Let’s explain the title for this fishing report; it was a day with two plans heading in; and only one paid off. Fortunately. The Friday morning forecast called for little to no wind, mild temps in the mid-40s approaching 60s, some sunshine…and…what was this? Fog! Yes, as of Thursday night, fog was predicted to take over the early morning hours. So I woke up, looked out the bedroom window, saw it, and exclaimed “[not nice words].” But…the show goes on, so we gave it a shot today on the river. Motoring out of my home creek in the upper Severn, the fog was dense. I could see about 15 yards ahead of me and after that, nothing ahead. Just thick, white fog. I hugged the shoreline as I made way slowly to the mouth of the creek. Plan was to head across the main river channel and up into a sizable cove with submerged grass along the shoreline (what’s left of it at least). The hope was maybe something snaky would hit, but probably something esox would.
Had to abandon Plan A as soon as I hit the river stem. Too thick a fog, no visibility, and much too risky at the moment. So Plan B swung into action; head back into the creek and up into it’s headwaters to the shallows to see if anything, again, snaky or pickerel would be cruising. Water temps in 2–3 feet of water were hovering at 50F.
The next half-hour was a well executed Plan B with nothing to show for it. I made way to the target waters, casted target lures (Rapala Twitchin’ Minnow, and a Bass Assasin Sea Shad on a Gamakatsu Swimbait Hook 1/8oz), but didn’t catch target species.
Within a half-hour, the fog appeared to have burned off the river from afar, so I headed back into Plan A, making the ride across the river and into the grassbeds. At this point I started alternating between the lures mentioned above, and added a Zman Willowvibe into the mix, tipped with a Zoom fluke in a gray/blue shad color. There wasn’t much action at first, but at a perpendicular intersection of a dock and the edge of the weed line, I hooked into a nice pickerel that fought much larger than he turned out to be. I was thinking PB on this one, but it measured just 21″ on the bump board. Back he went to swim another day.
The rest of the morning saw me move along this weed covered stretch of shoreline, mostly within 2–4′ of water that extended to 7–10′ deep. I got a couple more takes in the weeds and released the healthy, aggressive pickerel. There were zero snakehead to be seen. I cruised the shallows looking, almost like flats-fishing, but didn’t see any signs of the species.
There’s always next time. And next time, I will once again have a Plan A and Plan B. That’s two shows for the price of one outing. See y’all on the water again, real soon!
