There are no fish in the Severn

[YakCapn]

that are willing to take a hook. Actually, there were tons of fish on the fish finder. It seemed very promising. The fish finder showed large fish, small ones, clusters, tons of bait, but I didn’t get a single bite after 5 hours of trolling and jigging. Used bucktails, paddle tails (big and small), tried the yozuri glass, and even a mister twister on a small jig head and a shad dart to see if I could scare up any perch. Nothing. Just sore legs and a sore back. Second time out on the Chesapeake waters in the last few weeks and been skunked twice. The other time was at BT in late April. If it wasn’t for the shad run at Fletchers I’d be completely dejected about spring fishing, fortunately I’ve had a couple fun outings there with good action.

[Big Mike]

Bummer. If you’re in Arlington like your signature says you might consider a trip to the lower Potomac in St Mary’s. Not that much further a drive but we’ve been consistently catching fish for the past few weeks. Starting to see them in shallower water using lighter tackle presentations.

[YakCapn]

Thanks Mike, I'll definitely look into that. Yeah, I'm in Arlington...I can get to the western shore Chesapeake launches in just under an hour in the morning. The drive back is usually much worse with traffic. I'll investigate St Mary's. I'm heading to Assateague Island/Chincoteague in two weeks to hopefully get some flounder and maybe some blues, and if I'm lucky a red drum.

[M1A4ME]

I remember one trip down the Greenbrier River in WV with my younger brother around Memorial Day. The water is still cold enough to get your attention when you get out of the boat but the fish were biting, some.

On a good day we might catch 30 or 40 small smallmouth bass. If you caught a 15" bass you caught a "good one". I had begun to think that was all that was in that stretch of the river.

But on that day, we say 8 or 9 really nice big smallmouth up in the shallows. They would not hit anything. Nothing. As we floated down through a nice long hole of water we'd see them streaking out of the shallows to the deeper water. We'd fish to the bottom of the hole and row back to the top and float down again and see more (the same we figured) big fish leaving the same spots to run for deeper water. Nothing in the tackle boxes would get us a strike.

After 3 or 4 passes in the one hole we floated to the bottom of it and got out to catch some crawfish. We rolled over some rocks, caught some, and rowed back to the top of the hole. Put the crawfish on a hook and tossed them to the areas we'd seen the big bass and again they'd just swim out to the deeper water. I figured they were trying to bed and maybe the crawfish would get them to strike but it didn't work.

After than I knew there were plenty of nice smallmouth in that stretch of the river - we just didn't know how to catch them.

It can be frustrating and exciting. That's usually real clear water and when it's right you can easily see the bottom rocks/moss in 8 or 10 feet of water.

[ronaultmtd]

Not catching fish is easy...so is getting in a rut due to success...like I found myself in...I have had so much success with a handful of lures in just a few variation of patterns/colors that I stopped experimenting...downsized to just those few...that normally work...but this Spring has been abnormal...(if there is such a thing nowadays as normal) scary thought...anyway back to my rant...fishing with Baitball reminded me that being stuck in a rut kills success...I did not have any black and gold pattern swimbaits in heavily stained water...and every variation of white and chartreuse was coming up empty...fish were not hitting at all...Manny gave me a few and instant success...big fat frisky 25 inch Striper...I had tried XRaps, Rattle Traps, poppers, and every variation of swimbait I had onboard...so now you know what I have added to my “go-to” arsenal, don’t you? Some dark swimbait bodies...