even joining the Mid-Atlantic Kayak Bass Fishing tournament.  He was okay with the odds of not catching anything, so we stuck with our plan and made preparations to launch from Millard Tydings Memorial Park at sunrise on Saturday April 27th.


We got to the ramp at exactly 6:00AM, and met fellow MKF forum members DaveFX35 and Yak Fish.  They have had a couple trips under their belt already this year, so we chatted a little to talk about our plans for the day and to discuss what techniques we would try.  It seemed the name of the game for kayak fishing the Susquehanna Flats was trolling jerkbaits.  The Flats is a huge body of water, and the fish are typically schooled up in small areas, so trolling is just the easiest way to cover all that water to find them.

Trey's all set and ready to go.

Trey and I were lucky to get a parking spot immediately next to the ramp, so we just carried our kayaks and gear down to the floating dock and rigged up there.  Within the next hour we were on the water and ready to paddle into the big expanse of water known as the Susquehanna Flats.  We stuck with Yak Fish at first, and he suggested that we spread out to cover more water, and we could call each other up if we hooked up with any fish.  That sounded good, so Yak Fish went further north, and Trey and I headed straight east from the marina.

White Perch on a crankbait.

I trolled a Rapala XR-10 in black and white on one rod, and a silver Rattle Trap on a second rod.  Trey trolled 2 shallow-diving crankbaits that he uses for Largemouth Bass fishing.  We started zig-zagging across the water, while heading South when I saw a group of boats gathered together on the East side of the Flats.  I suggested to Trey that we check it out, so we started paddling over.  At one point we hit some water about 4 feet in depth, and Trey said he hooked up with a Shad on one of his crankbaits.  I don't think I've ever heard of Shad hitting crankbaits, so that was interesting.  Trey got the skunk off him early, and apparently the fish was pretty decent in size (I didn't get to see it) so he was happy to have caught a fish at all today.  He wanted to see if he could catch any more, so he started casting his crankbait and working it in that area, and he started hooking up with some small white perch!  I couldn't believe it...it hasn't even been an hour yet and he's out-fishing me 3-to-0! 

28 inch beauty.

After snapping some pictures of his micro-catches, we continued on toward the group of boats when....I heard my rod bouncing up and down!  A fish on my rod with the X-Rap!  I took hold of the fishing rod, and fought for a good couple minutes to get the fish in.  When I caught sight of it, I knew it was an active, decent sized Rockfish with 2 treble hooks on its lips.  I've watched videos showing how to extract hooks from your flesh, but I didn't want to ever have to try it out on myself or anyone I know...so I was in no hurry to get the fish on board.  After a couple good drag-pulling runs, the fish was calm enough to get on the boat.  A nice, fat, 28 inch Rockfish.  My biggest fish ever!  From shore, pier and boat.  I took a couple pictures of the beauty, and Trey also took a couple pics of me and her together, then back to the water she went.  Luckily the fight didn't wear her out too much - she swam right off as soon as she got wet.

17" Bass on an XR-10

Look at all those holes on its lips.  This guy does not learn....

 Excited about the catch, I called Yak Fish and DaveFX35 to let them know about the conditions of the catch.  4 feet of water, paddling east, on an XR-10.  Hopefully with those facts, they can catch some fish too.  Unfortunately, for the next 5 hours we trolled all over the flats from 4 feet to 10 feet and not another Rockfish was caught by anyone in our group.  However, it still was not a bust.  Trey and I actually hooked up with a combined 5 Largemouth Bass in the middle of the flats!  Each time I hooked up with one I was hopeful that it was a Striped Bass because of how hard the initial hits were.  Susquehanna Bass are very stocky and can give up a good fight.  What was interesting was that all 5 of them were 17 inches long.  No shorter, no longer.  With the non-existent Rockfish, the Largemouth Bass were welcome by-catches of the day.

Trey's 17" Bass on a shallow-diving Crankbait.

