Any Reporter Writing About Snakeheads Please Read | 7.11.13

STOP USING THE SAME STOCK IMAGE OF THE SAME SNAKEHEAD IN EVERY ONLINE ARTICLE

It starts now. I can't take it any longer. I now start an online movement to ban these redundant images from being  posted. They are tiresome and lack any creativity or effort. 

This image was used AGAIN in an article that was just posted on the internets http://www.sportsgrid.com/animal-shenanigans/terrifying-frankenfish-caught-in-the-potomac-river-just-wants-to-be-loved/

I'm calling you out Rick Chandler. You have no creativity in picking images for your article. 

And anyone who uses this article should have their thumbs slammed in my 1981 Honda Accord doors if that car is still around: 

 

There are way more images out there of actual northern snakeheads taken from the Potomac River than these images from where ever. They have been circulating for a decade and it needs to stop right now. STOP THE INSANITY

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Recent Tidal Basin Excursions | 6.4.2013

Just got back from my 3rd trip to the Tidal Basin in the past 7 days. Its been a slow week with a light client load (thus not a lot of blog posts recently) so I was able to get out once with the kid, once solo, and today with some friends.

Last week with the kid was fun. Loads of bluegill as the tide was in and the fish were up on the wall and under the overhanging trees. I had a limited amount of time to fish with her as it was her birthday and we had to get her to a cupcake at 5pm.

We missed a nice bass by the MLK memorial. We walked over to the Kutz Bridge pond. Under one tree was a small snakehead, about a dozen carp, and a goldfish.

None of the fish were interested. It was truly frustrating. Especially when the kid who is getting potty trained is shouting 'poop poop poop' when I'm trying to be all sneaky quiet.

Then  POTUS flew over.This wasn't POTUS, this was a chopper doing circles around the basin. It was not normal to see this.

The next outing was this past Sunday. It was an overcast day. The one before was bluebird skies and I could see in the water. Not this day. It was choppy water and wind. No visibility. I could barely see my curly tail fly a few inches down.


Fishing was slow. I moved clockwise around the basin as usual from the FDR. I missed maybe two nice fish but couldn't ID them as the water was off color. Both were just off the wall. I made it over to the Kutz pond and I got massive tug from a fish. It was a nice largemouth. I pulled it up over the wall and was quite pleased.

A family walked by and I asked them for a picture. Turns out they were tourists from China. The dad wanted a picture with me after my solo picture. So for the bit I had the son take a picture of me with the dad too. Then the dad offered me Chinese cigarettes. I declined. The bass was really nice. Though when I have snakehead on the mind this is just bycatch.

 Here is the pic the son took of me and the bass.

 The storm was making its way over. The wind picked up and the rain started. I was having too much fun to do my normal anal retentive obsession with Doppler radar. I did not check it once while fishing. I managed to get over to the Ohio Drive bridge. One big snakehead came up for air so I set up camp and worked the bridge. I managed a nice largie that tailwalked a couple of times and leaped out of the water for the tourists.

Today I had some free time again. I met up with Mike and Khalil. The tide was out. The most out I've ever seen. The shoreline was exposed along the wall in some parts.

The structure along the wall was visible so I made a mental note of exposed trees, pipes, water outflows, and chunks of concrete. We even noticed coins littering the rocks below and along the Jefferson Memorial sea wall.

 Here is a big goldfish.

 I'm gonna say the fishing sucked due to the lack of water and the fish just not being there. I spotted a few mudding carp. One small snakehead, and a dozen bluegillhere and there.

POTUS flew over us on his way to Bethesda to meet up with wounded soldiers.

 Khalil peeled off just about the time Mike and I finished. We found a few gar in mating pairs but none were interested (they were getting it on and feeding was not on the list of foreplay) I found a full can of beer, making it the second of the year. This one went in Mike's new Patagonia hip bag bottle holder.

I called it at 4:30 as I had to deal with traffic on I395. Can't remember the last time I got skunked. It was a learning experience being there on a blue bird day with a super low tide. And I was able to test out my VestPac which I'll be reviewing soon.

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Friggin Huge Bass | Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary

Maybe it was a sign of good things when I spotted a common loon swimming in the shallows of Roaches Run this morning.

Kirsi and I met Mike and his dad at the lot at 0900. Mike is graduating from college this weekend (good luck on being a grown up when you wake up on Monday, no more spring or summer vacation.) and hid dad is in town for the celebration.

