Gonna be fishing a federation tournament Sunday may 7th on the Potomac out of smallwood state park launch. Just looking for some info on stage of spawn,"hot spots", types of baits to throw, that kinda stuff. Is there any a-rig limitations on the number of hooks? Never been there before so any advice is appreciated. Gonna be there the fri and sat before to practice. Thanks in advance.

What nobody has info on the Potomac? That's hard to believe.

First thing you need is a good river map of the area you will be fishing. Lot's of good water near Smallwood. Sent you a pm.

Only fished there twice, but did well there last saturday in the BFL.  Don't bother with the a-rig.  The fish are in shallow grass, 1-4 ft, most of the time.  Not sure if incoming or outgoing tide is best (haven't fished there enough to figure that out).  Almost everybody that fishes the river is throwing a senko or bladed jig.

On 4/22/2017 at 11:23 AM, JKline21 said:

What nobody has info on the Potomac? That's hard to believe.

I suspect the problem isn't that there's no info....the problem is that good answers to your questions would require encyclopedic volumes.    Every tributary is a little different....every couple miles of main stem are different.  Every tide change brings dramatically different conditions.  I have been on the VA side this week, but I can tell you that you got to figure them out every time .....Saturday, at 6PM, they were fairly aggressive and chasing small cranks over grass.  Tuesday at 6PM, they were schooling up minnows and wouldn't touch anything over about 2".  Last night, the hunters and cruisers could be caught on occasional small lipless, but money was being made in laydowns.  There's a lot of information, including recent reports at National Bass Guide Service.com and even on Charlie Taylor's fishing report.  The list of 'good spots' that you can reach from that launch would number in the tens of thousands.

On ‎4‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 6:49 PM, JKline21 said:

Gonna be fishing a federation tournament Sunday may 7th on the Potomac out of smallwood state park launch. Just looking for some info on stage of spawn,"hot spots", types of baits to throw, that kinda stuff. Is there any a-rig limitations on the number of hooks? Never been there before so any advice is appreciated. Gonna be there the fri and sat before to practice. Thanks in advance.

Right now the Potomac has a minimum length limit of 15 inches until mid June.  As far as hook restrictions, Maryland had a 3 hook limit; VA doesn't have a hook restriction.  With that said, you have to make sure you are not in Maryland waterways if you rig up a standard A rig.  I would highly recommend getting a map of the Potomac because you might think you are in VA waterways when you're actually in Maryland (VA waterways is less than 2 to 4 ft from the bank on the main channel in certain places). 

 

As far as hot spots go it is truly based on tidal conditions.  If you're wanting to narrow it down to a handful of spots I would highly recommend Occoquan area  and Aquia or Potomac Creek.  This time of year on outgoing tide I like to fish Aquia creek.  Incoming tide I will normally sit outside the mouth of the creeks (Aquia/Potomac) or shoot up north to Occoquan or up near the new MGM.