posted on: June 18, 2019

Father�s Day Weekend

Type: Nontidal
Region: Southern
Location: Smallwood State Park

I went camping with my youngest daughter and her family over the weekend. We camped at Smallwood State Park and my son-in-law, Dale, and I fished the upper end of the Mattawoman out of Slavin. The fishing pressure was immense, we saw no less than 50+ bass boats and kayaks everywhere.

We started out by casting top water frogs and Whopper Plopper, back into the shallows. Working the baits slowly back to us, anticipation hanging thick in the air, then Dale tied into a big fish. The water exploded, his bait disappeared and then the fish started to pull his yak, breeching the waters surface the fish then took a dive deep into the hydrilla, just to break Dales heart. His kayak drifted, silently for a few moments, the wind pushing him further back into arrow plants and lily pads. Silence.

We fished another few hours, switching baits to plastic worms rigged shaky head. We caught four largemouth bass, the largest was 18�. I saw two mid size snakehead caught and a few bass off other kayaks and bass boats. That evening Dale, Isaac and Wyatt, my youngest grandson, and I sat on the fishing pier near the parks store. Wyatt catching a blue catfish on a night crawler made our day.