Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Waking up at 4am (yawn) is something that I will do for fishing and fishing alone. I'll tell you seeing, the crisp red sun break the horizon made it worth the effort. That site coupled with 100 bass boats spanning two tournament groups really gets me pumped up.

Due to the inflexibility of Leesylvania State Park, we couldn't access the park until 5am and didn't launch until about 6am. That means we squandered a good 30-40 minutes of early morning bite while all of the boats checked in and launched.

We launched 34th of 55 and headed straight into Mattawoman. Within the first 30 minutes we had two keepers in the well and within the next hour we completed our limit with close to 8lbs in the livewell. Needless to say, it was a great start to a nice day on the water. We were successful with topwater frogs and soft plastics throwing to grasslines ands isolated clumps. Included in the 8lbs was one that went about 3lbs. Good fight, great looking fish.

After Mattawoman we moved to a few places nearby whose names I don't know, but the bite ultimately slowed down for us. At about 1045 we headed over to Occoquan where the bite immediately picked back up. We must have caught another half dozen keepers that required us to weigh and cull with our existing catch. We made a culling mistake when we replaced one bass in the well with another only to find out that there was still a smaller bass in the well. That probably cost us about a 1/4 lb, but the game is pounds and ounces. Fortunately, we landed one that allowed us to replace the dink and regain that 1/4 lb.

For the rest of the day we headed back down river to the Mattawoman, Chickamuxen area only to miss a few bites and land some non-culling bass.

We weighed in 8.95lbs which is a decent catch, but apparently we were among greatness because we ended up in 43rd place. The winning bag was just over 19lbs which is almost a solid 4lb average. Either way, it was another great day on the water and the Potomac just continues to amaze me with the quality of the fishery.