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There are fish in the Severn -- the big rockfish have proved hard to find, but if you target smaller fish, you can still have plenty of pullage.
Aesiegel (Ed) and I launched from Jonas Green this afternoon. We met Moc in the parking lot. He was just loading up after a successful crabbing trip. We jigged several debris piles in the main river but had no bites (Ed did snag one perch while jigging). We moved to an upstream tributary where we cast to shorelines. I cast 2" Gulp minnow grubs on a 1/8-oz jighead and a Strike King MicroKing 1/16-oz spinnerbait. There were quite a lot of leaves floating on the water making casting and retrieving challenging. I had better success when I cast out, let the lure sink for a few seconds, then stuck the rod tip a foot deep into the water. That way I could retrieve without contacting the floating leaves. That technique was not perfect but did allow me to catch more fish. I managed only a few perch and two small rockfish. Ed had better success than me.
After several hours, Ed needed to head home. I started paddling back to the park, but realized I had not had enough fishing for one day. So I detoured to a second tributary which proved to have a better bite. After an hour spent fishing there, I ended up with a total for the day of nearly two dozen perch (three fat 11"ers, and one gigantic 10" perch that was taller and fatter than the 11" ones), a few rockfish to 14", a few pickerel, and one little yellow ned. I caught most of the perch on the spinnerbait. Nearly all fish were caught in less than 5' depth near the shorelines -- some of the larger perch were caught in less than 1 ft water with leaves on top.
With the hurricane heading this way, the fish in the main river may get moved around. I would feel more confident about fishing in the tributaries for the next week, unless the water is muddied by runoff. Those tributary fish have natural cover. They can hunker down and wait for the water quality to improve after the storm moves out.
Aesiegel (Ed) and I launched from Jonas Green this afternoon. We met Moc in the parking lot. He was just loading up after a successful crabbing trip. We jigged several debris piles in the main river but had no bites (Ed did snag one perch while jigging). We moved to an upstream tributary where we cast to shorelines. I cast 2" Gulp minnow grubs on a 1/8-oz jighead and a Strike King MicroKing 1/16-oz spinnerbait. There were quite a lot of leaves floating on the water making casting and retrieving challenging. I had better success when I cast out, let the lure sink for a few seconds, then stuck the rod tip a foot deep into the water. That way I could retrieve without contacting the floating leaves. That technique was not perfect but did allow me to catch more fish. I managed only a few perch and two small rockfish. Ed had better success than me.
After several hours, Ed needed to head home. I started paddling back to the park, but realized I had not had enough fishing for one day. So I detoured to a second tributary which proved to have a better bite. After an hour spent fishing there, I ended up with a total for the day of nearly two dozen perch (three fat 11"ers, and one gigantic 10" perch that was taller and fatter than the 11" ones), a few rockfish to 14", a few pickerel, and one little yellow ned. I caught most of the perch on the spinnerbait. Nearly all fish were caught in less than 5' depth near the shorelines -- some of the larger perch were caught in less than 1 ft water with leaves on top.
With the hurricane heading this way, the fish in the main river may get moved around. I would feel more confident about fishing in the tributaries for the next week, unless the water is muddied by runoff. Those tributary fish have natural cover. They can hunker down and wait for the water quality to improve after the storm moves out.
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