Pacemaker Fishing Forum

After a long week at a conference, a couple of my business associates and I decided to have a meeting on the river. We met up at Gravelly Point at 0630 with a plan to go down to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to try to get some of those big cats that Capt. Mike always catches!

As we started motoring in the no wake zone, I got a call from Jeff and Curly (they were fishing Fletcher's) and they relayed that they had a keeper in the box already. So my guys said they wanted to go to Fletcher's. Since this was my plan C, i tried to talk them into trying the Washington Channel (plan B) first and then maybe head up to Fletcher's if the action got hotter. Nope! They want to go to Fletcher's so up the river we went!

Did I already say it was a beautiful day??

We got to Fletchers and say Jeff & Curly but they were frustrated because the bite was slow. Now what do I do? So we anchored......



.....in the little cove below Fletchers and put put the lines. It didn't take too long to get the skunk off the boat but we got our 1st laugh when this cat got Dan good!



Although we got quite a few bites in this hole, they must have been little cats because we didn't get another one so we move up the river by 75 yards. A few minutes later, John got into the action and took his skunk off!



The action stopped and we moved up river again but this time, we caught five nice cast (including one channel).





This fish was caught on a "Campo cast". Let me explain. Several years ago, Dan, John and I were fishing for white perch when John totally screwed up a cast that landed right next to the boat. of coarse, Dan and I ripped into him but teh joke was on us as he landed one of the nicest white perch of the day. That story has been told numerous times.

So...I was setting up some lined and I flubbed the cats and had a mess out back. I was mad but I heard Dan yell "Campo cast"! So I said, "what I am about to do is totally wrong, the line is going to get messed up.....i should not be doing this". ll of the sudden, I get a big hit and this nice blue cat came aboard. There is no way I should have caught that fish with that presentation.....but it was a "Campo cast"!



Curly and Jeff moved downriver to try the bridges and then the channel. We stayed for a bit and tried another hole which produced three more casts. All told, we caught 9 blue cats and 1 channel cat at Fletchers. We also saw Paula out there live lining for stripers with live herring. She was just written up in the Post a few days ago....worth the read.

After the action stopped, we headed to the Channel. We made several passes and got zippo! Curly and Jeff had picked up some largemouth bass and I'm sure they will report whatever else they caught.

As out time was coming to an end, one of the lines went down and John picked up an undersized rock on a blue/silver rebel jointed Spoonbill.



Dan was up next when one of the rods went down but he was busy steering the boat so John jumped on it and we finally had our 1st DC keeper striper of the year!



As we get most of the time when we fish in DC, we were treated to landing jets which is always a thrill....it never gets old.



What a great day!!