Had a good day on the water yesterday over on Potomac and Accokeet Creeks.  Cloudy the first half of the day then the sun came out (and I forgot my sunscreen)!  I got there a little past high tide at 9AM and fished the channels,  and into the early lilly pads somewhat.  I did best in the channels using a chatterbox, red-black with craw trailer and orange-chartruese with a brown craw trailer.  (I did not have my ruler so I used my tackle box for size in photos it is 10″ long so you can guess the length as they lay next to it. )   All my bites, bass and snakeheads were deeper in the main channles of the side creeks about 6′-15′ deep.  Not many bites but the few I had produced well!

I had seen fish jumping and rolling all morning, mostly carp and cats,  a few large shad but a few looked to me like snakeheads.  Sure enough they were awake finally after a “long” winter!  I had a nice 2.5 lb. largemouth first thing that morning in the lillies, a male just cruising but could not finf any more for the rest of the day.  My first snakehead bite was an hour later, around 11:30 AM and my biggest fish, a nice 8.2 lbs.  He bit my orange/chartruese chatterbox  taking it right from the middle of the channel close to my boat not in the lillies!  I missed one 30 min. later then got another nice 4.2 lbs. again from the middle of the channel.  Then things slowed for an hour or so as slowly drifted back up Accokeet creek to the Crow’s Nest state park kayak/canoe ramp. I did not see much in the way of bass or snakeheads in that part of the creek accept for carp and a few larger shad.  No gar fish there yet either.    So I worked my way back to the middle and widest part of Accokeet where I had caught my first two snakeheads and sure enough got another nice 5 pounder

and scared a whopper!  He jumped clear out of the water as my bass boat came up the edge of the lillies, had to be a good 12 lbs! (okay maybe 10lbs.  I am a fisherman after all)  It was huge!  No luck finding where he swam off to so I now at early afternoon and sunny I worked the inside the lillies and nothing.  Then I went back out to the channel and slowly worked it back to the main creek mouth and hooked another nice fish, takin’ drag but spit the hoot before I could get it up to the surface.  From the way it faught it most likely was a big snakehead.

I kept the large one, a male and put the others back large females so we’d all have nice fish to catch another day.  Now I know many of you want to kill or keep every one you catch but I definately noticed a big decline last year compared to the years before so we must be limiting their expansion just fine.  Practice good stewardship and lets make sure there are fish tomorrow for all of us.

So they are warmed up and active- let the games  begin!