Springtime
(Tidal Water)
Cranking on the Potomac River – Part I
By Chuck Bailey
“If you were to die and enter through the pearly gates, you’d find St Peter there sitting on one of its piers – that’s how beautiful the Potomac River is.” So says Frank Karl, a bass tournament angler smitten by a tidal waterway.
A non-fisherman might look around and see the Potomac as a pleasant tidal river, but wonder why one would call it more beautiful than any other on the eastern coast. Clearly, it is what swims below its surface that excites Frank and draws him back year after year. He insists, “From an angler’s perspective it is an incredible fishery.”
This 383 mile long river is the 4th largest the along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. With Maryland and Washington DC on one bank, and Virginia and West Virginia on the other, its waters ultimately flow into the Chesapeake Bay.
And whereas it is possible to catch bass in the Potomac’s shallow waters all year long, in the springtime it becomes a gold mine for the crankbait enthusiast. But regular success comes only to the angler who has studied and mastered the secret to unlocking the river’s treasure, which is… the tide.
A Tidal River
Most bass fisherman find their largemouth bass in the countless reservoirs, lakes, and ponds that dot the continent. But the Potomac is a tidal river, where the gravitational forces of the moon (and sun) create a whole new wrinkle for the bass angler. As the moon circles the earth, its pull on the earth causes the ocean to rise and fall, and almost every 6 hours the tide changes direction.
Almost. From one day to the next the coastal areas experience two daily high (and two low) tides. It would be very convenient if the two high or low tides each day occurred on a precise 12 hour cycle, but unfortunately mother nature does not work according to our clock. The precise cycle time is 12.4206 hours. That means high or low tide will change from day to day by approximately 50 minutes.
A lake fisherman may be tempted to say, “So what? A bass is a bass, is a bass.” But the largemouth in a tidal river have learned to adapt their feeding patterns to the current flow changes in the river. If an angler doesn’t understand or refuses to grasp the significance of this evolutionary adaptation, they will be frustrated when fishing a tidal river.
A Slack Tide Slump
Frank Karl remembers his first trip to the Potomac. Before arriving he had heard that bass will rarely be caught on a slack tide - (the time period in between the tide moving in or out - when the waters are still). They told me it was highly unlikely that a fish could be caught at slack tide.” Karl laughed at what he was sure was myth. “I thought to myself ‘I primarily fish still water lakes, so I will get them to hit.’ I was wrong.”
That’s not to say an occasional bass won’t be caught during a slack tide, but as Frank has humbly discovered “…you catch more fish when you’ve got water movement. It doesn’t matter if the tide is going out, or coming in; if you have a current flow, those bass in a tidal river are conditioned to ambush their prey when the tide is moving.” As a result, bass often move in and out of certain areas depending on the start or lack of water movement.
Sometimes fish will not move from an area, but they will just shut down until the water begins to move again. Whether they move or remain stationary, their feeding schedules are primarily tied into the tidal clock.
Frank explains, “If you have a weedbed full of fish and there is water movement, they are going to feed. But if you are out on the main channel of the Potomac and you are targeting docks or rip-rap – those fish may not be there during slack tide.”
Moving Water and Feeding Stations
“There are certain places, locations, or areas where fish only like to stage at certain times of the day. We call them feeding stations,” explains Frank. Of course, this seemingly simple pattern is not as black and white as one would hope for.
Nature has its way of keeping anglers guessing. “We’ve may hit a good looking pile of rocks when the tide is coming in – and nothing. Slack tide - nothing. Tide going out – nothing. But when the outgoing tide is almost done, (when it slows up but is still moving) – suddenly you kill them there. These particular bass will move up and feast at the tail-end of an outgoing tide.”
“But there are also other places where there has to be a faster tide going in or out before the fish stage on them. That’s just the unique matrix on the Potomac, and the challenge begins with finding those feeding station locations, and then discovering what these particular bass like; faster or slower moving water, on an ingoing or outgoing tide.”
Running the Tide
To say that “timing is everything", is an understatement on a tidal river. Frank states bluntly, “Timing is crucial! Oh, my yes. And as result there are anglers that choose to participate in what is called ‘running the tide’.”
“If the tide is coming in, some bass fishermen will run 40 miles down river, fish an area for 20, 30, or 40 minutes and then buzz up a couple miles and hit their next spot, and continue this for as long as the tide is coming in. And likewise, there are other anglers who will run 30 or 40 miles north and catch the tide as it is going out, moving down the river as the water recedes.”
But doing this incorrectly can be a disaster. Frank warns, “If you do it wrong and go way up north when the tide is just starting to come in, it’s going to be some time before the water reaches where you are. If you choose to “ride the tide” correctly, you must start down river and chase the tide as it comes in, and be up river to chase the tide as it goes out.”
