Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Lock 8 sight fishing

After exploring Violette's Lock on Sunday, I used the last hour or so of daylight to check out Lock 8 again. The water got pretty muddy, but there were still a few sections that were easily sight fished. I ended up landing one small carp around 2 pounds, and broke off a roughly 5 lb carp after he made a quick dive into some logs after being hooked. The light was low enough and casting crazy shadows that I was pretty limited in which sections I could even see fish. There were a few areas where I could catch a glimpse of a tail or see the silt plumes, but couldn't stick a fish.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Exploring Violette's Lock

On Sunday afternoon, I made the trip up to Violette's Lock (aka Lock 23) near Potomac, MD. I knew there is carp fishing in that area because one of my friends sent me a picture of a carp he caught from the area. I didn't get the intel from him on exactly where he caught the fish, and there was minimal information I could find online for carp. Go figure. It was up to me to find the fish.

I started off the day walking along the C&O Canal for about 1.3 miles. The first 3/4 of a mile was completely unfishable. The canal was completely choked off by weeds, and the height of the tow path would make landing a fish nearly impossible, but even worse, the bank was completely covered with high brush growth making casting impossible. There were also a couple kayakers paddling up the canal which would've spooked anything you wanted to fish anyway. It wasn't until the end of the stretch where the weeds started dying off and I saw a few carp behind the trees. Once the canal became fishable, I didn't see any carp, which surprised me because the conditions looked great. Shallow-ish water with a nice muddy bottom. After about a quarter mile, the water got deep to the point where sight fishing would no longer be possible unless you find fish feeding on the edge of the bank. Once it shallowed up again, weeds started choking out the canal. I didn't find any fishable spots for the entire length I walked. This time of year - especially on nice days on the weekend - I would not plan on fishing the Canal near Violette's Lock.

After that, I grabbed my waders and jumped into the Potomac. I saw someone with a spinning rod in hand walk down a little path, so I went that way instead of walking out towards the direction where people were launching kayaks. The water was surprisingly dirty given how little rain we've received. I couldn't see my feet once I was about thigh deep. It may have been silt getting stirred up from the kayak launch. Because of this, I didn't explore much on the Potomac side since I don't feel comfortable wading in water where I can't see where I'm stepping, particularly with the bottom formation of this stretch of the Potomac. Perhaps next time, I'll try going upstream of the kayak launch. Or just go with my friend that's fished it before.

Monday, August 24, 2015

BFC - Big Fletcher's Carp

I got out for a couple hours on Friday afternoon after work. Given my limited time, I decided to simply hit the Canal by Fletcher's Cove. I found one carp right off the bat and got him to the net, ringing in around around 5 lbs. Moving on down the canal, I saw a big silt plume and found a big fish to match. A couple casts in, I get it to eat, but it only stings the lip of the fish. I figured game over for that guy. Surprisingly, it kept eating. This fish would poke at the bank, move along 10 feet, and eat again. I chased this fish for nearly a quarter mile making casts and getting ignored. Finally, I decided there was no way he'd eat the fly he already tried (I should have realized this from the beginning) and switched to a different color. The first cast with a pink bug and he inhaled it. I fought the fish for about 25 minutes before an onlooker gave me the assist with netting the fish. Surprisingly, this fish never took me into my backing, but it would not let me gain an inch. Every time I got it 20 feet out, it would take back 30 feet of line. It rang in at 14 lbs. I need to stop using 3X tippet in this section of the canal.


Monday, August 17, 2015

95 Degree Pay Dirt

I hit the section of the C&O Canal between Fletcher's Cove and Georgetown this weekend with my friend Nick from TwoFisted Heart Productions. We had some success, but we had a lot more mistakes. I landed a nice 8 lb carp and Nick one just shy of 6 lbs. We lost a heck of a lot more between broken tippet and missed hooksets. The carp activity was great until about 11 AM, then it became almost impossible to find anything until about 1 PM when the fish started showing up in the shadows again. Our best guess is with the super hot temps and bright sun, the fish went deep when the sun got straight overhead. It was hard work trekking a total of about 12 miles along the canal in 95+ degree weather, but at least we hit our pay dirt.

