Ultralight Beam: Pohick Bay Ultralight Fishing

After driving for 4 hours and fishing for 9 without a bite we decided to go for a fun trip in the Potomac river. The goal was to find a huge school crappie that would make us forget about yesterdays failure and provide a couple hours of ultralight entertainment. The forecast called for scattered showers but we threw the lightweight rain suits in the yaks just in case.

my new pb!

We never did find any large school of Crappie but what we did find was fast action from an assortment of fish. We went as far up the bay as we could fishing lay downs and channel edges. The water was very shallow often making the mirage drive useless. We made it to a lay down in a deeper channel running through the shallow flats.  Collin was first to land a small Large mouth then we proceeded to land about half a dozen each before the bite died. We continued upstream into the main channel of the creek the water was crystal clear and you could see fish darting around. We fished the deeper sides of the banks and some wood the fish got smaller though and all we could manage were some assorted bream and a couple small bass.  After catching a few we ran into a couple of kayakers who said they were having similar luck with small bass. After having a couple of quick flurries of action and 20 to 30 fish with no crappie we decided to make our way back out towards the main river in hopes of finding a couple. We made it to an area that was a little deeper and had some large submerged trees and rock. The area looked perfect to hold some big tidal Potomac slabs. On my first or second cast in the area I landed a nice crappie  then a 14 inch bass shook off at the boat. Most of the the action was close to the structure and snags happened often. The best presentation seemed to be under a small cork to keep it out of the snags.The hardest part of fishing was trying not to get blown into the structure or the bank. I wish I would have brought my power pole with me as it would have allowed me to fish the area more thoroughly without getting blown around. The surprise of the day came when a 16 inch bass grabbed my little crappie jig deep in the structure I was afraid that it would pop the 6lb line I was using on the structure. Luckily I was able to maneuver it out and it swam into open water where I could easily subdue it. The day was a success in contrast with the day before even though we didn't sink our kayaks with crappie we took 6 home for dinner which will fry up nicely with a side of potato salad.