We called it quits around noon, and spent about 30 minutes paddling back to the launch ramp.  We loaded up the gear and went to the outdoor grill that they have next to the park and marina.  The food was pretty good, and the atmosphere of being in the sun by the water with lots of people enjoying the day was great.  Though I wouldn't say the trip was a success in terms of catching loads of Rockfish, it was still a successful day in that neither of us got skunked, neither of us turtled, I got my personal best fish ever, and Trey is now a fan of Kayak Fishing.

I love pit beef, and I love hush puppies.

Kayak Son Fishin'

The weather's been getting warmer, the days have been getting longer, and I've been itching to try taking my 3 year-old son, Caleb, on my kayak with me.  I had plans to go kayak fishing on the Susquehanna Flats with a friend of mine this weekend, and he has never fished from a kayak before.  We thought it would be a good idea to get his feet wet by taking him to a small lake in my neighborhood the evening before.  Since it was going to be a quick trip to a small lake, and the weather has been nice, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to take my son out on the water with me.

Future Kayak Anglers

Right after work I hurried home to load up my kayaks and to pick up my son to go kayaking.  My friend arrived shortly after I finished loading up the 'yaks and we made our way to the lake.  He's a bigger guy than I am, so I gave him the Prowler 13 to fish in, and I took the Tarpon 100 with Caleb.  The Tarpon 100 is a great small water kayak!  It is light, quick to set up (the seat is permanently attached, so you don't have to rig it in when you are setting up), tracks decently well, and it is super stable.

Safety first!  Caleb in his brand new PFD.

I sat my son in front of me as I paddled along, and he had a great time.  He helped me paddle the boat, helped me reel in fish (a Crappie and a Largemouth Bass), and even took my picture for me.  As the sun started to set, we packed up and headed home for dinner and some nice rest for the big day that my friend and I had coming up the next morning.

Why is there a lemon juice bottle in the picture, you ask?  I'll explain in a later post...

A crappie!

You can always tell when Caleb takes the picture...his fingers show up on the edges.

Occoquan River Crappie

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Earlier this week, AbuMasgouf from the MKF forum suggested we try to coordinate our schedules to fish the Occoquan for some crappie together.  Since my trip earlier this week was not too successful, my wife was gracious to let me go once again.  My in-laws are arriving today too, so if I do well we can have fish for dinner - they would love that.

I took the OK Prowler today.

I met AbuMasgouf at the launch at 9AM and we were on the water by 9:30.  This was his first time fishing at the Occoquan, and also his first time fishing for crappie.  I'm only 2 trips ahead of him, so I didn't really have much insight to offer.  However, with all the knowledge we gathered from my past experience, some tips from other boaters, and from forum posts we wanted to see how we might do. 

First crappie of the day

We paddled across the river to the first marina we could find and hit up the docks to see what we might jig up.  I had my fishfinder today, so I was able to use it to determine the depths and kind of see where the fish are.  Within the first 10 minutes I hooked up with the first crappie of the day, and it wasn't a bad one at 10 inches.  I could tell today would be much better than my previous trip.

One of the large bluegills that were around

We stuck around the area for maybe and hour and a half or two hours.  We both hooked up with a couple more crappie and some monster bluegills.  AbuMasgouf caught the biggest bluegill I've ever seen...I think it was around 11 inches.  I also caught one that was almost as big.  Earlier in the morning the crappie seemed to hit the jig going sideways (cast and reel it in).  And the bluegills I caught were hooked when jigging vertically slowly near the bottom (Those bluegills seemed to give a better fight than the crappie).  However, after a while they stopped hitting the grubs and the fishing slowed.

I caught this guy at some point in the day

We decided to try some other areas, so we went off in search of more fish.  I paddled back and forth across the channel to try to find some fish on my fishfinder, but couldn't register any on the screen.  I later found out this was probably a bad way to find fish.  We paddled all the way to the last marina before the opening of the river, where I had had some success in the spring when I first tried for some crappie.  We still couldn't hook up with any there, and it was getting to be time for AbuMasgouf to head out so we went back to our original honey hole to give it one more shot before calling it quits.