Fishing a Spot All Day Long
Frank used some key words in that last statement; “if you choose to ride the tide”, which presumes that not all serious anglers do. It would be wrong to assume that the most successful tournament anglers are tide chasers. Frank admits that “Sometimes the most successful anglers are the guys who live on the Potomac.” Why? “Because they know the places where the bass stay all the time, regardless of the tides.”
The bass in the Potomac do not always do the same thing. Some will move to feeding stations when the current is flowing, and wander away from that structure when the current is not there. But others will simply stay put and simply shut down. And, though they are hard to find, the locals know a few weedbeds that are always hot; or as they say, “Places where you can catch fish all day long.”
These rare locations where an angler might get strikes all day long are generally weedbeds further away from the main channels and tend to hold larger numbers of fish. When a small area contains a high concentration of bass, there tends to be a lot more competition for the area’s forage, forcing the feeding window beyond the typical tidal patterns.
The Local Advantage
Because the river may change dramatically from one year to the next, Frank concedes that “The local anglers may have a small advantage over out-of-town competitors, because they spend so much time on the water and are able to find those special places that have a better concentration of competitive fish. They find more of those locations, and get on them faster than those non-resident anglers who only have two days to pre-fish.”
An interesting question is whether most tournament winners on the Potomac are locals who stay in one special area and fish it more thoroughly, or the anglers that run the tide? Even Frank doesn’t know the answer to that one.
With so many variables contributing to the changing conditions from day to day, it’s hard to predict which pattern will win more often. There is still an element of luck involved. “You can take the risk and run the tide and sometimes it will pan out. Or you can stay in one area and wait as the tide comes in and out - and that may pan out for you. My partner and I have done it both ways; sometimes the choice panned out, and sometimes it didn’t.”
Team - IIK
The partner Frank is talking about is Mark Knapp, and together they have competed very successfully in every “team tournament” in their section of the country. It’s probably fair to say they are "big fish in a smaller pond." Naturally, they would love to be full time professional tournament anglers, but like many talented anglers they can’t yet afford the escalating cost of the sport in recent years.
What they are hoping for is that the professional bass fishing community will soon learn what walleye and redfish anglers already know – team tournament fishing is only half the cost to an individual and allows more anglers to participate in the sport.
Until then, ‘Team IIK’ - (derived from their last names – Knapp and Karl) - relish the Angler’s Choice team tournaments, and others competitive venues that match one pair of anglers against a field of other talented anglers. For 18 years these two have passionately competed in local tournaments, refining their game plans, and winning a fair number of their contests. And both delight in driving the three and a half hours to get to the Potomac River – their favorite body of water in recent years.
Tidal Nomads
Mark and Frank have learned many tidal river lessons over the years. And they eagerly share them with with others anglers, because the transition from lakes to tidal waters is less difficult when an angler begins to understand the crucial role that water movement plays in a Potomac River bass's daily routine.
“If you are fishing a lake and you have a bass under a dock,” Franks explains, “that bass is probably going to be there all day until it is caught. It’s important to understand that if you catch a 4 pounder off a dock in the Potomac, you can go away and come back to that same location in 20 minutes, and there’s a good chance another bass has taken it’s place - that quick. These fish are primarily nomads, (far more so than lake fish are), and they are opportunists. Among Potomac bass there is this rule, ‘Move your meat, lose your seat’.”
“Spend time on the Potomac and you begin to discover some of these really good feeding stations. I know anglers who, after catching a bass off such a spot, will continuously return to that same location every 15, 20, or 30 minutes because they know that bass often move up and repopulate that spot.”
A Constantly Changing River
“The more time we spend on the river, the more we have learned about it's changing nature. For instance, there are some years you can go into Mattawoman Creek and find large concentrations of bass. But then, two years ago they weren’t there. Piscataway Bay, is usually a good location, but you never know because the river changes from year to year.”
“The ability of a location to hold fish all depends on how bad the winter was, and whether the new grass is growing in the same spots, and a host of other environmental reasons. But this leads to an important fact on the Potomac: wherever the weeds start to grow first in the spring, that’s when you are going to find your bass.”
The Weeds Are The Key!
The Potomac is basically a shallow river. “Most of the water you are going to be fishing in the Potomac is 10 feet or less,” says Frank. “There is a narrow boat channel that will get down to around 30 or 40 feet deep in some places, but most of the river is shallow.”
“The weed growth is phenomenal down there, and a weedbed can stretch the length of 8 football fields. In the coves of the many creeks, take Mattawoman Creek for instance, the creek channel may be 17 feet but only 50 feet wide. The rest may be 10 feet and then poof – it’s shallow. And when I say shallow, there are times when the water is only 3 feet or even less.”
