I have to admit, coming in for this tournament I did not have high hopes for myself. I kinda thought I would do the usual 0 out. Well I did. But we'll get back to that issue later. Right now I want to talk about how this whole thing set up.
The Potomac River is my home water sort of. I mean, I grew up right near the area. I would not say I know it intimately but I know it's basic make-up. I'm not at a complete disadvantage in this fishery. So the week before the tournament, I heard of some good fishing coming out of Douge creek. Seated near Fort Belviore, VA; Douge is a funnel shaped creek with a shallow channel. It has been known to be very productive and often gives up good fish. Grass is very plentiful as well and has 2 washout points on the southern shore. These points have creeks that run out of them and into the main body, which makes the points very exaggerated. Sure enough the bass were there. They were no doubt liking my Explosive Tackle spinnerbait in black and red. Next time shaking off a catfish that wanted a piece of the action, but not until after he slimed my boat.
I'll save you the anguish of telling you the long version of the rest of the tournament by just saying I did not hook up on any legal length fish. But before you all lose hope and interest in old Bob, if you have not already, I can tell you that this angler had his hour after the last meal of the day.
After me and my co-angler got too hungry to even fish, we headed back to Mattawoman and rolled back to camp with guts twisting, obviously for two reasons. Of course we got harassed for not putting anything on the scales and to the other side of the spectrum; ''sorry you had such a crappy day of fishing". After feelings had been replenished and everyone had a good laugh at my expense, we had some killer steaks for dinner which were flipped with a grill fork unlike the night befrore's plastic fork idea. They tasted better without the petroleum by-product additive. Anyway, over good fishing conversation and beer, we finished our steaks and started out for yet another opportunity to duke it out. This time opting out of paying into the purse. Remember that statement because it will become chief later on in this story.
The boats are in and everybody starts taking off. I'm already at a major disadvantage here in the fact that everyone else is using golden rule. I don't have a golden rule! So now I have to bring back 15 inches or over and they just have to measure anything 12 or over and throw it back. Really I can't say much for my attitude at the time. I was not angry or anything. Just disappointed about my sun glasses being lost to the depths earlier that day plus not doing anything in the tournament. I really just wanted to go fishing. Not really wound up for the competition of it, not about the money at stake because there was none. Just let's fish. So I decided to just idle on into Grinders Wharf. Grinders, if you can picture this, is about 100 yards from the ramp. It's really a cove with some old pilings and a wreck or two. From shore it drops from 0 to about 10 feet pretty rapidly. Then it comes back up to a flat about 4 feet deep and covered in thick coon tail. Then that drops off into an even deeper channel around 14 feet and back up again with a massive grass flat that stretches all the way out to the main body of Mattawoman. I'm in the 14 ft. channel at this point, punching the grass about 20 feet in from the edge, with a YUM wooly bugger and a 1 oz. flipp'n weight pegged with a handful of tooth picks. My co-angler says "I'm going to try a buzz frog". I begin thinking to myself "yeah along with everything else you have in your bag as well. I have never seen anyone switch as much as he does. I wonder how he ever figures the fish out. As I'm am thinking this, one comes up an kisses his white frog. Okay, this guy is on to something I think... and just then he hooks up but the grass interferes with the hook set. Just about then I am thinking I need something that is designed to move slowly and can partially penetrate through the grass. I got it! I pull out these huge mongo 8" YUM Dingers in black and blue. I rig it texpose with no weight and give a wing. It just flops on top of the sloppy thick weeds like SPLAT!. Then I pulled it into a gap in the Forest and let it fall all the way and let it just sit. The pick-up, the move, the hookset. YANK! Got him (or her). It's a nice fish in the 3 lb. range and the good part is it was over 15". A keeper? What's that? At any rate. One's in the live well and plenty of our 2 hour limit left. I hurle the huge worm like a mace to the next gap in the Forest but no body's home, so I turn to the edge of the grass just before it hits the 60 foot wide channel. The worm sinks and I twitch it's way further into the weed line and same thing. I could feel it get attacked and YANK! Another quality fish at around 2.5 lbs IN THE LIVE WELL! YES! I could see fish moving all through the grass, but as I targeted them they would not bite. I saw a very large boil further down the weed edge so I figured I would cast behind it and maybe I could get it's attention with some twitching. I felt the fish suck the entirety of the worm in with my mega sensitive G Loomis GL2 rod. I reared back with a devastating hookset that brought the fish out into the channel with me. As it came for the boat I raced to take up line and keep tension on the hooked lip. Once it reached the boat it must have realized that it was blocking its way into the grass because it took an instant detour around the bow, narrowly missing trolling motor. Meanwhile I'm thinking ''please don't play ring around the Rosy on my trolling motor and break off". I swung the fish around to the other side placating it's need to be near the vegetation, and that was all it had. Thumb, lip, boat, in that order.
By the end of the whole 2 hours I had a couple ounces over 10 pounds with just 3 fish. Mainly because the biggest took up half of that total in it's weight alone. I went to bed that night thinking "what if I had caught another couple of 3 pounders." The slump is over!
