Potomac River Bass Fishing Report May 17th 2014

Posted by melvin on May 18, 2014

Story From: www.melvinsmitson.com

Date: May 18th, 2014

Potomac River Bass Fishing Report May 17th 2014

Okuma Reel, Big Bear Rod & Crawdad Rat-L-Trap I Used To Catch Fish Today

I had a rough day on the Potomac River today. Heavy rains the day before this ABA Weekend Series tournament had the river in pretty bad shape but in hindsight it may have been my strategy going into this contest that came back to bite me. I was not able to practice before the tournament and had my mind set on going to one of the more popular spawning flats on the southern portion of the river.

Thinking that the spawn was most likely in full swing by now. Visually, it appeared that I had made the right call. This spring time spawning hot spot on the Potomac River looked like a parking lot full of boats by mid day. I landed around 30 fish but none of them were keepers. I threw all kinds of baits but all I was catching was males under 15 inches.

New Gambler Heavy Cover Swim Jig W/ Gambler EZ Swimmer

Many of the bass I was catching were caught on the new Gambler Heavy Cover Swim Jig with a Gambler EZ Swimmer. Whenever I noticed a variation in water depth I paid particular attention thinking that the females may be hanging a little deeper. The sun never really came out and stayed out today. Leaving a bit of a chill in the air and perhaps putting a damper on the mood of the fish to go about their spawning business on these flats. The big females just never came up onto the flats today in any great numbers.

One nice female bass did come up and took my bladed swimming jig that I was using at the time about 2 feet from the boat. I saw her come up and grab my bait but never really had a shot to land her. She took my bait under the boat before I could even set the hook, she was gone. I'm thinking she looked to be in the 6 lb - 7 lb range.

Even with that, fishing was off out on these flats. Something in the back of my mind told me to go find some hard structure. By the time I left these flats and went looking for hard structure spots other boats were already fishing on them. In the end the allure of catching hundreds of BIG spawning fish moving up onto the flats outweighed the desire to locate isolated fish off hard structure. Before the day was over I wound up fishing inside of a marina and got 2 keepers on a soft plastic stick bait that helped me finish in 36th place.