Gravelly Point Small Mouth

Out going tide. Friday afternoon stall tactic to avoid dense DC traffic. Lots of water draining from the Roaches Run culvert under US-1. I was checking the place out to see if there were any schoolie stripers, but no takers other than this guy. It took the 1" Nymph soft bait pretty close to the shoreline - not in the main current. One fish (no matter how small) is still better than a skunk. The small mouth down in this part of the Potomac (tide section) seem to have much darker coloration. Seems I need to go fishing for more small mouth to do a comparative study...

Saturday Morning Fishing at Lake Newport

I opted to just walk to the lake this morning to go fishing. I brought the 5wt flyrod and my St Croix Ultralight spinning setup. I walked up to the dam and did the rock dance first. I saw these two little turtles swimming around without a care in the world. I figured I'd give them a life lesson (don't forget to check your 6 periodically) then let the kids study them for a while. They got a free meal out of the ordeal so their plus one. Using the spinning rod, I hooked into another yellow perch, and again as I was pulling it up to hand, it came off the hook. I got a small bass the same way (spit the hook after a jump). I finally got one to hand - handsome devil too. I used the flyrod back around toward our side of the lake, I hooked into a decent sized bluegill (not big enough to make into an impressive gyotaku). I saw one of the old resident grass carps hovering close to shore - I suspect these ripening berries are one of the reasons - time to breakout the blueberry fly... Driving around to different spots is awesome, but I do appreciate the local waters (nearly in our backyard).