Middle Patuxent River

Today it was a river fish in search of small mouth bass. I did catch one 6 inch bass. Try as I might I only got one more bass bite but no luck catching it. However, much to my surprise I did catch a 10 inch and a 12 inch trout. They were miles above the stocked trout area in a small stretch of fast water roughly 4 feet deep. Also there were the usual bunch of fall fish, suckers, and sunfish that were caught as well. I also saw the big (20 pound) snapping turtle in the big bend hole and a baby fawn hiding in the brush behind my house.

This was an early fish with Grandson Paddy. I hook and Paddy is learning to land the fish now because he is Autistic. I currently bait the hook, cast and hook the fish. First fish was a small small mouth bass, then fallfish, and sunfish. Great fun for walking out the door and down to the river.

This was an up-river fish in the non-stocked area testing for bass activity. I did catch a small mouth bass, but no bigger bass were active. My bass was about 5 inches. I saw several small bass in feeding positions, but none went for what I threw at them. Caught several small fallfish and sunfish on a dry fly and on a plastic Berkley minnow. The plastic Berkly black speckled minnow was the most productive lire. Big bass are coming. In the Middle Patuxent the big bass are 14 inches.

Tough cold day. Did not see any fish, but this one hit at the end of the day. It took a yellow pinched worm fished up stream across the river floating down. The fallfish hit almost immediately. The next fishing day all I saw was cold water. Got skunked. Bummer. At least I had the whole river to myself. That is the only good thing I can say about the day.

Walked up river to the big bend hole. First cast caught a fall fish. Then I caught several small small mouth bass. I saw some larger ones, but just could not place the plastic minnow in front of them as they swam by. I could see the snapping turtle down deep under a rock. I could see the turtle shell and no head or tail. He was just inactive. Finally, walking down river to home I caught one more fall fish the longest of the day -- 8 inches.

This was a river fish. Tough day. Worked hard to catch this bass.

Afternoon fish produced several bluegills and one 10 inch smallmouth bass. The bass was sitting in tree roots and hit the instant the lure splashed in front of him. It all has to do with getting the lure right in the face of an active fish. The bluegills also hit a true plastic trout magnet colored black and red. I tested this to see if colors made a significant difference in catching fish. Before catching the bass I tested the trout magnet with both a pumpkin colored and black and white speckled minmows, a swimmin jimmie, and a brown pheasant tail nymph. No real bytes on these. Moving to a different spot made all the difference. This just shows that finding active fish is most important and lure selection is less important.

This was a surprise! The hole from which I had prevously caught several large bass was now occupied by a 4 foot nose to tail snapping turtle. That kills the hole. First pic shows the turtle. Second pic highlights the monster turtle. I did catch some fall fish down river and a Rock Bass with the very distinctive red eye. I was really testing the trout magnet with a power bait minnow. I used about 1.5 inches with the tail. The minnow is 2.5 inches long so I just cut the head off. The wiggling tail seems to be the strike provoker for all different fish.