Lots of typical stuff and some unusual patterns were used on the Potomac. Photo by Cobi Pellerito. Angler: Bryan Schmitt.
MARBURY, Maryland — Generally, the Potomac River is a surefire place for an interesting tournament, and anglers in the Toyota Series presented by Phoenix Boats Northern Division had just that in the season opener. With pretty solid weights each day of the event, a wide variety of baits and patterns provided plenty of variety on the river.
Next, the Northern Division anglers head north to Lake Champlain, where the fishing should also be fantastic.
1. Catt makes it possible in a stream
While fishing in a stream, Michael Catt finally won by a fairly large margin after making a big catch on the first day and never really faltering after that.
Catt's main bait was a Bruiser Baits Bruiser Hog Texas rig with a 1/4-ounce Flat Out Tungsten weight and a 5/0 Owner hook, which he used on a 17-pound Seaguar AbrazX. For the T-rig, he used a 7-foot, 4-inch heavy Ark Invoker Pro. Catt also used a dropshot with a Bruiser Baits Drop Shot in Potomac Special for his worm, a 1/4-ounce or 1/8-ounce weight, a No. 2 hook and an 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu as a leader. On the rod, he used a 7-foot, 2-inch medium-heavy Ark Invoker Pro.
2. Perch bed key for stokers
Spike Stoker came in second with some Potomac staples and some non-traditional offerings.
He fished for clams in the morning with a Berkley Frittside, caught some on the frog, threw a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer with a Yamamoto Zako, and used a 3/16-ounce Reneau Tackle Line Thru Finesse head with a 3.8-inch 6th Sense Divine Swimbait.
“I started every morning on a bed of mussels; the first two mornings it didn't work out as well as I thought it would,” Stoker said. “But the third morning they bit – I caught 15 pounds in an hour.”
“When the water was really low, I would take the swimbait and crank it as fast as I could over the bass beds, and they would come up and get it,” he said. “I had probably found 20 or 25 of those bass beds, and when the water was low, the fish would sit on the edge. The head of the swimbait comes through the sparse grass really well, and when you crank it in, it wiggles really hard left and right.”
“Bass beds” are understandable to Texans, but other people may know them as sunfish beds or bream beds. For his baitcasting techniques, Stoker used Reneau Tackle rods and put a homemade skirt on his JackHammer to create a customized atmosphere.
3. Dickerson sticks with the pad bite
Tommy Dickerson gained 19 pounds on Day 1, but was never able to reach that total again for the rest of the event, but still performed well each day.
Dickerson fished exclusively with pads, using an iRod, 40-pound braid line, and a black and blue Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver. He used 1/4- and 1/2-ounce weights and a 4/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook.
“On cloudy days they were higher under the pads and the 1/2 ounce spooked them a little,” Dickerson said. “So I started throwing the 1/4 ounce and was barely making it. When I threw the 1/2 it spooked them and I barely got a bite. At high tide I got more in the pads and at low tide more on the edges. I had a couple of spots from my last visit there and they were producing something again. I think the bottom was harder – they always seemed to produce something; I could leave and come back several times in one day.”
4. Schmitt does well again on the Potomac
Bryan Schmitt, arguably the best tidal angler currently, has once again made it into the top 10 on his home river. This week he managed to do so using a whole range of different tactics, which is rather untypical for the professional from Maryland.
In addition to a SPRO vibrating bait prototype, Schmitt used a SPRO Bronzeye Jr., a Missile Baits Quiver Worm with Floatzilla Tail, a 1st Generation Copperhead Bladed Jig, a 1/2-ounce Hayabusa Lil' Schmitty Swim Jig (river special), and a Missile Baits D Bomb.
For his worm, Schmitt used a 5/16-ounce Reins weight and a 4/0 Hayabusa WRM959. He trolled the vibrating jig and swim jig with a D Domb with the fins cut off. For the solo D-Bomb, he used a 5/0 Hayabusa FPP Straight HD and a 1.5-ounce Reins weight. All around, Schmitt used P-Line and Fitzgerald rods.
Schmitt started the event with a swim jig on the Greenway Flats, but had to cobble together a bit of his own from there on out.
“I don't normally do this on the river, but I did three different things three days in a row,” he said. “The first day I walked up to the greenway, and when I got to where I was going, nobody was there, and me and my co-angler were blistering them. The second day, I'm really excited to go back there, and I'm not getting any bites — horrible. I was fishing the edge of the grass, and a fish exploded next to a log. Well, I caught a 4 and a 3 1/2 and lost a big one on that log. So I started walking, and then I caught another one in the grass and lost another big one in the grass.”
On the third day, Schmitt had to adjust again after two samples had already failed.
“On the third day, I didn't know what to do. I tried a few things, caught everything, and then went out flipping and punching in Aquia,” he said. “I wasn't fishing clean and I wasn't getting the best deals – I was just getting so lucky with the stuff. I was getting these bites that you don't normally get unless you're winning, but it just wasn't happening.”
