Another County and a Salisbury freshwater "slam"

Another weekend has passed and I'm back at school teaching chemistry. But this weekend was a productive one despite the driving that I had to do. My weekend started with a drive to St. Mary's County, specifically Leonardtown High School for the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference track meet. My son was running the 300 m hurdles and I was the one who took him down. With his event not scheduled to start for an hour and a half, I decided to drive another 7 or 8 minutes down the road to St. Mary's Lake and give it a try. When I got there, the Department of Natural Resources was holding a kids' fishing derby, so I knew that space on the shore would be a premium. It was really neat seeing the parking lot full and as I walked to the trail I spotted dozens of families with kids having a terrific time. I settled on a small finger on the southeastern portion and started casting a small jig with a Powerbait nymph towards a small set of lily pads. Three or four casts in, I was hooked up with a small, maybe 12 - 14 inch, largemouth. The kids around me, started yelling in excitement "It's a bass!" when they saw him come out of the water one time. I snapped a photo and released him back, hoping that maybe he would make his way over to the kids for them to enjoy.

After the track meet I headed home with my son for lunch and then dropped him off for work. I then hit the road to head to Salisbury so that I might be able to see my mother for Mother's Day. With the fact that she is still under the care of a nursing facility, my sisters and I really wanted to make sure that we were all three with her on Sunday. Since I arrived in Salisbury right at dinner time, I decided to let mom eat in peace so I headed to my favorite spot at Pemberton Historical Park. The grasses are really starting to sprout up and it made getting a lure down deep enough to get hit difficult since I came only prepared for panfish really. I wasn't prepared to "punch matts" as they say. Nevertheless, I was able to still find a couple of areas that had "open" water next to some of the grasses, so I figured that they would be great ambush spots for larger fish. Man was I correct when I hooked into a nice, probably 18 inch, chain pickerel. I changed locations and found some more open water, and began to cast there as well. It was there where I hooked up, and landed a nice, probably 2 lb largemouth. He was only my fourth or fifth of the season, and I was pretty happy with his size, especially because I was rigged for panfish the entire time. I released him and made a few more cast and came up with a respectable bluegill, maybe 8 inches in length. After that catch I really started to hope. I've caught many "trifectas." You know three species in a body of water, but I had never caught four different species of freshwater fish in the same body of water. I cast a little more, but the area seemed to slow down, so I decided to change spots, back to where I had caught the pickerel. I made a couple of casts into the deeper portions of the creek, getting caught on grass a few times. I decided to try three more casts since time was starting to run short. I made a long cast and was rewarded immediately by hooking up with a nice 10 or 11 inch black crappie. I had done it, four freshwater species in one trip. Actually what was nice about it, for me, at least was that I only caught four fish while there that day!

To put the finishing touches on the trip, Sunday afternoon, after a very nice visit with my mother and sisters, I made the drive back towards Calvert County. I was ahead of schedule on the drive so I decided to make a stop in Queen Anne's County, just about a mile from the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I decided to give a pond just on the outskirts of Terrapin Beach Park a try. I had stopped there before but had no luck on previous visits. As luck would have it, I was able to catch a small black crappie to help me put Queen Anne's County on the list.

All in all - it was a pretty good weekend in the fishing department. Hopefully there will be many more to come.