I had three rods strung up:

• 9' 5wt with full sink line. A shad jig and damsel nymph
• 9' 8wt with floating line. A curly tail bass fly on there
• 11' 6wt switch rod with 350 grain floating line. A Popsicle and damsel nymph were on there.

We fished the delayed outgoing tide near the tunnel at the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Mikes dad didn't take long to get into the first fish. A nice schoolie striper.

Nothing huge but any striper is a gift. This one of course took the damsel.

It was a pleasure watching Mike's dad cast that two-hander and it was his first ever striper on the fly.

Next up he hooked into a slab crappie and the crappie progressively got bigger. 






Mike then hooks into his first ever largemouth on the fly. It was a nice specimen and a great catch any day. The bass took the shad jig.

Give Mike a few more minutes and Mike hooks into a herring and a long ear sunfish. That is a total of six species in one day.

One of the next casts was magical. We watched a small river herring take the damsel nymph and take off.

All of a sudden the rod bends double.  The kind of bend of a 5wt that a herring shouldn't do.

Here is a pic of the bent rod.

This was not the most bent the rod would yield. At one point I thought it would explode on him.

I quickly switched the phone to video to capture the moment. More reason to keep the GoPro with me at all times.

Here is the bass. The strange thing is that the fish ate the herring off the line and the damsel nymph was stuck in the bass' jaw.

The fish had a huge belly, presumably stuffed with herring. Its eyes were massive and bulging out at us.

And the crappie kept on coming. They took the damsel and Popsicle left and right.

 This may have been the largest and prettiest black crappie I have ever seen. There were all sorts of blue  hues mixed in with the black.

The tide then changed and the fishing shut down. I did see one of the largest fish I've ever seen in the Potomac hanging out in the fast water. I could not identify it but it was a ham with fins. 

The gar were in mating pairs. Not as many as typical for this time of year.

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Congressional Gardens | Ultimate Urban Fly Fishing

If you don't know where this is, you might remember a dude driving his tractor into the water a few years ago. And might I add that the wife and I were at an open bar at Charlie Palmer's that night and traffic was just awful getting to the bar!

So the Potomac is rather flooded today and I wanted to sight cast to some carp. I looked up this article from back in the day and decided to fish the gardens as I was going by Orvis just a few miles away to pick up some repaired rods.

I had the kid with me today. We parked two blocks from the White House. I threw the kid in the back pack and strung up an 8 wt rod. I tied on a typical local leader of 20-12-8lb leader. The fly of choice was a pink goomie worm left over from the Project Healing Waters 2-Fly tournament.

The water was rather green and the clouds overhead didn't help. I was looking for carp. I spotted a nice largemouth bass in the water-nothing was more than a foot deep. I tossed in the worm and stripped it in. The bass inhaled the fly and we landed a beauty. I had some German tourists take our picture.

 One after another we sight cast to single bass. I had to wait for the clouds to clear to sight fish. We found the fish had no fear of us. They would scoot off the wall when we walked by and then stop about six feet away. One cast and a twitch and they ate the worm!

 We sight cast to and landed five bass in a row. This was awesome. We then lost one bass at our feet.  That was six.

Bass seven was along the little bridge. I dropped the fish back in and my kids milk bottle. I don't think I made a cast more than 20'.

 We lost two more fish. And this is some of the best bass fishing ever. And its three blocks from the White House! The final fish we saw tore the fly to pieces. It ripped off one of the tips. We landed the fish. My thumb was all tore up. Free parking was about to turn to change to getting ticketed.

We picked up the pace and ended on a high note. Seven bass landed in 30 minutes. Not bad. Not bad.

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Recent Client Pics | Potomac & Rappahannock

Spent Saturday at Chain Bridge. Loads of river herring in the water. Fishing was slower than I wanted. Arnold caught some shad, perch, and a baby snapping turtle.

We bumped into Khalil. He had a good morning. It was full of walleye, herring, shad, and stripers.


Sunday found us down in FredVegas. Peter got into bluegill and shad.

 My new fish eye lens for my Iphone. The biggest fish of the day was this American shad.

 Here is another shad.

 Not Ted Turner caught this herring. The fishing was slower as the day went on to my frustration. Everyone worked on their casting skills and had loads of fun.

 After 12 hours on the water I needed food.

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