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Last year I had an absolute ton of success cat fishing on the Potomac. When I heard about the CCA catfish tournament today back in March, I'm not going to lie I pretty much figured I had it in the bag.
Made sure we had an assortment of really good bait before we even got down there on Friday. Stayed the night in Indian Head and was up and on the water by 7 after the captains meeting.
We decided to launch at Mallows Bay. There was a lot of boats entered, and I figured most of them were going to head north to Fort Washington (contest was held at Smallwood State Park), and I wasn't really worried where the shore anglers put up. Mallows Bay seemed the perfect choice for my 2 buddies myself and our kayaks.
Aaaaand it wasn't.
Right off the bat it was windy, choppy and raining. And it kept up like this til about 10:30ish. We started bouncing from spot to spot trying to find fish and notta nothing. I kept telling myself "We've only been out an hour, bites are gonna come"...then one hour turned to two and three and four and before I knew it it was 10:00 and none of us had a single bite.
Come on! This is catfishing! We're supposed to be dropping cut bait down and hooking up left and right! What's the deal?!
I eventually caught an 18", and my buddy hooked up with a schoolie striper. We finally found very small cats in very deep water, and the challenge became trying to hook up with tiny cats on our 8/0 circle hooks (it didn't happen).
Around 11:30 the sun finally came out and it started to warm up. Go figure we had to be back in line at SWSP for weighs in by 1300. The way we saw it was we could paddle in with one 18" cat, or bite the bullet and turn this tournament day into a regular ole fishing day.
We elected to stay out and I'm so glad we did. The weather was awesome for the rest of the day. We didn't catch any more fish, but once I was able to pull myself out of angler mode and just appreciate the area around Mallows Bay, I can honestly say the trip wasn't a waste.
I got to watch bald eagles chase off sea gulls, ospreys catch fish, and of course check out all of the old wrecks ( if you don't know what I'm talking about Google Mallows Bay. Fascinating history read). On top of all that I got a good long hard paddle in.
Today was humbling in the fishing aspect, but perfect in the kayaking aspect. And I couldn't tell ya who won what tournament wise.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Made sure we had an assortment of really good bait before we even got down there on Friday. Stayed the night in Indian Head and was up and on the water by 7 after the captains meeting.
We decided to launch at Mallows Bay. There was a lot of boats entered, and I figured most of them were going to head north to Fort Washington (contest was held at Smallwood State Park), and I wasn't really worried where the shore anglers put up. Mallows Bay seemed the perfect choice for my 2 buddies myself and our kayaks.
Aaaaand it wasn't.
Right off the bat it was windy, choppy and raining. And it kept up like this til about 10:30ish. We started bouncing from spot to spot trying to find fish and notta nothing. I kept telling myself "We've only been out an hour, bites are gonna come"...then one hour turned to two and three and four and before I knew it it was 10:00 and none of us had a single bite.
Come on! This is catfishing! We're supposed to be dropping cut bait down and hooking up left and right! What's the deal?!
I eventually caught an 18", and my buddy hooked up with a schoolie striper. We finally found very small cats in very deep water, and the challenge became trying to hook up with tiny cats on our 8/0 circle hooks (it didn't happen).
Around 11:30 the sun finally came out and it started to warm up. Go figure we had to be back in line at SWSP for weighs in by 1300. The way we saw it was we could paddle in with one 18" cat, or bite the bullet and turn this tournament day into a regular ole fishing day.
We elected to stay out and I'm so glad we did. The weather was awesome for the rest of the day. We didn't catch any more fish, but once I was able to pull myself out of angler mode and just appreciate the area around Mallows Bay, I can honestly say the trip wasn't a waste.
I got to watch bald eagles chase off sea gulls, ospreys catch fish, and of course check out all of the old wrecks ( if you don't know what I'm talking about Google Mallows Bay. Fascinating history read). On top of all that I got a good long hard paddle in.
Today was humbling in the fishing aspect, but perfect in the kayaking aspect. And I couldn't tell ya who won what tournament wise.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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