5. Basics deliver for Duarte
John Duarte landed on the leaderboard with two consecutive 17-pound bags on days two and three. For the Maryland pro, using simple items was enough.
Duarte primarily threw a 3/8-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer in white and hit with a Zoom Z-Hog on a 4/0 Owner Jungle Flippin' Hook and a 1.5-ounce weight.
“The first day I kind of messed it up; I let them bite first thing in the morning,” Duarte said. “The next two days I basically caught them on a mat, striking, and the last day I weighed two or three of them out of a grass bed in the main river.”
6. The Bright Spot pattern works for Davis
Flint Davis made it into the top 10 due to a rather unique pattern.
“I thought I was on bream beds, but it turns out I wasn't,” he said. “I caught them at low tide, in bright spots. Well, the bright spots were little holes in the bottom. On the grass flat, the bright spots were six inches deeper – at low tide, all the fish were driven into the bright spots.”
The downside was that not much happened for Davis until the end of the day.
“It was really annoying for me at high tide,” he said. “I couldn't catch them until the tide was low enough, and then I had to run around like a madman when the tide was right.”
To catch his fish, Davis relied on a crazy-rigged Yamamoto Senko with a 1/0 Roboworm Rebarb hook.
7. Serafin shines with finesse
Chase Serafin spent a week on the Greenway Flats and used some clever techniques to get bass to bite.
His main hitter was the exotic 5-inch Yamamoto Senko in pumpkin green with a bright green colored tail. He also used a drop shot with a 3/8-ounce weight and 6- or 7-inch Roboworm Straight Tail Worms.
“I threw the Senko into the grass beds and ran the thing through the holes as slowly as I could. There were some bream beds in between, which is why I colored the tail,” Serafin said. “Halfway through the first day, I noticed there were some isolated clumps on the edges of the grass flats, and I could see fish around them on LiveScope. I caught them with the Dawn Roboworm with dropshots – that's what I caught all my big fish with on day two.”
8. Potomac good again for McCann
Ben McCann is currently setting a pretty good record on the Potomac River, and the shallow, grassy fishing area seems to suit him just fine.
At this event, McCann mixed a few different baits. One of his main baits was a BOOYAH Pad Crasher with a 3/0 Gamakatsu Frog Hook and trimmed legs. He also used a Beast Coast Gorilla Swim Jig with a Zoom Z-Craw Jr., a drop shot with a 6-inch Roboworm Straight Tail Worm, and a weightless Missile Baits D Stroyer.
McCann used Powell rods and Daiwa reels throughout, with Seaguar TactX for braided line and a Seaguar Red Label for fluoro. For his dropshot, he used a Gamakatsu G-Finesse Worm hook and a 1/8-ounce weight.
McCann used all of his equipment when fishing in bream beds, grass and swamps.
“I was fishing the swim jig in water so shallow that I could literally see the fish reacting to the swim jig,” he said. “The D Stroyer was a follow-up bait. I could throw it up if they missed it, completely weightless; it looks super good in the water column and they usually don't reject it.
“The dropshot was designed for hard cover in the current and I would throw it at passing fish,” he said. “I fished a lot near sunfish beds and a lot in the marshes where the water was draining off the arrowheads.”
9. Ingalls sticks to the basic pillars
Ryan Ingalls, one of the oddly few locals in the top 10, brought a few river standards to get the job done.
An Ima Finesse Popper was probably the most fun thing Ingalls threw, and he also used a 3/8-ounce no-name swim jig with a craw trailer and a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer in white, bluegill and craw patterns. He used Gamma line and Dobyns rods.
“In the past, I've always had trouble adjusting on the second day. This year, I finally took a different approach and it worked,” he said. “I just targeted deeper grass, ditches, edges — things unique to the grass flats. I fished the Mason Neck area — that area was so good in this event because we had a tidal window. Up there, it was low tide for the entire six-hour tidal cycle, so I didn't go too far up or downstream. On the third day, the area where I caught the limit wasn't good, so I gave up around 9:30 a.m. and went fishing for fun.”
10. Main river buoys Keyso
When Mikey Keyso came fishing from Florida, he landed his usual top 10 hit with a fishing rod in hand.
For Keyso, the main bait was a 1/2 or 3/4 ounce Reaction Innovations Kinky Beaver (Dirty Sanchez), a 4/0 Mustad Grip-Pin Max 3X Punch Hook and a 50-pound Fitzgerald Vursa Braid.
When Keyso caught a 7-2 while training on the main river, he had the idea that it would be a great bite.
“I was fishing the main river with ChatterBait and saw some clumps of milfoil at low tide,” he said. “I started casting that and got bites. That was my main thing, just casting milfoil anywhere I could find it. The second day we had a pretty strong wind and I had to move out to Belmont Bay where I cast the milfoil. That was my thing – I went there to fish the grass.”
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