The canal is rewatered!

My friend has reported that there is water back in the Canal in the Georgetown stretch along with sightings of carp. Maybe the mulberry season isn't over yet after all! The trees likely won't be dropping for too long, but the good thing is that the draining and refilling likely brought in a new batch of carp which means they haven't learned all our flies yet!

A drained Canal

Unfortunately, it appears the mulberry season is cut short this year. The canal between Fletcher's Cove and Georgetown has apparently been drained for some maintenance. I assume this is in preparation for the upcoming 18 months of the C&O canal being drained. Very unfortunate.

Memorial Day Mulberries

I meant to post this earlier, but life got in the way. Better late than never.

The mulberry hatch is in full swing. I got out all three days over Memorial Day weekend. The fish seemed to get more aggressive as the weekend rolled on. My last fish of the weekend was the biggest, pushing 15 lbs. and caught right in front of the Sea Catch restaurant. It put up one heck of a fight, and I had quite the crowd cheering me on by the end.

The big boy

Even the turtles are looking for the berries

Mulberry Watch, Part 2

I got out this past Saturday in the few hours to fish the stretch between Fletchers and Georgetown again. Some of the mulberry fruits are beginning to show light shades of red, but we still have some time to go. Strangely, or maybe not, some of the trees were a little deeper red than the picture, but others weren't even showing any red at all. With warmer weather coming up, we might see the fruit starting to drop next weekend, but certainly by Memorial Day at the latest. The other cue is there's lots of baby geese around now. They're cute, but their parents get a bit angry when you walk past.

Now as far as the fishing. There was some good and some bad.

The Good

• Very clear water - at least for the canal - with about 3 feet of visibility
• Very active fish - lots of fish were poking around, feeding, and cruising
• Very big fish - I'm fairly certain one fish (that wouldn't eat) was easily pushing 30 pounds

The Bad

• The water was extremely high - about 2 or 3 feet above normal. It was actually spilling over the overflow point that's a bit north of Key Bridge.
• A storm rolled in and ruined everything

I was quite surprised when I got to the canal and saw how much water was there. I wasn't sure if it would mean a ruined day or a good day. Turned out to be a little bit of both. It was very easy to find cruising fish. The bad thing was feeding fish were extremely hard to target. It was easy to spot the large plumes of silt, but because the water was so high, the feeding was happening too deep to actually see far enough through the silt to figure out where the fish were. To make it even worse, the silt clouds simply were not dispersing. 

Nonetheless, I still managed to stick two fish, Unfortunately, one escaped my net on my first landing attempt then popped the hook out, and the second fish broke me off while I was trying to scoop him. I pulled the hook out of countless other fish's mouths too.

I went with the Bonefish Gotcha again today after having success last week. I can't quite figure out this fly. Some feeding fish would ignore it, others would attack it very aggressively. I even got a few fish to eat that I never would have expected to pay attention to food with my old techniques. I also have a zero percent success rate in setting the hook if the fish is swimming towards me with this fly. That's the hardest way to set a hook on a carp, but I'd usually at least make contact on a few fish. Maybe it's just a coincidence. 

Keep your eyes out for the next report. I'm going to try to get a mulberry fly tying tutorial up soon too!

It's almost mulberry season!

I was supposed to go musky fishing on Saturday with one of my favorite Virginia guides, Matt Miles, but the river was unfishable for the third time this year. With that trip off the books, I figured it would be a great time to head over to the C&O Canal to check out how close we are to the mulberry hatch, which if you have been reading this blog for a while, you'll know is my favorite time of the year. The berries are there - pretty small and green. A "ripe" mulberry is around an inch long, but these are closer to a quarter inch right now. My guess is that we're maybe two weeks away.

Despite no mulberries, I still had to check out the fishing. I walked from Fletcher's Cove to Georgetown and back. The majority of fish I saw were at either end of my trek. I thought it was going to be a long day because most of the fish I saw were out of true sight fishing range with my normal nymphs since the water was so muddy. I finally stumbled upon a fish hugging the bank, but pulled the fly away from him when he went to eat. I guess some off-season rust. A few more fish ignored the fly. Frustrated, I tried my strategy of the makeshift strike indicator, but that didn't work either. Finally, out of desperation, I tied on a Bonefish Gotcha and dropped a cast out. To my surprise, a fish ate it almost immediately, but I didn't get a good hook set. A few more casts later, and I actually came tight! It was actually a pretty hefty fish, and the good news is most fish I saw were pretty good size this year.

I even saw this little guy hanging out in a tree.

More Bad News for Fishing in the C&O Canal

After the post last week about repairs to the C&O Canal requiring a large portion to be drained, it looks like even more bad news awaits us. You may remember in the past the replica canal boat that used to go up and down the Georgetown section of the canal as a tourist attraction. It stopped operating several years ago, but as The Georgetown Current reports, the Georgetown Heritage nonprofit (local business improvement district arm) wants to begin operating it again. In order to do that, both Locks 3 and Locks 4 need repairs.

The National Park Service has funded the repairs to Lock 3, at a cost of $5.5 million dollars. It will require the canal to be drained completely east of Lock 5, which is just over the Maryland border. The NPS plans to begin work in October of this year with completion expected in April 2018. Additionally, repairs to Lock 4 have not yet been funded, so NPS has no timeline for when those will be complete. While the required repairs are less extensive, one can imagine these repairs may not happen at the same time and could extend the timeframe.

