Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Before Tuesday Carl had been calling me, trying to plan a trip to Fletcher's to catch some early season white perch. Being the "WP Master," I could tell that he was getting pretty anxious about getting some WP smell into the boat so I was hoping to get into some nice fish when we launched on Tuesday morning.

We launched at Gravelly Point around 7am. We knew that nice sized WP were being caught near "Windy Run" from a previous reconnaissance mission to Fletcher's. We stopped at Windy Run and rigged up bottom rigs with 4-5, yes that is 4 to 5 OUNCES of weight with worms and halved minnows. It didn't take long before I caught my first ever blue cat:



You can see that it had a long and deep gash along its side but it was still healthy enough to eat and put up a short fight. We didn't catch anything after that so we decided to move.

We motored up to Fletcher's to see if we could find any WP. We saw some guys catching them from the shore on Easter Sunday but nothing of size. Fletcher's was PACKED with row boats filled with fly fisherman catching shad. We anchored outside the calm water created by the cove and managed one or two VERY small white perch. The water was moving very fast. Again, we decided to move.

We decided to motor back to Windy Run where the current was slower. By that time there were 3 or 4 boats anchored near where we had fished earlier. We saw one guy in a boat who was catching WP left and right so we decided to anchor just downstream and farther from the shore from him. Immediately we started catching WP:



Carl's first WP of the year:





The other fisherman near us was still putting on a WP clinic. He was catching fish on literally every single cast. I've never seen anything like it. He was throwing all of them back, even the big ones. We decided to try to replicate his pattern by positioning the boat the same distance from the shore as his. That move paid off. We started whacking WP, even bringing up two at a time! We caught quite a few large perch.



The fish also got BIGGER:



Two BIG ones at a time!





Our cooler at the end of the day:



Carl caught two more blue cats and I got my first experience with the infamous kitty-slime.

We were starting to turn "medium-rare" by about 11am so we decided to return to the ramp before we became "well-done." It was awesome to catch some quality fish on the first WP trip of the year. Most of the bigger fish were caught on the halved minnows although some were also caught on night crawlers. I thought Carl was going to jump out of his pants when we started pulling up big ones two at a time!

On Wednesday, Mo joined us in an attempt to replicate the previous days success. We launched around 6am. Washington is very beautiful at sun rise:



We tried the same spot as Tuesday and Mo landed the first fish; a HUGE white perch!!!


But the rest of the day was pretty tough. We moved around a lot, found some fish here and there, but the average size wasn't nearly as big as the day before. I was given the (unfortunate) job of Captaining the boat. A word of advice: if someone tells you to "take me to the fish"...don't. The guy who drives the boat gets the blame if the fishing is tough...On Wednesday, that was me. The fish just weren't at Windy Run in the same numbers as Tuesday. They were also smaller in size like this "junior" that Mo landed:


We caught some fish but the large majority of them were too small to keep. Here is our cooler at the end of the day. Notice Mo's "gorilla" perch compared to the others:


A view of the local fauna at Cormorant Rock:


It was nice to learn about fishing at and around Fletcher's. I had never fished DC water and it was definitely a learning experience. Carl has some great stories and experiences of fishing the area and I feel fortunate to be part of it.

Last edited by Dominion Dan (Apr-08-10 7:43PM)