Late April and Early May Summary of the Upper Potomac

[PotomacTide]

I've been offline a lot lately fishing, traveling, and working so I just wanted to throw up a sampling of my catches in the Upper Potomac area over the past 3 weeks. Its been another great Shad fishing season. Spent a lot of time at fletcher's this year as opposed to Occoquan. For some reason I did not do very well at Occoquan this year. Altough the biologist electro shocking the water for snakeheads were netting snakehead every 10 yards along the banks of the Occoquan. But for me, I probably caught less than 20 shad in the Occoquan in April (Usually I catch easily over 100). At fletcher's I lost count somewhere around 100 this year. I couldn't believe how everything was biting on darts at fletchers. I was catching a lot of big keeper white perch and big catfish on darts. Some people were even catching small stripers on darts.

Also went down to Ft Washington area in the creeks/marina. Caught a bunch of large mouth bass and crappie on spinner bait in shallow waters. Saw snakehead popping a lot out there, but none of them bit. Caught lots of catfish in the channel near ft washington, some over 30". Catfish at Ft Washington were caught on cut bait.

I also tried fishing along the coastline across Delmarva (Delaware Bay and Chincoteague). Got a big nasty skunk when I was not on my yak. Taught me a lesson! It was horribly windy and the coastline was all chopped up. The big black drum are in Chincoteague right now when its not so windy, but unfortunately it was windy through my entire trip. Flounder was good the weekend before I was there, but I was skunked on the Flounder as well.

[ictalurus]

That's a nice collection of fish. I was hoping to hit Fletcher's again, but the timing didn't work out. I wonder what was up with the shad at the Occoquan this year.