Snakeheads and Largemouth on the Upper Potomac

Type: Tidal
Region: Southern
Location: Upper Potomac

I just saw the fox news piece on Snakeheads. On March 19th I caught two Snakeheads on back to back casts and killed both fish.

My friend Kevin Wilson writes a outdoor blog called Fatboysoutdoors. Here is part of his fishing report from that day�

March 19th, 2012 marked a new day in the history of Mr. Steve Kelley and his fishing career, the maiden voyage of his brand new Mako boat. His boat transformed from an expensive piece of d�cor or jewelry to a fishing boat in a matter of hours. The floor of his shiny white boat was soiled by snakehead blood, snakehead poo, milfoil and other SAV fragments, algae, general dirt from our footwear, and the outside was stained by the mighty Upper Tidal Potomac. And we christened it with good sized fish. What a great trip.

We launched at 11am at Smallwood State Park in Mattawoman Creek, and on our way out from the ramp we veer right into the creek. I opted to use the same blue/chrome Rat-L-Trap to start mostly since I had confidence in it. Our plan was to focus on the vast emerging weed beds and toss lipless crankbaits and cover some water.

We fished along the deeper channel where it met the weed bed. I proceeded to move the weeds around while Steve, on his very first cast, caught his biggest tidal river largemouth to date, a stout 21 inch that weighed 5 pounds.

It wasn�t a few casts later that Steve boated another fat largemouth, this one 18 �� and most likely about four pounds. He proceeded to catch another nice 17� bass a few casts later. Not long after that, I was on the board hooking into a less than massive 12� skinny male largemouth.

We headed out of the creek to Greenway flats. We stopped at the Mouth of Pomonkey Creek and caught a few largemouths and some yellow and white perch. Then we pulled up to a spot that Mark and I found the other day that held fish, and I finally hooked up on a decent 18 �� largemouth on the Rat-L-Trap.

I caught a couple more smaller keeper sized bass after that, then we moved up to the Greenway weed beds. I landed some more fat largemouth along the weeds. Steve opted to head toward shore and work the wood with a ringworm. On his first cast, he landed a fat 17� largemouth, followed by a yellow perch. Not long after that, he hooked into a fish that catapulted out of the water on his hook set, almost doing a back flip. I yelled out, �snakehead�! Sure enough, Steve landed this fishzilla.

He hooked into another one shortly after. We wondered if they were paring up to spawn and he caught the mated pair. If so, we spared the Potomac from a zillion more of these.

I managed to catch a couple more fat bass on the trap while probing a new weed bed area. We moved to a familiar point, and I hooked up into a monster. This 21 �� fish was barely hooked by the back treble of my crankbait�my biggest fish in a couple years.

I started slow, but finished with a bang and equaled my last trip, 14 bass, including a 21 �� fatty, a 18 �� bass, and two 17� fat bass, and three yellow perch. Steve landed 10 bass, including his biggest Potomac largemouth to date on his first cast, and a four pounder, along with two yellow perch, a white perch, and two fishzilla snakeheads (dead with the gills ripped out, probably filleted last night by Mr. Kelley).