It was a slow summer...

Well it was a slow summer for me in the fishing department. Since the posts you saw over Memorial Day, I only got on the water three total times. Once on a trip to Beaver Island for carp (I know, I owe you a write up), once on a smallmouth float on the James River, and once a couple weekends ago on the C&O Canal.

The canal wasn't much to write about. I hooked a couple fish, but broke them both off trying to land them. The space canal between 7 and 8 was almost completely empty of water. Between 6 and 7 was fish-able, but low and dirty. I would rate the area as "fish somewhere else" based on what I saw. Plus, with the de-watering of the canal coming up soon, it's probably only going to get worse.

That being said, I did see two monstrous grass carp in the main stem of the Potomac. It was a little surprising to see them there since they aren't native (and generally can't reproduce around here) and I hadn't ever heard of a stocking program in the past. Regardless, I couldn't even get them to glance at my flies.

Hopefully soon I should have some video for you from the past few months...

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.

First Carp of the Season

With the streak of warm weather, I figured my chances would be good at finding some stirring carp in the C&O canal on Saturday. Of course, the weather turned out to be cooler than originally forecast, which doesn't help keep the fish active.

I parked up at Lock 8 and began my walk down towards 7. Nearly all of the stretch had no water, and there were only a couple pockets that had enough water to hold a couple fish. The final 100 yards above Lock 7 held a few more fish, and I managed to pluck my first carp of the season out of there. He took my usual fly, although I needed to change up colors to get any reaction from the fish. I didn't know it yet, but it was a signal of what was to come.

I continued on down past lock 7. The water level in between 6 and 7 was roughly normal, or maybe down a few inches. I worked the stretch all the way down to Little Falls Pump Station. There were plenty of fish, and some of them were hogs too. Unfortunately, these early season fish were as picky as I have ever seen them. I tried throwing everything in my fly box at them, but the vast majority of my attempts were met with nothing more than an occasional follow. I only got one fish to eat the rest of the day, but could not connect on the hook set. Even the "bank digging" fish wouldn't look at my fly.

The interesting thing is the fish were clearly actively feeding. They were rooting around and pushing plenty of silt. I even saw a couple fish actively opening their mouth and eating something. But I couldn't tell what it was. My best guess is since things appeared to be beginning to bloom, the fish were each plant matter versus the bugs I was throwing. As the weather warms, hopefully the fish will become less picky. Either way, I'm starting to count down the days to when it's time for the carp to feed on mulberries.

Spring is coming!

Spring is on its way for sure. The 5-day forecast has a four days in the 70's with two hitting the upper 70's. This could spell an early start to the carp season here in DC! Hopefully I'll be able to string together a couple hours before or after work this week to check things out. I'm getting the itch!

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.

Joaquin Effects

The effects of Hurricane Joaquin will be impacting our fishing for a few days at least, but it's hard to say how long with how frequently it seems to be changing directions. Few of the models still have it making landfall over the mid-Atlantic, or even anywhere in the mainland. Regardless, all the streams should be blown out for the next week at least, I would guess based on the rain we've already received. Besides the rivers just being too muddy, it would be downright dangerous to wade into any streams or rivers. The non-tidal section has predictions at the Little Falls Pump Station of the river still rising by Monday approaching flood stage. The Tidal Potomac at Georgetown is expected to approach flood stage with the next two high tides, and is expected to flood with continuing intensity at high tides through at least Monday. The predictions don't go beyond Monday yet, but I'll be keeping my eye on them. While no one wants the property damaged associated with floods, when the Tidal Basin floods, it creates some fantastic grass flats where the carp are known to come up and feed. We often see that with spring floods, but we may may not see that in the fall. Depending on how badly things flood, the river could mix with the C&O Canal, which could either let fish escape, or hopefully, bring some big fish in that get caught up in the canal. I'm thinking we won't hit those levels though.

Looking ahead at the forecasts, Saturday is definitely a wash (pun intended) for fishing of any sort, but maybe there will be a break Sunday if you have some still water you can hit. Next week should be nice, so lots of opportunities to stick with the still water or even the Canal. Hopefully the following weekend will give the waters enough time to get in some fall fishing.

Is it still summer?

I had a very busy end of the summer, but finally was able to get back on the water on Saturday. Fall made a rapid appearance last week with some fairly cool temps all week. I had no idea what to expect for the fishing.

I first hit Lock 7-8 on the Canal to tune up on sight fishing. The water was high again. In fact, I've never seen more water above Lock 8. The first section of water below 8 was crystal clear, but quickly became pretty muddy after a couple hundred yards. I could only find on fish that was mudding and visible. A few more were throwing silt, but were too deep. There were quite a few that were feeding on something off the surface, but I couldn't figure out what it would be this time of year. Needless to say, after a couple hours, I struck out and moved on to the main stem of the Potomac.

The water was lower than I ever fished before on the main stem. It was also crystal clear. I thought this might be good because the fish would stack up in some of the holds and I'd be able to see them from further away. I'm not sure if it was the low water that made it too difficult for fish to get into the normal places I find them or if the cooler temps made the shallows less appealing, but I didn't see a single fish. I'm sure it didn't help that it was overcast and windy, two things that don't help finding these guys when the bottom is dark as is. I did find tons of crawfish though. Oh, and my scale randomly broke as I was walking around.

Lastly, I went off to Fletcher's Cove. I walked for a while before I saw my first fish. As I was prepping for the delivery, an interested lady ran over to see what I was looking at and promptly spooked it. I thought for sure that would mean a skunk for the day. Luckily, a little while later, I found another fish, delivered the cast and watched it suck in the fly. Several minutes later, I landed a fish I'd estimate in the 8-10 pound range. I had one more shot before I called it a day, but couldn't coax an eat.

Carp on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River

I went out on a smallmouth float on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River this past weekend. Of course, With the possibility of carp, there was always a rod rigged up just in case we saw a feeder. We floated the section upstream of Elkton, almost at the beginning of the South Fork. Within the first 5 minutes, we saw a silt plume, and the guide handed me the carp rod. I patiently waited for the fish to turn any direction except away from me so I didn't line him. Once my opportunity came through, I got the right amount of line out, went to drop it in front of him.... and hooked my smallmouth rod on the forward cast. By the time I got it untangled, we lost track of the fish. Bummer. We saw a few more feeders, but never actually got a shot off before the fish spooked away. There were a lot of other BIG fish we saw in some of the deeper holes. It really makes me want to try a float dedicated to carp, but there probably wasn't quite enough water conducive to fly fishing for carp to make it worth an exclusive trip on this section of the river.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!