While having the canal drained for shorter periods of time over the winter isn't particularly new, having such a large portion drained for such a long period of time is new to me in the 9 years I've lived in the DC area. This comes as an even greater disappointment after what we saw last season. The 2014-2015 winter saw the canal remain filled the entire season. As a result, last summer we saw bass, bluegill, and carp populations flourish. Bigger and healthier fish were available, and the canal became an even greater source of recreation for the general DC area. This will be replaced by a dry canal bed and towpaths blocked for extended periods of time due to construction.

While understandably, a nearly 200 year old canal and lock system will require repairs, it's quite unfortunate we cannot figure out how to restore something that was built with 19th century technology in a more reasonable time frame than 18 months.

Water in the C&O Canal

My sources tell me it appears the Canal is getting filled with water in the section around Georgetown. How the fish actually get in there after they drain it is still beyond me. Well, they clearly get washed/sucked in, but I'm amazed it occurs in the numbers we see.

I've also been told that there will be no water from Lock 5 all the way north to possibly even as far to Lock 22. I'm hoping I'm interpreting the data incorrectly, but it sounds like I'm not. There's a culvert at Carderock and the "Log Wall" that's requiring repair. As I mentioned in my last post, there was normal water levels in between Locks 6 and 7. Hopefully that sticks.

How deep is the canal?

So exactly how deep is the canal? It's a question I've wondered for a long time. Of course, the answer is "it depends" but I now have a much better idea. With a few hours to kill on Saturday afternoon, I ran over to Fletcher's Cove to have a run at some carp. I realized immediately that the water levels were down about 3 feet. Looking towards Georgetown, I could see some mud islands poking out of the water. I realized this would mean one of two things: Either water levels would be great for sight fishing to big carp OR I'd be able to finally get a good understanding of bottom structure and depth. It turned out to be the latter. Walking south of Fletchers, you have about a quarter mile where there's still a good amount of water - to the point where you can't see the bottom - so you're talking a depth of probably 5 feet or more at normal water levels.

Once you hit a quarter mile down the canal, you get into another quarter to half mile stretch that's between a foot or two of depth, so it's likely 4-5 feet at normal water levels. Both this section and the last had a distinct "V" shaped bottom, where it was clearly deeper in the middle of the canal. There were lots of schools of shad, a few nice sized largemouths, and even the occasional carp. What had the potential for ideal sight fishing was quickly destroyed by the movement of all the fish stirring up the silt and giving you less than 6" visibility.

Moving past this, nearly the entire rest of the canal down to the foot bridge crossing at 34th St was basically dry with no more than a trickle of water in the middle of the canal. The closer you got to Georgetown, the flatter the bottom became with little to no drop off. The majority of this section is about 3 feet deep. There are a few deeper holes that are holding lots of sunfish and a couple carp around the Key Bridge.

Despite this being mostly a scouting trip, I was able to stick one fish, and it was a hefty one. Probably one of the bigger I've gotten on the canal, actually. I'm not going to hit that section of water again until the Park Service begins refilling the canal. There's too little water, and I think fishing it any more will really over-stress the fish. Next time, I'll walk north of Fletcher's. I've only hit that stretch once before and saw nothing, but all the fish in the lower stretch had to go somewhere, right? On a side note, rumor has it water levels are normal up at locks 7 and 8. I haven't checked it out myself yet, though.

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!

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.

Carps Revenge

I found a couple spare hours Saturday afternoon to get back out to the canal to get one last shot at the mulberry hatch and to hopefully enact my revenge upon the fish that broke me off. The season is really done now. I only saw about four fish in the 2.5 hours I got on the water. I broke two of them off. Ugh.

Mulberry Hatch

I fished the mulberry hatch with my friend Aaron yesterday on the C&O Canal right in Georgetown. It was my first time ever fishing that stretch of the canal, and the first time ever fishing the mulberries. What an experience! Of course, the fish weren't in thick under most of the trees, despite a steady drop of berries, but I still managed some success anyway. The total to the net in a half day was 3. I broke off one big boy that would have been a great fish. Aaron also broke off a fish after he set the hook so hard, I thought he was going to backcast it into the trees behind us.

The story of the day, though, was my last fish. I found a section where I saw a bunch of big fish feeding. I was fishing near the south side of the old boat (the "barge" which was tugged by donkeys in the old days) in the end of the canal, and didn't have a good game plan for landing a fish. I was about 12 feet off the water, with a narrow stretch of about 5 feet of water between me and the boat. I literally have no idea how I landed this fish, because nearly everything possible went wrong, but I still managed to get it to the net. Once I hooked it, it went on a hell of a run and of course made a sharp left around some bridge pilings. He had no thoughts about slowing down, and I started seeing my fly line getting low. I contemplated for a minute breaking him off on purpose because I was afraid he'd sever my backing and I'd lose the whole line, but I decided to press on and hope it held. I saw almost 100 feet of backing out of the rod tip before I stopped the fish, and luckily the backing held against the bridge. Just as luckily, the fish decided to come back around the correct side of the pilings to not completely wrap me up. But it wasn't over yet. Once I cleared him of the boat, the fish decided to swim around the other side of the boat, promptly getting the leader stuck on the boat itself. At that point, I had to do some passing the rod to myself around some trees, climb up on the bridge and walk across, and somehow popped the line free. At this point, there's a good 25 people watching this spectacle. Finally, the fish was getting tired, so I walked him down to the end of the lock where there was only a foot or two to reach into the water and was able to scoop him up to the cheers of the crowd. I felt the leader, and it felt like I was running my hand over sandpaper. I still have no idea how it held up.

Sucking a mulberry off the surface

This turtle was waiting for his chance too

So close to an eat... but he refused