I took a trip to the Patapsco river this afternoon with my new UL to see what I could catch. My goal was to get into some smallmouth. I've never fished moving water like this before so I had very low expectations with little to no confidence in catching fish.

I strapped on my chest waders and went in the water. I was fishing a 2" pumpkinseed colored grub on a white jighead. I walked downstream a little bit to the bridge where it was deeper and shady. Not too long into fishing I got a really hard hit that got me very excited. Shortly after I caught this little redbreast sunfish. Pretty, but not what I was really after. It still made the trip worth it for me.

I moved over to the next underpass below the bridge where it was deeper and rockier. On my second or third cast I felt a bite and set the hook and this little smallmouth came tumbling across the surface of the water. Tiny I know but I was still really happy about it... my first smallmouth!

Just two more casts in the same area and my grub got absolutely nailed when I brought it over a ledge (you can see the ledge in the photo). It was a much bigger smallmouth, actually pretty decent sized for a river this small. This fish got me really stoked. It's a shame that I didn't get to fight it very long, I could tell it had some muscle.

I caught one more tiny smallmouth in this spot before I decided to move upstream quite a bit to find some more pools. I was standing on some rocks that hang over the bank and I could see tons of sunfish and tiny smallies below me, constantly messing with my grub. I dropped it between some rocks and yanked up this small rock bass. Never caught one of these before either, so this made the trip even better.

A little bit further upstream I decided to put on a 2.5" tube on a bigger jighead and target some more smallmouth like that second one I caught. The water directly in front of me was deep and slow moving, with a sandy bottom that sloped up sharply into a shallow, rocky, fast moving stretch close to the other side. I cast my tube along this edge twice and felt what I thought was a hit (current dragging the tube over these rocks feels just like fish biting its uncanny) so I set the hook to be safe and my line took off. This was a better fish, it was fighting really hard and then it leaped out of the air and tried diving beneath the rock I was standing on before I could lift it out of the water. My last and biggest smallie of the day. This fish made me really happy.

All in all it was a good day, wayyy better than I had expected. For some reason, catching these tiny fish out of this river felt way more rewarding than catching 3 and 4lbers out of a pond on crankbaits. I'll be returning to this river in a couple days to see how I can do.

Awesome! Congrats on some firsts and keep at it! Smallie fishing can be addicting!

Jeff

Congrads man on the first one