Pacemaker Fishing Forum

It was an early meetup today, 6a in Bethesda. From there, we (John Nguyen and Duncan McGrath, our guide) drove to Seneca and started the float.



The 1st part of the float (before Seneca Breaks) was to get our gear in order and to get a great morning shot!



It was a beautiful morning, calm winds. Later, the winds picked up but it only affected us a few times.

Suffice to say that Duncan is a master managing the raft. I don't know how he does it but I guess 19 years or river raft guiding has honed his skills. He also doesn't like braid when fishing moving water with tubes. Once I broke off using my rod, that was it. He game me one of his (just like mine) and that was that!

After a much too long lull, I scored 1st with a 12 incher but Duncan would not take the obligatory 1st fish pic!

I then got a chunky 13" tubby and finally got a pic.



Then John got a nice chunk on a fly!



Pickins' were slim. For me, it was all tube, corner seams off the rock. They bit it right away or they didn't touch it. I manage to miss 3-4 bites too.  I did throw a jerk bait a few times with no success.

I also threw the fly for 30-40 minutes but I knew that was not the ticket today.

Time for lunch...only 3 fish boated and quite a few missed!



After lunch, I started catching bigger ones every few holes or so. We did not take pics of them all.

My next 5 were 15", 16" (2), 17" and 19". Duncan only measures to the half inch so if they don't make the mark, it goes back to the whole number.







It was a great day to be out despite the slow fishing.

Only one other raft out there, Mike Bailey and Alex Binstead. They only did a short float and caught a few but they too said it was slow.

We took out at Riverbend at 3:30p. And then fought rush hour traffic to get home. Not that I am complaining....