A Tale of Two Days on the River

“It’s called fishing, not catching.”

“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

“If it was easy, it wouldn’t be as fun.”

I guess I buy into the theory of those oft-heard cliches, but I really like catching ‘em. I’m honest enough to admit past the point in my life where a challenge really matters. I enjoy getting my string stretched. I had back-to-back days on the Potomac River this past weekend that pretty much proved it to me.

On Friday, my friend Scott, in town from Dallas and staying with his daughter and son-in-law joined me and I felt like we could do no wrong. Before we even started up the big motor, we headed over to the riprap jetties protecting the marina and on his “first cast where the bait ran right” he caught a chunky 2-pounder to get the skunk out of the boat.

The wind was blowing out of the north, so we made a short run to a protected bank that has produced April fish for me since I first started fishing the river in 1995. Well, technically, 1996 was the first April I fished it, but you get the point. A few casts in, I was hooked up. We stayed on that bank for the next four hours or so, until our allotted time dwindled, and landed about 20 bass. Nothing giant – the biggest might’ve pulled the scale to 3 ½ pounds. We rarely went more than 10 or 15 minutes without a bite, and while they clearly showed a preference for certain colors, we caught them on both vibrating jigs and swim jigs. There was one particular key stretch, and the size and the ferocity of the bites diminished as the tide got out, but the bite never went away. With a little bit of time remaining, we branched out from there and added three or four more bass to the tally.

It left me feeling like it was easy.

So when Hanna – who had not yet fished for bass, let alone in Virginia, in 2023 – indicated that she wanted to go out this weekend, I rerigged her rods and we made plans to be there before sunrise. I suspected there would be at least one big Saturday derby and I wanted to get to Friday’s bank first.

Of course, plans never go the way they should. When we left the house, it was virtually calm, yet 29 miles away at the ramp it was an E-Ticket. We took an ugly ride across the river and got to the bank a little bit chilled. After all, it had dropped down to 43 degrees overnight. Water temps had been over 60 on Friday, but when we got to our area I figured my graph was malfunctioning – it read only 54. That turned out to be accurate, and I’m sure that the temp changes, along with the change in wind direction had a lot to do with the slow start.

Still, I held out hope.

The fish were there. The tide was similar. There was no reason they shouldn’t bite.

Except that they didn’t.

I wanted to wait out a higher tide so we fished the area for nearly three hours without a confirmed bite. Back and forth, back and forth. Had Scott not been in the Suburban when I called Hanna on Friday to tell her about our success, I’m sure she would have thought I’d been lying. She might have thought that anyway.

Finally, a little bit after 9, we abandoned that bank and moved out into the grass. At 9:24, Hanna caught our first fish on a red trap. It wouldn’t have made our top dozen catches on Friday.

The ride back across the river a while later was even uglier than the way out. I gritted my teeth the whole way, pounded through the mess, and turned upriver only when there was no more ground to keep going toward the Virginia shoreline. It was a frustrating, rejecting, and embarrassing performance. I was mad all the way home, exacerbated by unreasonable holiday weekend traffic, and remained mad for a few hours later.

I’m still processing what this all means. I’ve fished long enough to know that bass turn on and off for reasons both obvious and not, often at the flick of a switch. But sometimes I just want things to go according to plan. I want Hanna – who like me has developed a severe mistrust bordering on hatred for the Potomac – to have more great days out there before we leave this area for good. Yet at the same time, I’m trying to exercise gratitude. We’re safe, we’ll get to do this again, and I did have one very good day with a longtime friend. I know that the fish still live there, it’s just up to me to earn them. I cannot help but wonder what I’d be thinking if the days had been reversed and we’d struggled on Friday and whacked them on Saturday. Would that have made me happier? For a control freak, I’ve clearly picked the wrong sport to immerse myself inside.