On the way over, I met the boater that I had talked to on Monday, and asked how he was doing.  He was jigging by the bridge pilings, and he said he was doing awesome - he even just caught 8 decent sized crappie in the past 10 minutes.  What the heck were we doing wrong????  He held up his red and chartreuse grub and told us that the fish aren't hitting anything else.  Well, that stinks because I don't have any grubs in that color combination.  We thanked him for his advice and went back to the honey hole.  We jigged around for a good half hour before AbuMasgouf headed home.  I was determined to catch some more crappie, so I paddled back to the bridge to see if I could catch some more fish.

The largest of the day

While paddling to the bridge, I checked my phone to see if my wife had tried to contact me, and to check my e-mail.  I noticed that someone had responded to my thread on the MKF forum with some tips.  Basically, it said "The crappie are around every structure in the river.  The hard part is finding where the big ones are schooled up."  Every structure huh....I had mainly been concentrating on the open areas in the lanes between docks in the marinas.  I didn't fish too much directly next to the docks and piers.  I took this advice and the boater's tip and jigged my white-chartreuse grub right up against the pilings of the bridge.  On my first try I pulled up the nice 12 incher pictured above.  It's working!  For the next hour or so I slowly jigged my grub up and down next to the piling.  I also let the current drift me around to get the horizontal action in the grub.  Doing this got me hooking up with fish pretty regularly.  I ended up putting a few more keepers in my cooler by doing this.

Packed a little more than last time, but still pretty light

Around 3:00, I was getting tired from paddling around so I decided to head back in.  While packing up I met the boater again, and we talked about our day.  He mentioned that most of the day he was getting his hits by jigging up and down slowly near the bottom, and that he wasn't getting any hits by swimming his jigs.  That is pretty close to the experience I had today.  I'm glad that the pattern I used was also what another angler had used too.  He also gave me some tips about some locations where he said he consistently caught some 12-14 inchers...but I'll keep that to myself this time =).

Today's catch scaled and gutted

At home I cleaned the fish and wrapped them in foil to put some of them on the grill.  It turned out okay - I did it this way to avoid having to pull out the frying pan...but I wish I had pan fried them instead.  With the foil they came out more like steamed fish and I didn't season it well enough.  My parents-in-law still finished all of their portions though!

This guy's bigger than my son's head!

It was a fun day fishing for these panfish, and I met a new angler friend in AbuMasgouf.  I'm looking forward to getting back to the Occoquan to hopefully figure out the pattern earlier in the day to get into more fish.

Occoquan River

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My sister-in-law is in town from St. Louis this week, and I thought it would be nice to have a fish fry this weekend.  I had plans to fish the lower potomac for some catfish and possibly some croakers, which people have been reporting.  When I found out that Ryan from the MKF forum was fishing for catfish this weekend too, I asked him if he wanted to meet up and fish together.  He had to be in Virginia today, so he was going to check out the Occoquan river.  Since I have not fished the Occoquan before, I was open to trying it out with him.

The area by the shore launch.

I got to the Occoquan Regional Park at 6:00AM, paid my $5 non-resident fee for launching, and started rigging up my kayak.  Ryan arrived shortly after, and we were in the water around 7.  We shared our plans for the day, and we were going to jig for some crappie by the docks of the marinas south of the 95 bridge, and then soak some bait to try for some catfish.

After passing the 95 bridge, we started casting along the shorelines on our way to the marina to see if we could hook up with a bass.  That was unfruitful for both of us, so we went to the docks and started jigging.  Within the first several minutes, I was getting nibbles on my shad dart rigged with a 2" gulp minnow.  I thought maybe the minnow might be too big, so I swapped it out with a 2" tube.  2 casts later, and I caught the first fish of the day.  A 15" largemouth bass.  I tried jigging some more in that row of docks, but I didn't get any more hits, so I moved on.

