I've gotten out twice now to Occoquan for some shad fishing. The first trip I totaled up 14 fish and my largest ever measured hickory shad at 19.25". I believe I may have caught bigger in years past when I did not have the benefit of my check-it stick, but since it wasn't measured it doesn't count. Over 19" is pretty darn good for a hickory shad though!
-- I got out on Monday figuring that the cloud cover and the light wind would be conducive to catching shad. As so often happens, expectations were not quite accurate. I started fishing at 1:30 and by 4 pm I only had 7 or 8 shad, with a couple nice female hickories over 17" inches coming to hand and the rest being some sporty but smaller males. I hooked two large fish above the pedestrian bridge that got away. One that I could tell was big when it burrowed down deep but twisted free after a few seconds. The second I had seen roll near the bank in a non-shad seeming spot. This fish took off on a run after being hooked that took me into my backing. Could have been anything! Odds are it was a catfish, but my gut says striper.
Anyhow, I moseyed back down to my spot below the pedestrian bridge around 3:30/3:45. Then the clouds went away and the bite came on. I proceeded to rack up about a dozen and a half fish over the next hour, including the two pictured fish. The silvery one was 17 and 7/8, the yellowish one was 17 and 3/4. Fly color preference flipped too. Before the sun came out, red and white did the trick. After the sun came out, chartreuse and white was the ticket. I was scheduled to stop fishing at 4:30, but my rule is if I cant go three casts without catching a shad, then I don't have to leave, period. Finally packed it in around 5 pm though after catching that last big one. Good to go out on a high note.
Water was a little stained but not too high. Tide was low when I started and coming near top when I left (probably also a contributing factor to the bite turning on). Tons of other fishermen were on the banks and no one was being good about social distancing. I had to politely decline help from several folks in setting up the foldcat. It is so funny to me how many people are on the banks casting crankbaits down at Occoquan. Here I am having a ball catching shad and there you are trying to catch bass from shore in an extremely heavily pressured spot. I just hope some folks see this and think to switch to shad fishing, rather than proceeding to lose $6 crankbaits in the trees. One dude had a sweeweet carp fishing setup though. He was in the parking lot under rt 123. Had the bite alarms, slingshot, and everything. It was a bit inconvenient that he was draping three lines over the kayak drag, but then again there were also two other dudes set up in the same spot bait fishing, so I had to go further down the shore into the power line easement to launch anyways. As I was coming back in there were several plups from him slingshotting his bait out to where I was rowing.
http://www.tpfr.org
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