All pictures are courtesy of Nick!







Thursday, August 13, 2015

Carp on the Canal with a snakehead bonus

I got a couple hours yesterday to run out on the C&O Canal after some carp. I fished a different section than usual - from Georgetown to Fletcher's Cove. This is about a 2.5 mile stretch with minimal opportunity for true sight fishing (I'll get to what that means) outside of mulberry season, but lots of huge fish. Most of this section of the canal is too deep to see bottom, so the sight fishing here is really just finding "bank diggers," which are what I call the carp that are nosing against the banks looking for food. All you need to do is walk along the bank and keep an eye out for muddy water or slight surface disturbances emanating from the bank. The muddy water is the best indicator, but you usually can't see it as far away as the water disturbances. The water disturbances are easily seen and can be from the tail of the carp pushing water or even the back of the fish breaking the surface, but they can also be false alarms from sunfish or frogs. Either way, keep your eyes peeled even if you don't see either sign of a carp - some of them aren't mudding, but are still actively looking for food. Once you find the mud, look for the fish before doing anything. Once you locate the fish, you usually get one shot to drop your fly in front of it's mouth.

You might seen some other obvious signs of fish that are in the middle of the canal (air bubbles from when the carp takes a mouthful of silt), but that fishing gets tough since you need an indicator and have no idea how deep it is out there.

Yesterday, I saw 6 fish total, but only bagged one. I started out with the carp fly I typically use on the Potomac. I spooked the first two, then pulled the fly out of a fish's mouth. After I spooked one more with the Potomac fly, I switched to my normal, unweighted C&O special. The very next fish I saw ate and I got a good hook set. Without even slowing down, he took me out to about 25 yards of backing deep before I could turn him. After another 5 minutes or so, I brought him to the net and he weighed in at just over 9 lbs on my scale. Pardon the terrible carp selfie - no one passed by for me to get to take a picture again.

As a bonus, on the way back to my car, I saw what looked like a bait ball you would see going after pelagics, but with really small reddish-orange fish. Peering in, I saw a snakehead. I quickly switched over to a clouser minnow, dumped it into the fray, and got startled to all heck when I saw a second snakehead come out of nowhere and slam my fly. Unfortunately, the fight with what would have been my first ever snakehead was pretty short lived and my line broke after about 15 seconds. I lost sight of the second snakehead and couldn't draw one back out and elicit another strike. I later learned that what I saw wasn't actually a bait ball, but was almost certainly a snakehead "nest" of their fry. Apparently both the mother and father guard the fry and the strike on my fly was to protect the fry themselves. Pretty cool! The quality of the picture is mediocre since it was with a cell phone through my polarized glasses. Hopefully next time I'll have my big camera with the polarized lens on deck.


Sunday, August 9, 2015

Cacapon Golf Course

So this isn't exactly a report on how good the fishing was, but instead how good it might be. I was at my buddy's bachelor party this weekend, and we hit the golf course at Cacapon Resort State Park in West Virginia. Of course, as we're going by the ponds (I somehow managed to avoid getting in them!), I notice a surface disturbance. The water was chocolate milk, and you had less than 6 inches of visibility, but that didn't stop me from seeing the tails of carp waving as they were picking stuff off the edges and bottom of the ponds. I'm fairly certain I even saw some sort of koi. I have no idea what else it could have been - they had fairly long and "frayed" dorsal, anal, and tail fins, and were more black in color versus the orange/gold you typically see on a carp.

If you're up for some golf course pond fishing (and I have no idea if it's legal there), give it a shot. The fish looked pretty big. Bring some small nymphs and a strike indicator and hold on!