First fish of the day.

In the second row of docks, I went back to my gulp minnow and tried vertical jigging with it.  After several tries, I get a hit...and it turns out to be a big old channel catfish.  I was trying to catch crappie, not catfish!  Well, the catfish was a pretty good size, so I put it on my fish stringer and tried again.  Several minutes later, I get another hit...and it turns to be an even bigger channel catfish.  I never got to measure it, but I would say it was pushing 20 to 22 inches.  Again, it was not a crappie, but I did want to catch catfish today...on the stringer he went.  I was starting to think that my jigging technique was somehow only attractive to catfish and not crappie.  A few minutes later, and I hook up with another catfish!  Unbelievable!  Oh, and all this time, these fish were being caught on my ultralight rod with 5 lb test braid.  It was actually kind of fun catching these large fish on light tackle.  I really wanted to catch some crappie, so I decided to move on and try the next marina.

On the way to the next marina, I trolled a small rattletrap crankbait to see if anything would hit it.  I was doubtful that it would work because of my failure to catch anything on a crankbait at the flats earlier this week.  However, halfway to the marina, I had a fish on my crankbait.  It turned out to be a small striper.  I forgot to snap a pic, but it was small...like 15 inches.

Ryan and I got to the next marina, and we tried jigging again for crappie.  Ryan was actually pretty successful - he was catching a lot of crappie on his small gulp minnows.  I asked about his technique, and it sounded like he was doing exactly what I was doing back at the previous marina where I was catching the catfish.  I thought maybe it was the location that turned me into a catfish magnet, so I tried the vertical jigging again....and...I caught another catfish.  Several catfish, actually.  I was getting a little frustrated at this point, because I wanted to catch crappie!  At one point, I hooked up with a BIG fish.  It wouldn't surface, and it actually dragged me out of the bay I was fishing in and into the next one before showing itself.  It was a huge blue catfish.  I was excited about catching such a large fish, so I went to stick my lip gripper in its mouth, and I guess his small teeth rubbed the line the wrong way, because the line broke.

I originally had a 6lb test mono leader on my 5lb braid main line.  I had snapped it somehow while landing one of the earlier catfish, and lazily just tied my jig head directly onto the braid.  I am pretty sure that abrasion from the rough surface on the blue catfish's mouth was what caused my line to fail.  Never again will I make that mistake.  He was huge...

Since it was time to retie, I thought of something else to try.  Last year, when I was perch fishing, I had some success using soft plastic grubs on a spinner arm.  I tried adding the spinner arm to the gulp minnow, and voila!  I was starting to catch me some crappie.  I went through several more of these docks to try to catch some crappie worth eating.  There were a couple white perch in the mix of fish that I caught too, which was a pleasant surprise.  Eventually (inevitably) I hooked into another catfish, and that was when I decided I was done fishing here.  Catfish are fun to catch on ultralight tackle, but it's also frustrating when you're not targeting them.

Ryan and I moved around, casting our lures to the shoreline to see if we could catch some more bass.  We both ended up catching a couple bass, but none that were impressive in size.  I caught mine on the gulp minnow, and on the rattle trap crankbait.  The gulp minnow is so versatile...it'll catch anything!

At this point, we slowly started making our way back to the launch and stopped by the 95 bridge to see if we could catch any catfish.  I didn't have any success there, so after a little while I parted with Ryan and I went back to the launch.  I was packed up and on my way home by 1.

My kayak and gear at the end of the day.

Fishing the Occoquan was interesting - it was a lot more fun that I thought it might be.  I also caught 6 species of fish today, which is pretty cool when you consider that they were all caught in the same body of water.  I brought home a few of the catfish, crappie, and white perch and cleaned them for tomorrow's fish fry!

Tomorrow's Dinner.