Frank Karl says that when it comes to cover and structure, “The Potomac has all of it. There are places where there are stumps, overhanging trees, old bulkheads, lots of manmade structure such as docks, water breaks, (because of the tide ripping in and out, they have inserted rock bars to stop erosion), and some places have half a mile of rip-rap on the shore made of big boulders.”
“So the river has a little of everything. But the weedbeds are usually key on this water.”
Natural Weedbed Disasters
Unlike most lakes, Frank points out that “This river can change from week to week. On the first week of June, I might go into a cove and find a beautiful weed bed, and just be pounding it and catching fish. But I might go back a week later to discover that heavy rains flooded the river and destroyed the weed bed. When plush green weedbeds become all brown because they were choked out by excessive dirt and silt, those bass will move. They will find greener pastures.”
“Likewise, the weedbeds can be stunted in the spring if they don’t get the sunlight. Two years ago it rained a lot. This produced a lot of silt in the river, making the water clarity unusually dirty. It didn’t let the sunlight get under the surface to germinate weeds, so the weedbeds weren’t producing right. They weren’t growing. You need sunlight to germinate the weeds… so a lot of the weed beds did not flourish until later in the season.”
Water Clarity
Water clarity on the Potomac varies and primarily is the product of tides, rain fall, and weed growth. “When you have a low tide, a lot of the water gets sucked out, leaving clear water behind. Clear water happens more often when the weed growth comes up in late spring and early summer (that’s when you get the heavy weeds). In fact, back in the shallows the water stays predominately clean due to the weeds filtering the silt out.”
“But when you get a high tide, you will usually have a little bit more stain to the water. The only time you get truly muddy water on the Potomac is when you get a heavy rain. And then you will see what looks like chocolate milk coming down the river. But if an angler goes back into the coves and different creek channels, they can find clean water. And when I say clean water, there are a lot of times when it looks like tap water.”
Required: Quick Adjustments
So far, Frank’s description of the Potomac can only lead a reader to one conclusion; a tidal river is an ever changing environment that requires anglers to learn how to make adjustments much quicker than when fishing lakes. As we have learned, the water clarity changes with the tide, weedbeds change from year to year, (and during floods, from week to week), and fish in different sections of the river utilize either the front, middle, or tail ends of the switching current flows to eat.
Even when a pattern is discovered, the river will not let give an angler much time to work it. Frank explains, “Let’s say you are fishing a lake and finally discover a pattern throwing a Carolina rig down points in 20 feet of water. Normally you can start hitting all the different points on that lake, and find success with that pattern a good portion of the day.”
Smaller Windows
“Well, to an extent, pattern fishing is the same here on the Potomac, but with a tidal twist. If you discover fish are holding on riprap on the main channel, naturally you will start running the main channel. But unfortunately, your window is smaller. Why? Because in this case, the key might have been that you had an out going tide. Well, the tide is going to change soon, so your window of opportunity closes faster on a pattern in the river than on a lake.”
So angling adjustments to changing conditions must be made quicker – based upon the changing tide. Frank elaborates, “If you were to read the tidal river charts on the Potomac you will see that almost every 6 hours you are going from a low tide to a high tide, and you will be going anywhere from a foot to two foot of water depth difference. So once you have found a pattern, your window of opportunity becomes smaller.”
It’s easy to see why some anglers choose to “run the tide” after discovering a successful pattern. Chasing the tide allows them to keep the window open longer.
Largemouth Down River, Smallmouth Up River
If you are ever going to participate in most bass tournaments, it will be most likely be a limit of largemouth that wins it. It’s true there are both largemouth and smallmouth in the river, but as Frank points out, “You’ve got to go north into Washington DC to catch smallmouth, and because most of the tournaments are held south of there, I have not caught a smallmouth on the Potomac yet.”
“When you get above Washington DC there is a series of locks and dams, and above that is where you get into the smaller part of the Potomac going into West Virginia. It’s still a pretty nice size river, but you aren’t going to be able to take a bass boat – you are going to have to use a flat bottom or zip boat – and there’s where your smallmouth are found.”
<TO BE CONTINUED>
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In Part II – our Potomac River expert explains the pattern and location transitions from winter to springtime, and the role that new grass fields play in finding fish. The proper rods, reels, and lines are explored, and Frank Karl's favorite two crankbaits, colors, and techniques are discussed.
In Part III – a third favorite crankbait is discussed, and more vital tidal secrets are discussed. The impact of weather, (including wind, waves, and confronts), upon shallow water environments are explored, and some final important advice is given to those desiring to fish tidal water rivers for lunker bass.
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Frank Karl is one half of Team IIK. His partner Mark Knapps and he have been fishing bass tournaments for 18 years and the Potomac is one of their favorite bodies of water. Make sure to check their "Rod Caddy" that can attach easily to the back of almost any bass boat. For more information, check out their website www.team2kfishing.com.
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