Fried Lemons

Trimming the legs unevenly helped me out. Ease of walking also varies by design. The easiest walking frogs I've found are the terminator frogs.

Companion reel is here. The whole combo weighs less than my Stradic 2500. Balance point is exactly on the locking nut.

Back to basics this season. 1/4 oz ballhead jig with a 3" power grub on the river. Not a perfect bait but pretty close at like 80%. I've caught largemouth, smallmouth, striped, and rock bass on this thing as well as the occasional walleye/catfish. Almost makes me feel bad about all those expensive hard baits I have sitting in the box.

As long as your guides have hard ceramic inserts and not the cheap metal ones they should be fine with braid. Vintage reels might have trouble with braid.

I go through phases. I'll get really into catching a certain species and devote all my time and effort into catching that particular fish. Once the season changes or I have some success I'll switch to another species. I feel every species of fish has something unique to offer, be it a technique used to catch it or a particular way of fighting. This season I really keyed in on the invasive flathead catfish in my area. Lots of fun to catch with an extremely powerful fight. I still default to bass fishing for at least 60% of my time on the water.

New ultralight rod. Fit and finish are flawless and the sensitivity is incredible. Most of the UL rods I'm used to are like limp noodles. This rod has a crisp feel and a fast action. Also extremely light weighing in at 2oz. Still waiting on the companion reel. Can't wait to fish with it.

I fish exclusively from shore. All of my lures I organize into various Plano boxes and choose based on where I plan to fish and what species I'm targeting. I can fit up to three Plano 3600 boxes and all of my tools in my backpack although it's usually just one or two. I prefer to carry just one rod whenever possible or at most two, also based on where I'm fishing and what I'm fishing for. The type of bank fishing I do is sometimes very rough with off trail hiking and climbing huge rocks. It's much more enjoyable if I don't have multiple rods to tangle in trees and bump against rocks. I do want to buy a kayak eventually.

If I think I have a fish I reel my rod tip down then give a short, hard set. Assuming you're fishing braid you don't need to swing the rod too much. Just reel down to give yourself some room for a strong hook set.

A few weeks ago I had some work in DC and as I passed around the river I noticed lots of grass mats in the area. Decided to finally go down there and fish them today. Fished a frog for 2 hours, missed one massive blowup. Found a large gap in a mat and noticed multiple large snakehead periodically surfacing to breathe. They would not hit the frog, so I switched to a swimbait. Watched one at around 10lbs follow and slurp it in. Alas I either set the hook too soon or the fish spat the bait just in time. No action for the rest of the day.

Took a long sweaty hike to get to a stretch of the Potomac I wanted to fish. Fishing was slow but I managed two decent fish near a feeder creek. The inflowing water was noticeably more stained than the main river and the fish were holding along the mud line.

I like to throw a 1/8oz kastmaster as a search bait. Casts very far on light tackle and attracts fish from a good distance. Retrieve it just fast enough to avoid snagging the bottom. Once I locate a fish I'll throw a 2 inch grub on a 1/16oz ball head. Usually where there's one there is a school.

Fished the great falls area for 3 hours today. Caught 3 12-16" smallies, so a fairly slow day. On my "last cast" I hooked and lost a giant smallie just as I was reaching down to lip it. My old pb was 19" and I have caught many in the 18" range. This fish was in a different league. 21"+ with a massive girth.

Took a quick trip after work to a wade spot on the potomac. Water was very stained and about a foot above normal for the summer. I didn't go far as there was a threatening thunderstorm a couple miles to the west. Caught a 12" then missed the next two bites from the front eddy on a ledge. Third time I managed to connect to a chunky 17.5" fish. I got rained on soon after and the bite died down.

65lb braid and 80lb leader on a conventional setup. May seem like overkill but even smaller fish can quickly fray through lighter line on all the submerged rocks.

Got out on the river looking for flatheads around flooded cover. Got 2 big bites for the day. 17lber Just barely failed to break 30lbs. Beat my old pb by about 8 pounds. Just glad I beefed up my tackle, there was a submerged boulder that the fish tried its best to break the line on.

Flood stage is actually a good time to target large cats. The river gets kinda dead where I fish when the water gets too low and hot. I plan on getting out there this Sunday.

Various fish I caught over the past month. All caught along the C&O canal or the Potomac parallel to the canal. It's been tough overall.

I found that I can only walk a hollowbody well at the beginning of the retrieve after a bomb cast. Once it gets to about the halfway mark the walking action stops and all I can get are little forward hops. That said, I have had plenty of strikes on the hops so I don't think it matters all that much.

Caught about 8 smallmouth wading the Potomac all in the 12-14" range. Only lure I used was a z man finesse worm.

So I've had a really unlucky season so far with rod mishaps. I've sent in rods for repairs twice now and I have a third which needs a guide replacement. I really don't want to pay the $40 shipping and wait two weeks for the return on this one so I was wondering, does anyone here know of any shops in Maryland or Virginia around the DC area which will fix rods? Thanks.

I fish this stretch very frequently and frankly most days it is not this good. I think the key factor was the overcast conditions. The fish I caught were all in less than a foot of water. I like targeting shore vegetation because it gives me a shot at snakeheads, which seem to hang extremely shallow, right up against the bank.

Walked the canal today looking for bass. I started off looking for beds but the overcast conditions made it difficult. I worked this one bed for 20 minutes then found the sweet spot. I felt bad after this male looked pretty beat up. Made a move north up the canal and found bass in the upper reaches had not spawned yet. It was raining lightly so I pulled out the buzzbait. As it turned out there was an extremely good topwater bite. I caught around 10 in an hour. Seemed like every likely spot had a fish on it.

Walked the canal looking for bass today. Didn't get any hits but saw a pretty nice 3.5 sitting by a log. Showed no interest in anything I tried throwing. I switched to sunfish hoping to salvage the day. Unfortunately the sunfish bite wasn't great either. I kept 3 and chunked them by the river. Pulled up 2 flatheads at roughly 10 and 6lbs, both loaded with eggs. Interestingly enough when I tried this last year I only caught blues and one very small flathead. This year all of my bites have been from flatheads. They don't seem to be as widespread as blues but I'm pretty sure there is a local population spawning a few miles above D.C.

Caught this 5lber on my flooded local river. I was fishing a normally dried up flat which reached a 3ft depth thanks to the snowmelt. Visibility was about 6 inches.

Decided to get out today as the forecast said it would be the least windy day of the week. Reaching the spot I had in mind required a hike and a lot of climbing but the weather was nice. First to hit was this 18" smallie Next cast I had something on which pulled drag for all of 3 seconds before popping off. If it was a smallie it was a lot bigger than this one. About an hour later got this Catching one of these has been a goal of mine for about a year now so I was pretty thrilled. It took a lot of skunks to finally get one.