"Frank Reid" moc.deepselbac@diersicnarf wrote in message
...
Any suggestions or experiences of what works well on the Potomac?

Well, normally I use a heavily weighted, 5" long, Murrays Hellgrammite on
a
sink tip line that I've cut all but 5 foot of the sink tip off. With a
three foot straight leader of 8 pound mono as the terminal tackle. Go out
with a couple extra flies in my pocket, extra mono and some forceps. That
works all day. Until this year.
I fished a little downstream of where you were this evening with Allen
Epps
and his buddy Todd. It was brutal. Code Red air quality and 100 degree
temp. Found myself setting the vest on a rock, standing in the water,
cast,
dip down to my chin, and retrieve from that position. Allen mentioned the
line from Blazing Saddles "you all act like its 126 degrees out here, but
it
can't be any more than 114."

Yeah, the only place we caught the smallmouth was up by the damn in the
rapids, fishing the crayfish and shad rap lures on the calm side of the
rocks. My shad rap was a blue/orange and we both were casting a deep
red/clear crayfish as well. We had to wade out pretty far in some spots to
get some good pools. The bass were on the small side and I think I only got
two or three. My bro inlaw took about five total for the day. He has some
experience in rivers here in MD and VA but other than that he also talked a
lot about fishing lake Texahoma when he lived in Texas with his dad. Said
they lived right down the street from the lake and he spent most of his time
out there workin the banks. He also spends a lot of time a Lochraven draggin
largemouths and whatnot in so he seemed to be the fish magnet that day for
us. He was having a rough time bringing anything in once we went south of
the train bridge. He caught two smallies by the surrounding area of the
pylons on the Shanendoa before we decided to call it a day. Was getting
annoying cause one of the rafters was smacking his oar on the water when
they went by. By 10pm there were so many tubers and rafts floating on the
water it was getting difficult to get any action at all. Like I said we
started out about 7am and were there till 1pm and only caught a handfull of
smallies.

Your buddy must have put some special stuff on his lure to get the fish.
Nothing was moving. I've heard others say the same. The Shenandoah and
the
Susquehanna have both suffered fishkills of the adult bass population.
I'm
hoping that the same hasn't happened on the Pot-O-Mac.
I also noticed that the weed beds are gone. Didn't get to fish the river
last year as the rain kept the level up above safe wading levels. I'm
wondering if Hurricane Izabel may have scoured the river more than I
thought.

I was amazed on how shallow it actually was. In some spots it was like 2'
deep and in others you'd step into an 8' hole but I think due to the amount
of silt and slime all over the rocks that it wasn't scoured too badly just
was prolly too late into the heat of the day for catching anything worth
talking about. It was a really hot day. The morning was great tho, nice and
cool untill about 10 or so.

Good luck.

--
Thanks for the reply, I'll definately try the hellgramite on my flyrod, I
knew I wasn't prepared for the river but next time we go, i'll be ready to
coax a few in...We were talkin about it on the way home so it will prolly
happen within the next couple weeks or so.

Tight lines,

Anthony