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Sorry for the late post. Internet has been a turd lately. Anyways...
The little brother is home from college so I wanted to take him out on the extra kayak I have. I was
debating between going out somewhere for little stripers or taking him out to fletchers to try for blue cats (neither of us have caught a blue cat). Ended up choosing fletchers because it's a little closer and I figured the traffic wouldn't be bad (which it wasn't!)
Set out around 8:00am to the Shenandoah right by my house to catch some bait. We're driving along the river and I see a guy holding a big sucker down by the bank. I saw he was getting ready to throw it back, so I whipped my truck into the lot and yelled WAAITT! I must have scared the dude half to death. I asked if I could throw it in my cooler for cut bait. He said he had been accidentally snagging them all morning (they're running hard up here right now). So we grabbed that sucker and managed a few perch. Cut em all up (legal here in WV) and we took off for DC.
Matt got his license from the boathouse and we launched with no problems (it helps having another set of hands down there. Last time was a nightmare). We started paddling, and noticed noone was really having any action. Saw one guy catch a small cat, but other than that notta zilch. Saw a couple other people later in the day hook up with cats. I threw on a shad dart and started looking for any slacking shad or perch hanging around, while Matt was rigging up for cats.
Matt sets his line in the water and not thirty seconds later he's hollering all sorts of hooplah. He ends up landing a decent 22" blue cat.
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This ended up being the pattern of the day. We'd have our lines in the water for no longer than 5 minutes before they'd come by and absolutely smash the cut bait. We ended up catching somewhere around 15 nice cats with the smallest being the one I caught in the video. 5 or so were close to or above 30"
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This is some of the most fun fishing I've ever done. We would go over a deep hole, just drop our baits down right beside the kayak, and feel for the bottom. Then we'd crank it up twice to make sure we weren't getting snagged.
And talk about a hard fighting fish. In the attached video the first segment is me losing what I'm assuming was a really nice one. I was using 50lb power pro with my drag TIGHT and he was pulling line like it was nothing. My biggest of the day was somewhere around 30" (forgot to measure)
Some guys came up and asked if they could keep it as they saw I was throwing them all back. A part of me thought it wasn't right killing a fish that big (not to mention the DC fish advisories). But on the other hand the DNR really preaches to not throw these guys back. And it makes sense. I can only imagine how much damage these big eating machines have caused to the Potomac. It was almost freaky how quickly we could manage a big cat after dropping down. I ended up giving the guys 2 of the fish I caught.
I figure if the contaminates in the fish don't getcha, the "harmful steroid/antibiotic enriched beef" that you get from the store will. Or maybe the deer that you shoot in the fall that's been eating the grass polluted with acid rain will kill ya . Or maybe the farm raised salmon with the pink coloring to make the fillets look natural etc etc (you see my point).
Anyways, awesome day of fishing. Really glad we went and that I didn't get a shard of glass in my foot this time. Hope to get out there again soon and get on some 40lbers.
The little brother is home from college so I wanted to take him out on the extra kayak I have. I was
debating between going out somewhere for little stripers or taking him out to fletchers to try for blue cats (neither of us have caught a blue cat). Ended up choosing fletchers because it's a little closer and I figured the traffic wouldn't be bad (which it wasn't!)
Set out around 8:00am to the Shenandoah right by my house to catch some bait. We're driving along the river and I see a guy holding a big sucker down by the bank. I saw he was getting ready to throw it back, so I whipped my truck into the lot and yelled WAAITT! I must have scared the dude half to death. I asked if I could throw it in my cooler for cut bait. He said he had been accidentally snagging them all morning (they're running hard up here right now). So we grabbed that sucker and managed a few perch. Cut em all up (legal here in WV) and we took off for DC.
Matt got his license from the boathouse and we launched with no problems (it helps having another set of hands down there. Last time was a nightmare). We started paddling, and noticed noone was really having any action. Saw one guy catch a small cat, but other than that notta zilch. Saw a couple other people later in the day hook up with cats. I threw on a shad dart and started looking for any slacking shad or perch hanging around, while Matt was rigging up for cats.
Matt sets his line in the water and not thirty seconds later he's hollering all sorts of hooplah. He ends up landing a decent 22" blue cat.
image.jpg
This ended up being the pattern of the day. We'd have our lines in the water for no longer than 5 minutes before they'd come by and absolutely smash the cut bait. We ended up catching somewhere around 15 nice cats with the smallest being the one I caught in the video. 5 or so were close to or above 30"
image.jpg
image.jpg
This is some of the most fun fishing I've ever done. We would go over a deep hole, just drop our baits down right beside the kayak, and feel for the bottom. Then we'd crank it up twice to make sure we weren't getting snagged.
And talk about a hard fighting fish. In the attached video the first segment is me losing what I'm assuming was a really nice one. I was using 50lb power pro with my drag TIGHT and he was pulling line like it was nothing. My biggest of the day was somewhere around 30" (forgot to measure)
Some guys came up and asked if they could keep it as they saw I was throwing them all back. A part of me thought it wasn't right killing a fish that big (not to mention the DC fish advisories). But on the other hand the DNR really preaches to not throw these guys back. And it makes sense. I can only imagine how much damage these big eating machines have caused to the Potomac. It was almost freaky how quickly we could manage a big cat after dropping down. I ended up giving the guys 2 of the fish I caught.
I figure if the contaminates in the fish don't getcha, the "harmful steroid/antibiotic enriched beef" that you get from the store will. Or maybe the deer that you shoot in the fall that's been eating the grass polluted with acid rain will kill ya . Or maybe the farm raised salmon with the pink coloring to make the fillets look natural etc etc (you see my point).
Anyways, awesome day of fishing. Really glad we went and that I didn't get a shard of glass in my foot this time. Hope to get out there again soon and get on some 40lbers.
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